Considering Context: A Study of First‐Year Engineering Students

High‐quality engineering design requires an understanding of how the resulting engineered artifact interacts with society, the natural environment, and other aspects of context. This study examines how first‐year engineering undergraduates approached two engineering design tasks. We focused on how much students considered contextual factors during problem‐scoping, a critical part of the design process. As part of a larger, longitudinal study, we collected data from 160 students at four U.S. institutions. Students varied in their consideration of each design task's context, and women's responses were more likely to be context‐oriented than men's. Overall, context‐orientation was positively correlated between the two design tasks, despite differences in data collection and analysis. Having found that beginning engineering students, particularly women, are sensitive to important contextual factors, we suggest that efforts to broaden participation in engineering should consider legitimizing and fostering context‐oriented approaches to engineering earlier in the curriculum.     

Tapping into past design experiences: knowledge sharing and creation during novice–expert design consultations

Designing is a knowledge-intensive activity. For novice design engineers, an important means of acquiring knowledge is to consult experienced colleagues. We observed novice?Cexpert consultations as part of three engineering projects in a large aerospace company. Seven meetings were analysed in detail regarding the design activity, the content, and the form of interaction. Although the meetings were initiated for the purpose of information seeking, this process amounted to only 8% of the time compared to knowledge creation between novices and experts (47% of meeting time), and contextual information sharing (45% of meeting time). Both experts and novices were found to contribute equally and interactively to the discussion and analysis of solutions. The analysis showed how the processes alternated in the meetings. We identified tentative patterns on how these consultation processes change over the course of the design process phases. The micro-level analysis of the design activities and form of interaction provided a deeper understanding of how the consultation processes are discursively produced by the experts and novices. Finally, implications for design engineering practitioners are derived and suggestions for further research are provided.     

A Comparison of Group Processes,Performance, and Satisfaction in Face‐to‐Face Versus Computer‐Mediated Engineering Student Design Teams

Industry often requires engineers to work in teams. Therefore, many university engineering courses require students to work in groups to complete a design project. Due to the increasingly global nature of engineering, opportunities for students to navigate the issues of distance, time, culture, language, and multiple perspectives associated with virtual teams are becoming particularly desirable. To understand students' experience with virtual teams in a graduate course on principles of lean manufacturing, a group of researchers at a midwestern university compared the project performance, selected group processes, and satisfaction of students randomly assigned to face‐to‐face and computer‐mediated communication design teams. Students in both the face‐to‐face and computer‐mediated communication design teams performed equally well on the final project, and reported similar patterns in group processes with a few exceptions. Students in face‐to‐face design teams were more satisfied with the group experience than those in the computer‐mediated communication design teams; however, all reported an overall positive experience.     

Teaching engineering design: Can reading a textbook make a difference?

Teaching design is an integral part of most engineering curricula. Often, students are introduced to the engineering design process through a chapter in a textbook. Does this passive approach to teaching an active process aid the students' learning? An experiment was conducted to assess what students learn about the design process when they read a text. Here, 10 students enrolled in a freshman course were asked to read aloud from a freshmen engineering textbook. Half of the subjects read the text prior to solving three open-ended engineering design problems and the other half solved the same problems before they read the text. Both the subjects' process in solving the problems, as well as the quality of their solutions (the product), are assessed. Results show that subjects that read the text before they solved the three problems spent significantly more time solving the problems and were more sophisticated in their problem solving strategies. These subjects also scored better when judged on the quality of their approach to the problem (including the number of design criteria considered, communications, assumptions, and technical accuracy). However, these subjects did not score better on a quality measure of the final solution.     

Experiences of First‐Year Engineering Students Working on Ill‐Structured Problems in Teams

Background

As engineers solve problems that are ill‐structured and require collaboration, a common goal of engineering programs is to develop students' competencies for solving such problems in teams, often using cornerstone design experiences.

Purpose

With the goal of designing effective learning environments, this study identifies qualitatively different ways that engineering students experienced ill‐structured problems while working in teams.

Design/Method

This phenomenographic study employs interview data from 27 first‐year engineering students. Iterative data analysis resulted in categories of student experiences and their logical relationships.

Results

Seven categories describing collaborative, ill‐structured problem‐solving experiences emerged: completion, transition, iteration, organization, collaboration, reasoning, and growth. These categories are organized in an outcome space along dimensions we call reaction to ambiguity and use of multiple perspectives that can be used to frame students' perspectives from less comprehensive to more comprehensive.

