Teaching Interdisciplinary Design Between Architecture and Engineering: Finding Common Ground While Retaining Disciplinary Expertise

1 Copyright © 2015 by ASME

Proceedings of the ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conference & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference

IDETC/DEC 2015 August 2-5, 2015, Boston, MA, USA

DETC2015-46873

TEACHING INTERDISCIPLINARY DESIGN BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING: FINDING COMMON GROUND WHILE RETAINING DISCIPLINARY

EXPERTISE

Timothy Li Engineering Product Development

[email protected] Singapore University of Technology

and Design Singapore 487372

Nilanjan Raghunath Humanities and Social Sciences



Katja Hölttä-Otto Engineering Product Development



Asli Arpak

Design and Computation Group Department of Architecture

[email protected] Massachusetts Institute of

Technology Cambridge, MA 02139

Suranga Nanayakkara Engineering Product Development



Cassandra Telenko Mechanical Engineering

cassandra.telenko@ me.gatech.edu

Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 30332

ABSTRACT Many educators agree that developing an interdisciplinary

design curriculum is critical in creating the next generation of design professionals. However, literature surrounding the pedagogical challenges to undergraduate interdisciplinary design courses is limited. In this paper we study the initial challenges in developing and delivering an interdisciplinary design course. We observe from the perspective of the educators and the students in a newly synthesized co-taught design course that combines both architecture and engineering disciplines.

Through exploratory observations and analysis of student and instructor feedback throughout the semester, our findings suggest that disciplinary boundaries often influence pedagogical styles despite a concerted effort to create an interdisciplinary course that focuses on design. Despite agreement to interdisciplinary design teaching through shared lectures and activities, individual teaching methods varied, impacted by pedagogical norms from their respective disciplines. In response, students had mixed reactions to the varying presentation methods and critique feedback. This study, while preliminary in assessment, raises many questions about the challenges of teaching interdisciplinary design courses.

1 INTRODUCTION Introduction to Design is a required first-year

undergraduate design course at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) that combines both engineering and architecture design disciplines. It was launched in 2012 and this study focuses on data gathered from the course’s second year in 2013. During the course, students are challenged with the task of designing solutions for thematic problems. Faculty from the Engineering Product Development, Engineering Systems Design, Information Systems Technology and Design, and Architecture and Sustainable Development pillars facilitate and critique student progress throughout the design process. The classroom is arranged in a group studio format. Students enrolled in the compulsory course have mixed or undecided majors and are in the second semester of their first year. This course occurs concurrently with basic science courses and exists as a part of SUTD’s 4-dimensional pedagogy [1, 2].

The course was organized as eight weeks of lecture integrated with 13 weeks of studio. Each lecture was taught by at least one architecture and one engineering instructor, and tools and perspectives were introduced to aid the design process. Every third lecture, guests from commercial design firms shared their stories and perspectives. Each studio section was led by two engineering instructors and one architecture


instructor. During the study the overall theme was “Energy in the Home” and each section had a sub-focus, such as “Design for the Elderly.” During the studio sections, students engaged in activity modules to explore concepts introduced during the lecture and to apply them to their self-driven projects. The studio sections teach learning as a cyclical process, involving four types of activities, as described by the Kolb experiential model: concrete experiences, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation [2, 3]. This model enables teachers to “act as a facilitator in the natural inquisitive exploration that will occur in this progression [3].”

This course is a part of a unique curriculum and pedagogy taught at SUTD, but the concept of interdisciplinary design education has been practiced over the past two decades at various institutions across the globe. However, the literature surrounding the pedagogical challenges to undergraduate interdisciplinary design courses is limited. In this paper we begin to fill this gap by studying the early phases of developing and delivering an interdisciplinary course co-taught by engineers and architects, in particular focusing on the perspective of the instructors.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 The call for interdisciplinary education

The need for an integrated approach to design education has persisted within the literature for over two decades, across architecture [4, 5], engineering [6, 7], and management [8] disciplines. As the complexity of global challenges grows, educators need to prepare the next generation of innovative thinkers. The U.S. National Innovation Initiative’s (NII) 2005 report [9] states that “[innovation] arises from the intersections of different fields or spheres of activity.” The NII challenged educational institutions to change the way science and engineering is taught to better mirror industry practices.

