Collaborative Research: Research: Understanding and Scaffolding the Productive Beginnings of Engineering Judgment in Undergraduate Students

Most of the courses that undergraduate engineering students take are “engineering science” courses that present foundational engineering concepts and formulas. However, in these classes students typically complete well-defined “textbook” problems that only have one correct answer. They do not have many opportunities to apply these concepts to ill-defined, complex, open-ended problems like the ones practicing engineers solve. With open-ended problems, the core engineering work is not finding the answer, but rather deciding how to mathematically represent (i.e. “model”) the system so that it can be analyzed. These modeling skills of engineers are called “engineering judgment.” Students need opportunities to learn and practice engineering judgment throughout their entire education, starting in their engineering science courses when they first learn these foundational concepts. This project features two integrated goals—to develop a new type of assignment and to conduct learning science research in context—that will advance knowledge around students’ professional formation as engineers. The new assignment being developed, called Open-Ended Modeling Problems, gives students a chance to practice engineering judgment by asking them to model a complex, real-world system. Intertwined with this assignment development is the in-depth study of how students exhibit engineering judgment in ways that are similar to that of practicing engineers—just at an undergraduate level. This research will inform the structure and implementation of the Open-Ended Modeling Problems and will produce generalizable knowledge about how students solve open-ended problems. This project will be conducted by a research team consisting of engineering education researchers and engineering faculty who will collaborate to develop, implement, and study Open-Ended Modeling Problems. Engineers solving problems in the workplace use mathematical models to analyze physical phenomena in the real world and to design solutions to problems. When constructing mathematical models, engineers use judgment to make assumptions, simplify real world characteristics, and assess the reasonableness of a model’s output. While engineering judgment is essential for engineering practice, engineering students rarely practice or engage in judgment while in school. Students are not usually given the opportunity to solve ill-defined problems that necessitate and cultivate the use of judgment until their capstone design course. This project seeks to investigate how novice engineers—students—make modeling judgments when given the opportunity to solve ill-defined dynamics and thermodynamics problems. It uses a design-based research methodology to produce foundational engineering education research knowledge and evidence-based pedagogical reforms. This project will use a constructivist grounded theory approach to identify students’ emergent judgment skills and to characterize the productive beginnings of engineering judgment (RQ1: In what ways do undergraduate engineering students display the productive beginnings of engineering judgment?). The research project's findings will contribute towards training engineering students to solve more complex problems and better prepare them for solving problems in engineering practice. The project will also investigate how to create scaffolding guidelines to help faculty develop problems that give opportunities for students to practice making judgments (RQ2: What assignment scaffolding supports students’ development of the productive beginnings of engineering judgment?) and help them recognize judgments in students’ thinking and work (RQ3: What assignment scaffolding makes students’ productive beginnings of engineering judgment visible to instructors?). The research team will use interviews, group discussions, student work, and surveys to triangulate the findings. The study will produce a framework of the productive beginnings of engineering judgment; research-to-practice guidelines for writing, assigning, facilitating, and grading open-ended modeling problems; and samples of student work and student discourse that exemplify the productive beginnings of engineering judgment. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.