A novice designer is prone to making premature decisions. He may quickly jump to posing solutions and view design as a linear, step-by-step process. An experienced designer is much more likely to conduct research and delay making decisions. She uses a variety of techniques, sees design as an iterative process, integrates feedback, reflects on the design process, and uses rational inquiry to cross-reference and integrate ideas, information, and personal experience. Such behaviour reflects beliefs about knowledge and its creation and such actions are hallmarks of the relativistic thinker who can set goals, reflect on thinking, identify what is needed and understand why it is necessary. The novice and expert enact very different personal epistemologies.

In this study, we explore how personal epistemology influences the design process in the context of a project-based learning (PBL) module in which students are asked to design, build and test simple measurement systems to create a weather station. The curriculum is largely traditional in nature but has seen a small but significant increase in the amount of PBL in the last few years. Many, often competing, decisions must be made by the students throughout this module, for example when designing the signal conditioning circuits or choosing the variables, and many can rush through this process, failing to justify their choices and making decisions for arbitrary reasons. Were they to pay more attention to the decision making process the students, with little extra work, could engage more fully with the module, produce better artifacts and achieve higher grades. In this paper we argue prior knowledge and motivation, other key drivers of the learning process along with epistemology, are not the reasons why some students lacked independence and failed to justify many of their decisions in this module.