Early attempts at design education already included interdisciplinary approaches by the late 1980’s [8]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Product Development in the Manufacturing Firm course (later renamed to Product Design and Development) combined students from the Mechanical Engineering department with students from the Sloan School of Management at MIT (and later design students from Rhode Island School of Design). Efforts in interdisciplinary teaching expanded to several universities, in both undergraduate [10, 11] and graduate [12] levels in the U.S. [10, 13] and abroad [14].

SUTD builds upon this tradition through the construction of an entirely different approach to design education based on multidisciplinary pillars (instead of traditional departments) and interdisciplinary courses, such as Introduction to Design [1].

2.2 The definition of interdisciplinary

Juxtaposing ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘multidisciplinary’ may draw confusion, since they are occasionally used interchangeably. However, since we are delving into the

specific areas of interdisciplinary design education we will highlight some of the differences.

We use the definition of ‘interdisciplinary’ provided by from the Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research [15]. They define ‘interdisciplinary’ as integrating “information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems beyond the scope of a single discipline.” This definition suggests that ‘interdisciplinary’ education integrates existing expertise to synthesize new knowledge [16].

We contrast this statement with the term ‘multidisciplinary’, which is defined as “research that involves more than a single discipline in which each discipline makes a separate contribution” [15]. Borrego describes ‘multidisciplinary’ as “a temporary or weak combination of contributions from multiple disciplines [17].” He continues to draw contrasts, citing from Stokols et al. [18]: “participants in multidisciplinary teams remain firmly anchored in the concepts and methods of their respective fields,” whereas interdisciplinary participants “work more intensively to integrate their divergent perspectives, even while remaining anchored in their own respective fields .” Similarly, Ritcher [16] describes ‘multidisciplinary’ as an additive process.

The course, Introduction to Design, provides a context for faculty of different disciplinary backgrounds to integrate their existing knowledge (in engineering or architecture) to teach a shared subject—design. As such, we use ‘interdisciplinary’ to describe our course and similar courses.

3 INTERDISCIPLINARY DESIGN EDUCATION Constructing interdisciplinary design courses has challenges. Educators must bridge pedagogically different styles of teaching, as well as incorporate faculty, students, and administration to successfully sustain such a course. Compared to multidisciplinary courses, the various disciplines in an interdisciplinary course must work together in order to successfully construct a program. Differences in language, values and perspectives are only exacerbated by the administrative challenges of organizing an interdisciplinary design program or course within two or more departments or schools [12]. Though interdisciplinary design education can consist of several disciplines, at SUTD, our focus in Introduction to Design, is teaching design through the use of faculty in the architecture and engineering pillars. Our investigation will be on the challenges faced during the course and how students respond to this approach. When comparing architecture and engineering pedagogies, many similarities arise, however both have fundamental differences in how knowledge is transferred from teacher to student. We will discuss some of major work done in these areas, though not exhaustively [6, 12].


3.1 The pedagogy of engineering education A traditional undergraduate engineering curriculum is

organized into the instruction in basic sciences and mathematics during the first two years, followed by two years focused on engineering sciences [6]. While teachers may try to accommodate for differences in learning preferences, this traditional approach lends itself to an approach biased towards intuitive, verbal, reflective, and sequential learners [19, 20]. Topic information is communicated to students through presentation and lectures in a deductive manner, where principles are taught first, followed by its applications [19]. Students show basic levels of comprehension through periodic assessments. According to Saliklis et al. [5], this approach is typical for an engineering pedagogy, which often begins with the lowest-order of learning according to Bloom’s taxonomy [21] and works its way up. Felder [20] surmised that classrooms usually begin with level-one thinking (remember) and build to level-three thinking (apply).

