Pedagogical approaches for eliciting students’ design thinking strategies: tell-and-practice vs. contrasting cases

In this exploratory study, we investigated students’ design thinking strategies during a challenge involving the design of an energy-efficient house. We used the Informed Design Teaching and Learning Matrix as a framework for characterizing the students’ design thinking, focusing on four specific strategies—generating ideas, conducting experiments, revising and iterating, and troubleshooting. To elicit the use of design thinking strategies, we employed two pedagogical approaches—tell-and-practice (T&P) and contrasting cases (CC)—as conditions in a within-subjects design, where participants were exposed to one approach first and then the other. Findings suggest that students exposed to T&P then CC had more balanced use of all four design strategies as compared to the students exposed to CC first then T&P. Regarding changes in strategies used, there was a significant increase in conducting experiments, but a significant decrease in troubleshooting, after students were exposed to both approaches. This finding suggests that students spent more time experimenting and understanding how the system works rather than focusing on problematic areas and finding solutions to the problems they faced during the design process. Implications of the study include recommendations for using T&P and CC to elicit design strategies during design thinking.