Higher Perceived Design Thinking Traits and Active Learning in Design Courses Motivate Engineering Students to Tackle Energy Sustainability in Their Careers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper reply only partially to to previous comments. A more detailed reply point by point is needed. Particularly, the link between others On-site urban labs created by international universities could help you to enlarge your vision. Please, refer alsoto these experiences. 

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers and editor for providing feedback to improve the quality of the manuscript. 

Reviewer 1

The paper reply only partially to previous comments. A more detailed reply point by point is needed. Particularly, the link between others on-site urban labs created by international universities could help you to enlarge your vision. Please, refer also to these experiences. 

We added the reference suggested by the reviewer and expanded on teaching strategies to develop design skills.

Lucchi, E., & Delera, A. C. (2020). Enhancing the Historic Public Social Housing through a User-Centered Design-Driven Approach. Buildings, 10(9), 159. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings10090159

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting study that investigates the impact of perceived design thinking traits and active learning strategies in design courses to increase senior engineering students’ motivation for energy sustainability engagement in their careers. Here are my comments:

 

1. What was the motivation of emphasising on Design Thinking as contrasted to other systematic and iterative processes that also promote creativity and innovation in designing engineering solutions? There are other approaches too (Synectics, TRIZ, Trigger Approach, Morphological Approach etc). Perhaps the authors could do a brief comparison across several approaches in the Background section to narrow down the reason for their emphasis on Design Thinking.

 

2. I refer the authors to the Graduate Attributes and Professional Competences established (and recently updated) by the International Engineering Alliance (Refer to https://www.wfeo.org/wp-content/uploads/members/Webinars/WFEO_IEA_GAPC/IEA-Grad-Attr-Prof-Competencies-v4-Approved-21062021.pdf). I believe it would be worthwhile to triangulate a small part of your discussion with the Graduate Attribute Profiles relating to sustainability and sustainable development, especially the following attributes.

 

1. WA6 (The Engineer and the World): When solving complex engineering problems, analyse and evaluate sustainable development impacts to society, the economy, sustainability, health and safety, legal frameworks, and the environment.
2. WA2 (Problem Analysis): Identify, formulate, research literature and analyze complex engineering problems reaching substantiated conclusions using first principles of mathematics, natural sciences and engineering sciences with holistic considerations for sustainable development.

 

I strongly believe that there are significant merits in linking the findings of this study with the aforementioned attributes since most engineering programmes in Washington Accord signatories adopt these attributes in their programme outcomes for outcome-based learning (OBE). This practice is often stressed on in engineering programme accreditations. Perhaps your study provides an avenue in creatively fulfilling sustainability-related graduate attributes through higher perceived design thinking traits and active learning.

 

Thank you.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

We would like to thank the reviewers and editor for providing feedback to improve the quality of the manuscript. All of the original reviewer comments are highlighted in gray, and our responses follow without being highlighted.

This is an interesting study that investigates the impact of perceived design thinking traits and active learning strategies in design courses to increase senior engineering students’ motivation for energy sustainability engagement in their careers. Here are my comments:

What was the motivation of emphasising on Design Thinking as contrasted to other systematic and iterative processes that also promote creativity and innovation in designing engineering solutions? There are other approaches too (Synectics, TRIZ, Trigger Approach, Morphological Approach etc). Perhaps the authors could do a brief comparison across several approaches in the Background section to narrow down the reason for their emphasis on Design Thinking.

We now provide a clearer definition of design thinking, stating it is a way of reasoning to address situated ill-defined design problems through processes of reframing the design problem, proposing solutions, and (re)evaluating concurrently the design requirements and the proposed design solution. We also added several sentences to clarify design thinking in the context of the paper and added the following references.

Dorst, K. The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application. Design Studies 2011, 32(6), 521–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.07.006

Magistretti, S., Ardito, L., & Messeni Petruzzelli, A. Framing the microfoundations of design thinking as a dynamic capability for innovation: Reconciling theory and practice. Journal of Product Innovation Management 2021, jpim.12586. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12586

I refer the authors to the Graduate Attributes and Professional Competences established (and recently updated) by the International Engineering Alliance (Refer to https://www.wfeo.org/wp-content/uploads/members/Webinars/WFEO_IEA_GAPC/IEA-Grad-Attr-Prof-Competencies-v4-Approved-21062021.pdf). I believe it would be worthwhile to triangulate a small part of your discussion with the Graduate Attribute Profiles relating to sustainability and sustainable development, especially the following attributes.

WA6 (The Engineer and the World): When solving complex engineering problems, analyse and evaluate sustainable development impacts to society, the economy, sustainability, health and safety, legal frameworks, and the environment.

WA2 (Problem Analysis): Identify, formulate, research literature and analyze complex engineering problems reaching substantiated conclusions using first principles of mathematics, natural sciences and engineering sciences with holistic considerations for sustainable development.

I strongly believe that there are significant merits in linking the findings of this study with the aforementioned attributes since most engineering programmes in Washington Accord signatories adopt these attributes in their programme outcomes for outcome-based learning (OBE). This practice is often stressed on in engineering programme accreditations. Perhaps your study provides an avenue in creatively fulfilling sustainability-related graduate attributes through higher perceived design thinking traits and active learning.