While this approach made for deeply analytically and technically competent engineers, it has also led the industry to characterize engineering as “too theoretical”, and a departure from the original conception of what should be an engineer [6]. This discrepancy between academia and industry has led to the creation of the “capstone” design course, which allows final-year students to apply their theoretical knowledge on a systems-level [6]. The majority of capstone courses employ a variation of problem-based learning (PBL). PBL was a pedagogy developed originally for medical profession to help improve comprehension and engagement for medical students [22]. This method, which has been adopted across several educational disciplines, has become a crucial component to engineering design education [6]. PBL, as defined by Barrows [23], puts the student “at the center” and the teacher “as a guide at the side”. PBL provides “ill-structured problems”, forcing students to learn through self-discovery. By definition, PBL is inherently an inductive approach, where the need or application is discovered before the principles or tools are taught [20]. This instructional approach is often daunting to students as it is contrary to the traditional deductive approach. However it aligns with the natural way people learn [19]. In line with our characterization of engineering pedagogy according to Bloom’s taxonomy, capstone design or PBL courses often fulfill higher-level thinking, often in the analyze, evaluate, and create levels [5]. Similarly, this method of learning is experiential in nature and also aligns with the cyclical Kolb learning model [3]. The effectiveness of PBL has spurred debate, with some doubting the effectiveness of “ill-structured problems” [24]. An ethnographic study on engineering students across 13 engineering courses revealed that students perceived engineering design as “simply an extension of the engineering method into a messier world [25].” However, Strobel [26] performed a meta-analysis on quantitative results from tests involving PBL compared with traditional learning methods, and found PBL to be significantly more effective at developing skilled practitioners [26]. Even still, Dym et al. [6] suggested

that the “formal adoption of a PBL-directed curriculum produces results that are similar to, even indistinguishable from, those obtained with the typical U.S. approach, except with regard to the “significantly better qualifications in co-operation.”

3.2 The pedagogy of architecture education

Initial years of architecture coursework include topics, such as fine arts, history, mathematics and structural engineering courses, which may be similar to engineering coursework. However, architecture students have the opportunity to synthesize these topics in design courses and studios. An extension of the art studio and microcosm for a professional studio, the architecture studio course persist throughout an architecture student’s education, and takes up about anywhere from 6-16 hours per week of in-class time [4].

While Saliklis et al. [5] characterized engineering pedagogy as “starting at the lowest levels” of Bloom’s taxonomy, he characterized architecture pedagogy as beginning from the highest cognitive levels (level five, create) and working down the levels. Projects are often initiated with a “thorough understanding of the project’s social, environmental, and programmatic context,” which forces students to concurrently perform analysis and synthesis [5] [27]. Schön described the reflective practice of designers as they converse with their designs as “reflection-in-action” [28].

Attoe and Mugerauer [29] said the “pedagogical technique used most in design studios is criticism of each student’s effort at synthesis [29].” This approach to criticism, either through desk critiques, or through final critiques or panels, provides students with guidance throughout the design process. Kuhn [30] describes the feedback often as heterogeneous, with issues “ranging from structural integrity to the social impact of the design…often in the same conversation.” The heterogeneity of feedback and student work links back to on the Vitruvian virtues of architectural design, specifically the tripartite canon: firmness, commodity, and delight [31].

Architecture pedagogy shares much with the pedagogy of the capstone course, but on a larger scale. McPeek [4] describes PBL as the core of architectural education. However, this learning is typically conducted individually, rarely with any collaboration outside the relationship of teacher and student due to the significant sensory and cognitive requirements that are individualized and experience-based [4]. 3.3 Challenges in interdisciplinary design education

The misconception of the meaning of design is often the first hurdle to teaching interdisciplinary design. Students often equate design as “the ability to control technology, to create by translating one’s internal knowledge into objective form [25].” This quote implies that students often believe that a mastery of design tools is a mastery of design, and represents the challenge of integrating design education from different disciplines with little to no objective introduction to design.


