The Impact of Scaffolding and Reflection During Problem Scoping in Capstone Design

Contribution: This article explored problem scoping in an industry sponsored engineering design capstone course before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It employs reflection-in-action and quantitative action research, to demonstrate how the pandemic offered an opportunity for 1) students to develop their problem scoping skills and 2) for the instruction team to design novel reflection-based interventions to support students’ problem scoping process. Background: Despite the importance of problem scoping in engineering design, its development in engineering undergraduates, especially during crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, remains understudied. While the pandemic’s impact on higher education is generally perceived to have been negative, this article presents a different perspective, suggesting it may have improved students’ reflective practices. This is examined by comparing three cohorts of students who participated in the capstone prepandemic (2019), at the onset of the pandemic (2020), and a year after the pandemic began (2021). Research Question: How did students’ problem scoping skills change due to pandemic-motivated interventions in 2020 and 2021? Methodology: A quantitative action research approach was utilized due to the iterative nature of the interventions designed in response to the pandemic. Scoping metrics were derived from final project reports and compared across cohorts using nonparametric statistical tests. Nonparametric tests were selected due to small sample sizes and violation of the assumption of normality and homogeneity of variance. Findings: Increasing opportunities for reflection-in-action lead to improved design performance (with nuances) underscoring the importance of teaching reflective design practices to engineering students to better equip for complex design problem-solving.