Elena Sereiviene’s scientific contributions

Engineering design projects provide wide learning opportunities, including developing design thinking abilities. Yet, creating engaging and impactful engineering design challenges is difficult due to the open-ended, cross-disciplinary, and iterative nature of design projects. One critical attribute of these design challenges is their authenticity or, broadly, the degree to which they represent real-world design projects. Authenticity is important for education because it affects student learning and motivation. However, definitions of authenticity vary widely and there is confusion within the literature as to what it does or does not cover, leaving educators and researchers looking to create or leverage authentic engineering design challenges with little guidance. To address this gap, we draw on Strobel et al. 's (2013) authenticity framework, with four key dimensions: context, task, impact, and personal/value and relate it to the design thinking. We apply this framework to compare two distinct cases of K-12 engineering design challenges. Different dimensions of authenticity were evident in each case, in association with different tradeoffs in curriculum design and different opportunities for learning. We call for future research to employ clearer definitions of authenticity so student engagement and learning can be better understood in association with project authenticity.