Even after overcoming these basic barriers, developing a successful program has its challenges. Current attempts at interdisciplinary design education have been met with moderate success at the undergraduate level. Bronet [11] assessed students within Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s (RPI) Product Design and Innovation (PDI) undergraduate dual major to find that the program manifested as more of a multidisciplinary program that mostly served to “reroute” existing mechanical engineering students. In addition, due to the similarities in pedagogy between different engineering programs, educators are often more inclined to integrate across engineering disciplines. Hotaling et al. [32] studied the effects of multidisciplinary engineering capstone courses and compared them with mono-disciplinary engineering capstone courses. After controlling for variables like GPA and major, he found that students in multidisciplinary capstone courses had better rated outcomes as well as better job placement after graduation [32]. Across graduate programs, the challenges seem to increase. Simpson et al. [12] revealed several barriers with developing interdisciplinary design graduate programs. He found that the curriculum varied between programs and many programs had challenges with balancing science and art within the discipline of design. However, he also found that many educators agree with implementing PBL in the classrooms.

We can use Simpson’s discussion of barriers as framework to discuss other attempts at interdisciplinary design education to aid us in our discussion. He describes the four barriers as: (1) students, (2) teachers, (3) curriculum and (4) administration & resources. These four impact areas can be an asset to design education, or as initially conceived, barriers to success [12]. We will briefly discuss some of the previous work to understand interdisciplinarity in the context of these four areas.

3.4 Students

Much of existing literature focuses on courses and programs for graduate or senior undergraduate students reviewing graduate programs [12, 17, 33] or capstone courses [25, 34]. Some educators believe that synthesis requires a basic knowledge of a discipline as a starting point [7]. The concept of a T-shaped individual describes a student’s prior knowledge as their depth or the vertical part of the ‘T’, whereas design provides the breadth, or the ‘horizontal’ section of the ‘T’ [35]. This way of thinking tends to categorize design or synthesis as a final step in learning, preventing students from learning the design process in the early stages of their undergraduate education.

However, others have cited the need to provide context for students to understand the need for disciplinary depth by providing them with design methods in their first-year cornerstone courses [6]. At Lehigh University, first-year students in the Integrated Business and Engineering major work in teams during their first semester to reverse engineer products to determine their form and function [36]. Students in RPI’s PDI dual major program participate in collaborative design studios from the beginning of their curriculum [11]. Other

schools like Harvey Mudd College and Northwestern University have also developed first-year design courses which bear resemblance to capstone design courses, yet focus more on “conceptual design methods” and less with execution on the prototype, due to a lack of concrete technical knowledge [6].

While these attempts have been effective, some have found problems with cornerstone courses. Dym [6] quotes Christophersen [37] when describing some of the challenges with first-year design courses:

“The freshmen’s involvement with project work was not seen to be as effective as it may...since the students did not have the technical knowledge or tools to benefit fully form this experience… [37] ” However, there is evidence that first-year cornerstone

design courses increase retention rates within engineering, suggesting that if nothing else, these courses help keep students engaged with design and engineering [6].

While these examples show that first-year design courses have shared some success, more work is needed to understand the execution of such courses, with respect to students and teachers and their subsequent interactions.

3.5 Teachers

In design education, educators have the role of facilitating the design process, and often, these courses are taught by a faculty team. Fixson’s [13] review of existing programs highlighted the need for trust in the process of facilitation, while Simpson’s [12] review highlighted challenges with departmental ownership of interdisciplinary programs and courses and faculty alignment as potential issues to interdisciplinary teaching and research.

Brezing [38] believes that challenges between teachers are due to “ignorance of the respective other’s competence.” He attributes this thinking to the reason some may question the other’s relevance to the topic of design.

Literature on conflict in team-teaching becomes increasingly relevant for courses like Introduction to Design, where interdependency on instructors can range depending on how instructors agree on the pedagogy of the course. More integration in teaching benefits students, however increases the amount of interdependency on teachers, thus requires more planning and effort [39].

