An Engineering Course as a Design Object

Developing a course is a substantive design activity. Within a complex and dynamic context and user base, educators must scope ambiguous problems and develop detailed solutions that are often novel and iterated upon over time. While much attention has been given to course design as a process, less attention has been paid to what a course is as a design object. When instructors adopt a course design model, either explicitly or implicitly, they are often accepting implicit premises of what a course is and what components comprise it, which can carry advantages and disadvantages relative to the instructors' goals, students' needs, and departmental/college-wide priorities. This paper uses a multiple perspective approach to explore the nature of an engineering course as a design object. We engage three models, each representing a design tradition common within the field of engineering education. For each model, we discuss its associated design process, implicit or explicit assumptions about design objects that emerge from this process, and how the model might translate to the specific context of engineering course design. We selected three models (engineering design, backward design, and design thinking) to provide distinct, illustrative, and generative perspectives that would also be applicable to many engineering educators. After applying each of these models to courses as design objects, we compare models and explicate the implications they may hold for course design. These implications are organized around three themes: (1) bounds of the problem and solution spaces, (2) role of users and designers and (3) course evolution over time. We close with a series of reflective questions educators might use when considering models for course design.