Abstract:

Design and Technology education offers a methodological training in concepts of design and technology through practical application of real life problems and use of standardized design methods. Design and Technology (D&T) education is a fairly new subject for Indian schools and design research. Designing in groups is an important focus of D and T education research. But minimal research exist suggesting grouping structures for children to develop design problem-solving and idea generation. The D and T education acknowledges the difference between professional designers’ design thinking and aims and objectives of novice school children learning design (Anning et al. 1996). Unfortunately, and in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary, a rigid, linear approach to designing still predominates in school’s design and technology education which is highly influenced by methods designed for adult design professionals. Current practitioners of collaborative design education follow certain distributed models for teaching design to children, but none of these models focus on organization of groups. 

The aim of this thesis is to design effective grouping structures and guidelines for a design session in Indian middle schools. The thesis tests the hypothesis whether group composition effects idea generation of novice school children in a design problem-solving session. In order to design effective collaborative structures, we investigated organization of groups as an internal variable responsible for design problem-solving. We tested four different collaborative conditions based on the composition of dyad groups, with students in the age group 11-14 and measured the effect of group organization on design output and communication. Through a baseline study, game design and group size of two were found to be the most promising conditions for collaboration resulting in flexibility of ideas. Two final design trials were then conducted with the students in a longitudinal study. We used a mixed method analysis to investigate differences in design output as well as design process. The design output produced by the groups was analyzed on the measure of divergent thinking using the four factors of appropriateness, ideational originality, ideational fluency and ideational flexibility. This was followed by a thorough communication analysis using protocol analysis of the videos of groups. This was performed by coding the nature of talk in each of the condition. The results were then combined with the design output analysis to rank the conditions and find the most preferable group composition for children solving design problems. The four conditions were also evaluated on gender differences by comparing same gender groups with mixed gender groups. 

Differences were found in performance of children groups under different collaborative conditions. Insights on problem-solving strategies, group communication, attitudes of team members resulting in positive and negative social-interdependence are discussed in conclusions of the thesis.