Triangulation of Three Different Research Methods when Capturing Participant Data During Engineering Education

摘要

Designing new products and further developing existing products has become increasingly important for today's industry. Therefore, engineering education has been extending from theoretical education towards hands-on, challenging project-based education. The aim is to teach students real-life problem-solving skills along with communication and teamwork skills, which are also essential in the future working environment after graduation. Tracking this learning experience efficiently is one of the critical steps for improving it. And industry around the world is increasingly interested and has incentives in measuring the effectiveness of the design process and the design team, as commercial product development and R&D are expensive, risky, and time-consuming. In the experiment conducted in January 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland, the participants were from four different European countries and from several different study backgrounds. Most of them were participating the experiment as an elective part of their postgraduate studies.