Thank you for sharing this reference. We included this reference and connected it to our findings.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors

 

Thank you for letting me review your paper entitled: Higher perceived design thinking traits and active learning in design courses motivate engineering students to tackle energy sustainability in their careers.

I do believe that the topic is timely and interesting. Despite this, a few elements must be tackled because otherwise, they might hinder the effort in your contribution.

Let me report them here in order.

First, you must define design thinking. There are many articles published on the topic, but you need to take a stance and introduce better why the traits selected are relevant. Please look at the Special Issue just published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management that can help you in framing also this literature. As reported by scholars such as Liedtka, Micheli, Carlgren, or Magistretti, empathy is central, and it was pretty surprising not to see this as a trait measured. Probably you can leverage these four articles to reinforce your literature background.

Second, this aspect of the connection with the design thinking literature must be reinforced; the previous four authors, as many others are proposing interesting insights on the capabilities that managers can have in this field, why not introduce a theoretical background section where you expand this debate and create your gaps.

Third, by being quantitative research, it is better to propose hypotheses or at least a model that you test to represent the independent and dependent variables. 

Finally, SDGs are crucial but are you sure they are needed in this paper? Are they overcomplicating the model that probably is a layer you do not need? 

Here are some references that might help reinforce the design thinking contribution and debate in both theory and practics.

Good luck with the review

 

References

Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard business review, 86(6), 84.

Carlgren, L., Rauth, I., & Elmquist, M. (2016). Framing design thinking: The concept in idea and enactment. Creativity and Innovation Management, 25(1), 38-57.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers and editor for providing feedback to improve the quality of the manuscript. All of the original reviewer comments are highlighted in gray, and our responses follow without being highlighted.

I do believe that the topic is timely and interesting. Despite this, a few elements must be tackled because otherwise, they might hinder the effort in your contribution.

Let me report them here in order.

First, you must define design thinking. There are many articles published on the topic, but you need to take a stance and introduce better why the traits selected are relevant. Please look at the Special Issue just published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management that can help you in framing also this literature. As reported by scholars such as Liedtka, Micheli, Carlgren, or Magistretti, empathy is central, and it was pretty surprising not to see this as a trait measured. Probably you can leverage these four articles to reinforce your literature background.

Thank you for this comment. It echoes another reviewer’s comment about it. We added several sentences in the background section to clarify design thinking in the context of the paper and added the following references.

Dorst, K. The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application. Design Studies 2011, 32(6), 521–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.07.006

Magistretti, S., Ardito, L., & Messeni Petruzzelli, A. Framing the microfoundations of design thinking as a dynamic capability for innovation: Reconciling theory and practice. Journal of Product Innovation Management 2021, jpim.12586. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12586

Second, this aspect of the connection with the design thinking literature must be reinforced; the previous four authors, as many others are proposing interesting insights on the capabilities that managers can have in this field, why not introduce a theoretical background section where you expand this debate and create your gaps.

We now more clearly clarify our definition of design thinking in the context of this research in section 2.1.

Third, by being quantitative research, it is better to propose hypotheses or at least a model that you test to represent the independent and dependent variables. 

We added hypotheses.

Finally, SDGs are crucial but are you sure they are needed in this paper? Are they overcomplicating the model that probably is a layer you do not need? 

We connect our research to SDG for the context of the special issue of Sustainability. The connection to SDG is in the framing of the paper and connection to the survey questions about energy sustainability.

Here are some references that might help reinforce the design thinking contribution and debate in both theory and practics. 

References

Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard business review, 86(6), 84.

Carlgren, L., Rauth, I., & Elmquist, M. (2016). Framing design thinking: The concept in idea and enactment. Creativity and Innovation Management, 25(1), 38-57.

Thank you for the references. Brown’s design thinking skills align with the scale we used to measure design thinking traits as highlighted in Table 1. We’ve further emphasized this is the revision.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for adjusting the paper and considering my comments. I have no further comments about the paper, only that in the reference list, the organisation is called “IEA”, not “IAE”. IEA stands for the International Engineering Alliance. Hope you can at least adjust that before the paper is published. Thanks and cheers.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the review

I think the paper is now ready for publication.

the focus on Design Thinking is more explicit know

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

-There is no show in “abstract” of basic data which supports the research, such as samples, methodology, results or conclusions.

-Conclusions should be more accurate. There is no reference to other research which supports all data got in the study.

-There is no relevant data in relation with sample features which could help understanding in a more comprehensive way the different students taking part in the research.

-Some references have not been written in the appropriate format according to magazine standards. In example, some of them do not show the year in bold.

Author Response

 "Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well Presented and detailed. The topic is original and not deeply treated in the literature. The structure of the survey is clear. The graphical part is not readable at all. Could you explicate better the graphical interpretation of the results of the survey? I would suggest the experiment fa the an off-site campus If the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Here, in a peripheral area of the city is used to design with the students a sustainable district, experimenting the socio-ecological approach to improv students’ learning with a concreate living laboratory. Some more information are provided by the paper https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings10090159. I think that this research c’è can enlarge you horizon, demonstrating that your study is important also in south of Europe. Conclusion must be improved to demonstrate the importance of your study not only in US.

Author Response

 "Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is ready