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Investigating the design-science connection in a multiweek engineering design-based introductory physics laboratory task

2025· article· en· W4408288272 on OpenAlexaff
Ravishankar Chatta Subramaniam, Nikhil Borse, Amir Bralin, Jason Morphew, Carina M. Rebello, N. Sanjay Rebello

Bibliographic record

VenuePhysical Review Physics Education Research · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicDesign Education and Practice
Canadian institutionsToronto Metropolitan University
FundersNational Science Foundation
KeywordsConnection (principal bundle)Task (project management)Mathematics educationScience and engineeringComputer scienceEngineeringSystems engineeringEngineering ethicsPsychologyMechanical engineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Reform documents advocate for innovative pedagogical strategies to enhance student learning. A key innovation is the integration of science and engineering practices through engineering design (ED)-based physics laboratory tasks, where students tackle engineering design problems by applying physics principles. While this approach has its benefits, research shows that students do not always effectively apply scientific concepts, but instead rely on trial-and-error approaches, and end up their way to a solution. This leads to what is commonly referred to as the —that students do not always consciously apply science concepts while solving a design problem. However, as obvious as the notion of a may appear, there seems to exist no consensus on the definitions of and , further complicating the understanding of this gap. This qualitative study addresses the notion of the design-science gap by examining student groups’ discussions and written lab reports from a multiweek ED-based undergraduate introductory physics laboratory task. Building on our earlier studies, we developed and employed a nuanced, multilayered coding scheme inspired by the Gioia Framework to characterize and . We discuss how student groups engage in various aspects of design and how they apply physics concepts and principles to solve the problem. In the process, we demonstrate the interconnectedness of students’ design thinking and science thinking. We advocate for the usage of the term as opposed to to deepen both design and science thinking. Our findings offer valuable insights for educators in design-based science education.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.014
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.062
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.014
Threshold uncertainty score0.075

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0140.062
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0040.004
Scholarly communication0.0040.003
Open science0.0020.006
Research integrity0.0020.004
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.075
GPT teacher head0.414
Teacher spread0.339 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations6
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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