3.6 Curriculum

During the 2008-2009 NSF Design Workshop Series, educators had multiple views about which “quantitative models” and “qualitative approaches” to include [12]. Much of the existing literature describes new approaches to design methods in education or comparisons between existing approaches to determine common strengths [40]. Brezing [38] developed an integrated design theory, combining aspects of engineering or practical functions, with industrial design or semantic functions, hoping to “improve the efficiency of


interdisciplinary product development processes by giving representatives of both domains a better insight into the respective other’s.”

Downey [25] suggests that the placement of curriculum will affect how students interpret hierarchy. Based on where design elements are placed in curriculum, students may interpret design as “subordinate and dependent” to engineering or architecture.

Despite the challenges with finding the appropriate balance between science and art, many educators agree on the use of PBL as an underlying method for teaching design [4, 6] [12].

3.7 Administration & resources

Aside from faculty and students, educational institutions play a role in the success of an interdisciplinary program. Simpson [12] suggested the use of supportive reward structures to encourage faculty to teach and perform interdisciplinary research. Another challenge is the access and availability of resources, specifically studio spaces as well as prototyping resources. Resources that are not co-located can hinder the learning process. Additionally, lack of management and administrative support for interdisciplinary design education can hinder its success [12]. What is missing is an understanding on how resources, or a lack of resources can factor in the success of interdisciplinary design programs or courses. This topic does not relate directly to our current task, however it would be an interesting area to cover in future studies.

4 METHOD The interdisciplinary Introduction to Design is a unique

and deliberate effort by engineers, designers and architects at the Singapore University of Technology and Design to teach design as the cornerstone of academic learning. This study occurred during the second instantiation of this course and thus provides an interesting opportunity to analyze the initial stages of developing an integrated interdisciplinary course. In order to improve the course and share the lessons learned with other institutions, we explored the evolution of both student and faculty in the course over a semester to understand teaching in a cross-disciplinary environment. This study used a three-pronged approach to capture how faculty and student attitudes and even approaches to teaching and learning may evolve over the course of the semester. The subjects involved a teaching team of 18 instructors as well as approximately 300 students divided into six cohorts. The teaching team consisted of one-third architects and two-thirds engineers to reflect the faculties’ disciplinary demographics and the undergraduate pillar preference that students select upon their matriculation. In addition to the pre-declared preferences, based on previous years, we expect approximately 30% of each student class to pursue the architecture pillar, with the remaining students pursuing one of the three engineering pillars.

4.1 Participant observation Three investigators each acted as participant observers in

at least three pre-selected cohort sessions. The investigators represented one of three disciplines: engineering, industrial design, and architecture. This team was organized for their expertise in teaching, as well as for their individual backgrounds. The presence of the industrial design investigator served to limit the inherent bias in the other observers. Each investigator observed their own cohort as well others permitted by their schedule. Three sets of observations were scheduled: one during the beginning, middle, and end of the semester.

Prior to the observations, the investigators were trained in ethnographic methods. The observers were given guidelines and encouraged to take note of anything interesting in the cohort they were observing.

The guiding questions for the observations were set as follows:

• Describe the roles each instructor has and how that related to the cohort content.

• Are there any issues that caused significant discussion or confusion, if so, please elaborate.

• Describe design assessment related questions and discussions that may happen in the classroom.

The written observations were collected and analyzed by

an independent researcher not involved in the course itself. The researcher provided the necessary advice on participant and non-participant observation and questionnaires as necessary. 4.2 Faculty opinions

While the above observation provided in-depth data from the three investigators of the different cohorts, a broader view was also sought across all the faculty members. This was realized by a simple biweekly questionnaire. At the beginning of the meeting, each instructor was asked to write answers to the following two questions:

• What was the most important part about last week’s lessons, what should have the students learned?

• Did you learn anything last week, if so, what?

On the questionnaire, each faculty was asked to identify

their pillar and whether they were an engineer or an architect. No additional identifying data was collected.


