Design Education Research

Abstract

Design education research is part of design research. This has been a JMD position for quite some time, with a special issue dedicated to the topic in July 2007 with Mike McCarthy as editor and Phil Doepker and Clive Dym as guest editors. In his introductory editorial for that issue, Mike McCarthy mentioned the following: “Clearly without the fundamentals nothing else matters, but then when the fundamentals are in place the rest of this must happen effectively for engineering to be successful. In the past our industry colleagues would teach these details, but the demands of the modern marketplace are making them less patient with our students’ inexperience. This is one of many challenges that I believe research in design engineering education can address to our benefit as researchers, educators, and engineers.”