In this case study we report on the use of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) aligned form of Structure-Behavior-Function, called Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM), to teach four high school engineering teachers an approach for Biologically Inspired Design (BID).&nbsp; Functional theories of design describe a natural way in which designers solve design problem and provide support for case-based and analogical based reasoning systems and have been used successfully to teach BID to undergraduate students. We found that teachers instructed on BID practice and pedagogy using our modified theory were able to grasp the structural concepts and looked for clear markers separating mechanism (behavior) and function. Because of the systems-of-systems nature of most biological entities, these boundaries were often subjective, presenting unique challenge to teachers. Given high school engineering teachers look for methods to enhance their pedagogy and to understand multidisciplinary content, these findings will inform future curriculum development and professional learning approaches for engineering education.In this study we report on the use of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) aligned form of Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF), that we call Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM), to teach four high school engineering teachers an approach for Biologically Inspired Design (BID).&nbsp; Functional theories of design, such as SBF provide an ontology for describing how designers analyze and synthesize a designed system&nbsp;and provide support for intelligent case-based and analogical based reasoning systems. SBF also has been used to teach middle school science, [5], and BID to undergraduate students. We modified SBF to serve as a framework for instructing high school teachers and BID practice and pedagogy as part of a novel course that we are developing for high school engineering education.Because of the multidisciplinary and analogical nature of BID, guidance is required for both students and teachers to effectively look to biology for inspiration and functional solutions to engineering design problems. The need for a clear, understandable process of accessing and evaluating biological analogies, requires SBF to be a fundamental learning goal for the curricula.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Getting Beyond the Hairy House: Using Structure-Function-Mechanism to Advance Biologically Inspired Design Pedagogy

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2021/volume/85369

ASME 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE2021)

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.