4.3 Student opinions In addition to faculty feedback, student views were also

recorded. In the same two weeks that faculty answered the questionnaire, students were also asked to provide feedback. The answers to the questionnaire were collected anonymously except for the cohort the student was in. The following questions are shown below:

• What was the most important part about this lesson?

• Did you learn anything today? If so, what?

While these questions are used for research, they were also

used as “muddy papers” or “minute papers”—a common quick class assessment technique to help adjust the teaching during the semester instead of waiting for feedback at the end of the semester. This method of feedback had been employed previously as a teaching assessment tool. However, for the purpose of the study, we sought permission to publish research on these assessment techniques. 4.4 Data collection

For evaluation purposes, 351 “muddy papers” were collected from students over the course of the semester. In addition, 64 faculty submissions, which coincided with the timing of the “muddy papers” were obtained for review. Lastly, 13 observer records were provided for evaluation. The data from these three sources were provided to the researchers by the team teaching the course. Each person who collected the data was further interviewed for clarifications on the field notes they had collected and for any faculty opinions about the course or the team. The results were analyzed qualitatively using both narrative and content analysis.

Content analysis was conducted inductively, where patterns were determined from the entire set of observations and responses [41]. This method allowed us to determine categories based on what participants said. Qualitative content analysis varies from quantitative content analysis in that the coding scheme applied to the research is derived directly from the data themselves. Sandelowski [42] describes the benefit of this method as the ability to capture more of “the unanticipated”.

Narrative analysis was used to identify the use of language in the context of teaching design to understand viewpoints on design [43]. This method allowed us to categorize how participants spoke about design. Due to the size of the sample, this process was done manually.

These unobtrusive methods of analysis allowed us to study social behavior without affecting it. Those who collected the data did both participant observation and non-participant observation in order to minimize bias.

5 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS Several patterns emerged in the qualitative analysis of the

feedback and observations. These initial results indicated that instructors in the study tend to fall back on a personal pedagogical style, as described in section 5.1 and that students in these cohorts were confused by the conflicting feedback, as described in section 5.2. The findings and results of the “muddy papers” are discussed in section 5.3. The qualitative research methods applied in this analysis provide a descriptive summary of perceived events during the course and insights that could not be gained by quantitative methods. One of the features of qualitative description method, as stated by Sandelowski [42], is that it “is especially amenable to obtaining straight and largely un-adorned (i.e. minimally theorized or otherwise transformed or spun) answers to questions of special relevance to practitioners and policy makers.” Many of these observations therefore can guide further investigations. 5.1 Executing interdisciplinary design education

Instructors generally supported the interdisciplinary nature of the design course but lacked consensus on what interdisciplinary team teaching meant. Nevertheless, these instructors were committed to the idea of design from multiple perspectives and expertise with a “melting-pot” approach. Having mixed lectures and studios, faculty were directed by a head instructor to present different disciplinary and personal perspectives on shared topics. Activity modules were created by interdisciplinary teams to provide a synthesis of these perspectives. Furthermore, similar to a series of apprenticeships, the students were asked in lecture to synthesize and find their own preferred practice from these examples.

In practice, some faculty focused more on their disciplinary approaches rather then their expertise in core aspects of design, which is analogous to a “salad-bowl” instead of a “melting-pot.” For example, the architects seemed more conscious and committed to their disciplinary boundaries and thereby their approach to teaching design seemed heavily influenced by architectural theory and abstractions of design concepts as well as the studio setting. Some architecture instructors also seemed to perceive engineering instructors’ teaching as “engineering heavy”, even though the topics may not have been on traditional engineering science. This essential “clash of cultures” was also observed by Brezing [38], in his proposal for a integrated design theory.

However, there were multiple attempts to adapt, make sense of, and negotiate the design process amongst teachers. For example, one of the observers noted an observation about an engineer teaching functional analysis.

The class is about to start, Engineer A1 talks to the instructors and ensures that everything is organized. Engineer A2 is taking pictures of the white boards. Architect A1 is walking around. Engineer A1 starts


the presentation, introduces functional analysis. 1 Design issues – clarity of project goals 2. Rational basis for decision-making. 3. Reflects user values. When Architect B hears about the 3rd point, [the observer] finds [themselves] thinking that the statement that design ‘reflects user values’ is engineering heavy.

