Break it down: comparing the effects of lecture- and module-style design for additive manufacturing educational interventions on student designers’ learning and creativity

The growing presence of additive manufacturing (AM) in engineering has resulted in a consequent need for AM and design for AM (DfAM) educational interventions in design. Several researchers have proposed AM and DfAM educational interventions; however, some argue that these efforts might not be sufficient to develop higher-level skills (e.g., leveraging AM capabilities for creative design). Prior work suggests that longer, spaced educational interventions are more effective in encouraging learning and information retention; however, these interventions could also be time-consuming and expensive to implement. Our aim in this research is to compare two variations of a DfAM educational intervention: (1) a module-style intervention spread over two sessions with the introduction of DfAM evaluation metrics, and (2) a lecture-style intervention completed in a single session with no evaluation metrics introduced. From our results, we see that students from the module-style intervention reported a greater increase in their DfAM self-efficacy and reported having given a greater emphasis on part consolidation and feature size. However, the structure of the educational intervention did not influence the creativity of ideas generated by the students. These findings highlight the utility of module-style DfAM educational interventions toward increasing DfAM self-efficacy, but not necessarily design creativity.