Graduate student Corey Kado will be defending his thesis titled “Neurocognitive Examination of the Impact of Design Teams on Student Motivation and Performance.”

Corey Kado thesis defense

• Date: Friday, April 10
• Time: Noon-1 p.m.
• Location: BARC 1122
• Current major: M.S. student of mechanical engineering and B.S. mechanical engineering
• Thesis committee chair: Dr. Elisabeth Kames
• Committee members: Dr. Matt Bohm, Dr. Apurva Patel and Dr. Younggil Park

Abstract

As design is increasingly being implemented in standard engineering curriculum for the development of professional skills and hands-on experiences, it is also progressively more important to understand the neurological and motivational underpinnings of design on student educational outcomes. Traditional assessments of design provide a limited and biased insight into how students engage in design tasks.

This research seeks to utilize design neurocognition, which employs the use of non-invasive physiological sensors to measure the changes in neural activity, to study these underpinnings. Further, these changes can then be correlated with influencing factors such as motivation, to further understand the development of design skills in engineering education.

The major contribution of this study is to determine correlations between student design neurocognition and the student’s motivation toward the design problem, specifically examining a team environment. The results of this study show that certain regions of the brain experience increased activity when working in team environments. Further examination found that while there were no significant differences between sophomore and senior level designers in teams, intra-cohort examination showed senior level designers experienced reduced, more efficient brain activity. This activity was compared to potential influencing factors, such as motivation and team factors, revealing significant correlations.

Additionally, two new examination methods were applied, temporal analysis and interconnectedness. Temporal analysis examines how the brain responds to the design problems over time; interconnectedness examines which regions interact with the design at the same time. The results of these analyses found that while working with a team significantly increases brain activity over time compared to working alone, there were little to no significant differences between cohorts of students. Interconnectedness analysis found that certain regions of the brain activated together throughout a design while working in a team compared to when working alone.

These findings establish a foundation for future research into the continued examination of collaborative design, where of particular interest is examining further potential influencing factors. Through this and future examinations, actionable insight can be applied toward the improvement of design engineering education.

For more information, please contact Corey Kado.