Further analysis of the observations indicates that ideas on

the clarity of teaching seem to vary amongst teachers and disciplines. An example is shown below in the quote and drawing from an observer below.

Architect A presents a sketch he made and says, “this is the way I like to communicate through sketches.” He follows with another sketch on how the class unfolds. He situates the week’s topic in a broader context.

The sketch looks roughly as presented below:

The observer continues:

While Architect A contextualizes and overviews the whole semester, Engineer A1 walks in the room and Engineer A2 prepares materials. Architect A recaps some ideas from the week’s lecture class. He elaborates on the idea of “programming” again. Architect B finds herself thinking if the students are going to understand how “programming” is discussed in an architectural setting. Architect A gives an example from the work of the Dutch Architect Rem Koolhas. He discusses how the program is studied in this building, emphasizing the level of abstraction at this level of study. He deliberates how the project evolves from a program to space, while referring to the solution that Koolhas came up with as a spiral axis organizing the spaces in the building. He states “discussion of programming leads to some kind of aesthetic form.” He displays more images related to the example at the lecture. Architect B finds it very Architectural and wonder what the Engineers think of

this teaching. The conversation continues onto “space” and “library.” A commentary on “how architecture will look like,” in relation to urban spaces; a common point often raised in Architectural design as the relationship of the inside and the outside. Architect A explains “programming relates to both urban space and interior space.”

These observations reveal that the architects were more

comfortable with topics around abstraction, themes, and the studio format, and more inclined to teach with pictures and drawings, while the engineers in the teaching team tended to have more of a step-by-step (e.g. 1, 2, 3) approach to design. This observation aligns with perception that engineering pedagogy is overwhelmingly verbal whereas architecture teaching relies on visual methods to convey ideas [19, 20].

The above examples also show that earlier design training can influence pedagogical styles and concerted attempts have to be made to talk about design thinking from an interdisciplinary approach rather than engineers and architects collaborating to teach design through the lens of their own fields. To achieve this aim, the instructor meetings were conducted with a highly democratic approach while certain principles were laid down in agreement. Much attention was also given to student learning via collaboration.

Figure 2. Teammates sharing progress in active discussion.

While faculty made a conscious effort to adjust to alternative styles, they were not able to subdue their own. There seems to be a sense of reflexivity amongst the mindset of faculty members, which left them wondering, ‘is this the way design should be taught? Is this too much of an engineering approach to design?’ (Paraphrase of a quote).

5.2 Student reactions One of the key challenges that emerged from this study

was the method of student assessment. Many students, who are more used to traditional deductive lectures, may not necessarily benefit from an open-ended approach to design. However, students would still learn a lot, according to the observations and minute papers. For example, the quote from

Figure 1. Situating individual exercises throughout semester course structure, a “funnel.”


one observer during the middle of the semester stated the following about student progress:

Students communicate an increase in comfort and confidence in idea analysis, idea generation, and expression as individuals and as teams. Having a concrete example unfolding in real time at the board is referred as beneficial in the comprehension of “diagrams” and “activity diagrams.” Studying the “design values” in detail; such as human behavior, technology, environment, safety, cultural, and temporal; aid the students to refine their interests, while teaching them “new ways of accessing an area” of interest.

Between inductive or deductive learning, the literature suggests that there was no optimal method of teaching, but students tend to prefer deductive presentations [44]. Our research suggests that students in our Introduction to Design course may also follow that pattern.

Figure 3. Instructor providing advice on problem decomposition.

Students perceived the design lectures and studios in different ways. Some students thought it was good to have the freedom to explore and arrive at different design directions but others wanted more structure and steps in their learning to put their ideas together. There was a sense of frustration when different teachers taught them different ways to think about design. While there was no differentiation of tasks between engineers and architects, there seemed to be different instructions at times and varying levels of appreciation in student work. For example, during the critiques, one engineer looking at a student’s work said, “why thin?” while the architect looking at the same work commented, “nice work.” The different opinions were meant to demonstrate varied and informed approaches designs, but it ultimately left students to worry about a “right” approach to design. However, this worry may be typical to all design courses, despite the amount of interdisciplinarity.

An observation by an engineer revealed instance of instructor and student confusion, but also a willingness of instructors to contribute to improving teaching in the future.

Architect A talked to me [observer] – how our cohort went etc. – expressed how would be nice to have time to bring many viewpoints (not just one as in this cohort) – said class confusion could be since also instructors confused and learning as much of this is new to instructors as well.

5.3 Muddy papers The “muddy papers” also reflect the challenge students

and faculty faced with the design course. Coding of the responses shows that most common faculty topic was on teaching the design process while students wrote most about learning design techniques. This result supports the observations on the challenges and conversations architecture and engineering faculty had while teaching the design process to students, while students were most vocal on the techniques they learned in class. Both sets of “muddy papers” referred to the problems with the lack of clarity of instruction leading to miscommunication and dissatisfaction but both also refer to the benefit of the feedback of the instructors to get students to think deeply about their designs. Figure 4 and 5 capture the topics coded from the “muddy papers”.

Figure 4. Topics on student muddy papers

Figure 5. Topics on faculty muddy papers

Design techniques

Design process

Design feedback

Lack of clarity

Objectivity

Teamwork

Timing

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Design process

Lack of clarity

Design techniques

Design feedback

Expectations

Motivation

Collaboration

Objectivity

Other

0 3 6 9 12 15 18


These challenges are common for most beginner design students, regardless of interdisciplinary or non-interdisciplinary courses, who often have to reconcile their previous experiences in deductive learning settings, with these inductive or open-ended approaches.

6 DISCUSSION AND FURTHER RESEARCH The world of interdisciplinary teaching brings exciting new

approaches and possibilities to design. However, since this study focuses on one semester of a new course, several questions need to be explored in future iterations of this study. As such this study is exploratory in nature and hopes to point out more research directions.

One of these questions is whether different methodologies can be conveyed without disciplinary distinction. Can an architect disregard the norms of architectural pedagogy and yet convey the theoretical abstractions and methodologies that architects often use? The same question also applies to engineers teaching design. While teaching teams had agreed to a “melting-pot”, or interdisciplinary approach, additional factors, like time and effort constraints, may have limited implementation of this approach. These factors, in addition to a teacher’s discipline, may have contributed to the observed “salad-bowl” approach, in effect making the approach more multidisciplinary. This contrast isn’t meant to say that one approach is better than the other, however the course was certainly about bringing perspectives on design together, in a more general way, and not for domain-specific problem solving. Determining which method is more beneficial to students learning design will require additional course iterations to observe students and faculty under varying conditions.

Our study consisted of a teaching team that was primarily composed of engineering faculty. Further research will need to determine how much of a “role-model effect” exhibited itself through this course, impacting the reactions of the undergraduate students within the course, as well as the decisions in their major declaration. While this faculty make-up may have a confounding effect on the study, the relatively small faculty size of the architecture pillar, coupled with the large size of the undergraduate cohort, left the teaching team with limited options.

Further insight is also needed to understand and characterize additional disciplines (e.g. marketing, entrepreneurship, industrial design) and their contribution to the discussion on interdisciplinary design teaching.

Additionally, it may be important to understand which topics are better taught in an interdisciplinary setting, and which are not, as well as if it is important not to highlight disciplinary differences in design methods to students. A comparative assessment may produce a better understanding on how students learn certain topics best. Finally, many of the challenges presented in this study may have been the result of a new curriculum and new faculty. Further research is needed to determine if these challenges persist over time. We certainly urge more research in the above areas.

7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank the Singapore University

of Technology and Design for all their encouragement and support for teaching and research.

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Teaching Interdisciplinary Design Between Architecture and Engineering: Finding Common Ground While Retaining Disciplinary Expertise