Conclusions

First‐year engineering students experience team‐based, ill‐structured problem solving in a variety of ways. The resulting outcome space is of practical use to educators who teach courses involving collaborative, ill‐structured problem solving.     

Interdisciplinary Collaborative Learning in Mechatronics at Bucknell University

Examination of the “cone of learning” shows an increase in retention when students are actively engaged in the learning process. Mechatronics is loosely defined as the application of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer intelligence to the design of products or systems. By its nature, mechatronics is an activity‐oriented course. The course content also provides an opportunity to employ interdisciplinary collaborative learning with active learning techniques. The mechatronics course at Bucknell consists of mechanical and electrical engineering students at the senior and graduate levels. The students engage in a variety of activities in teams comprised of members from each of these groups. In addition to team laboratory exercises and homework assignments, the students work in interdisciplinary groups to process their efforts. That is, they engage in meaningful discussion among themselves concerning their activities and the implications of the various results. The students also act as teachers by preparing lectures and exercises on topics from their discipline to the students in the cross discipline. Specifically, the electrical engineers teach the mechanical engineers microcontrollers, and the mechanical engineers teach the electrical engineers mechanisms. This paper describes the learning techniques employed in this course, as well as the interpretation of the results from the students. It also discusses the relationship of the course outcomes to Criterion 3 of the engineering accreditation criteria promulgated by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (EAC/ABET).     

Engaging and Supporting Problem Solving in Engineering Ethics

Learning to solve ethical problems is essential to the education of all engineers. Engineering ethics problems are complex and ill structured with multiple perspectives and interpretations to address in their solution. In two experiments, we examined alternative strategies for engaging ethical problem solving. In Experiment 1, students studied two versions of an online learning environment consisting of everyday ethics problems. Students using question hypertext links to navigate applied more perspectives and canons and wrote stronger overall solutions to ethics problems than those using embedded hypertext links. In Experiment 2, students engaged in a more generative task, evaluating alternative arguments for solutions to the cases or generating and supporting their own solutions. Both groups better supported their solutions and generated more counterclaims than control students. These studies focused on solving realistic case‐based ethics problems as an effective method for addressing ABET's ethics criteria.     

External procedures in design problem solving by experienced engineering designers – methods and purposes

In the creative early phases of design problem solving, several kinds of external – especially manual – procedures of thinking (‘externalizations’) are applied. This was mainly shown in experimental settings for tasks of architects. We analysed the kinds and the reported purposes of externalising in the everyday work of experienced engineering designers. Three field studies with different samples of engineers (n?=?55) show: the majority of experienced designers reported the application of simple low-cost externalising (especially manual sketching and impromptu-prototyping) in their everyday work mainly for memory relief, communication and generation of ideas. Different mental processes in the early phases of engineering design require different kinds of externalising to support them. Simple low-cost externalisations offer most perceived support for communication and sophisticated ones (e.g. manufactured prototypes) for the evaluation of solutions. The results based on retrospective memory reports of engineers are confirmed by self-records of an ongoing conceptual design process and the documented frequencies of different kinds of externalising.     

Comparing the Undergraduate Experience of Engineers to All Other Majors: Significant Differences are Programmatic

Background The authors partnered with the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to examine how persistence within the engineering major and engagement of undergraduate students in engineering compare to other majors. Purpose (Hypothesis ) We explored three research questions: How do engineering students rate their college engagement compared to students in other majors? How do engineering persisters, non‐persisters, and migrators compare in terms of collegiate engagement, time on task, and enriching educational experiences? What college engagement factors predict persistence in engineering? Design /Method Data are from nearly 12,000 students who completed the NSSE survey in their first and senior years as undergraduates. Surveys were analyzed using ANOVA and Chi‐square calculations to determine whether differences emerged in three dimensions of student engagement based on students' self‐reported major. Due to the large sample, effect size was used to determine statistical significance. Binary logistic regression was used to identify factors that predict persistence among first year students and seniors in engineering. Results Results show that engineering majors are similar to non‐engineering majors on most variables. However, engineering majors reported significantly higher gains in practical competence and higher order thinking, but the lowest means on reflective learning and gains in general education. Engineering majors reported significantly more time preparing for class and less time participating in educationally enriching experiences. Conclusions We conclude that different educational outcomes between majors are the result of programmatic differences. The packed engineering curriculum requires students to make trade‐offs between gaining practical/marketable skills and participating in educationally enriching activities. We question this trade‐off and suggest alternative approaches.     

A Cognitive Study of Problem Solving in Statics

Background Even as expectations for engineers continue to evolve to meet global challenges, analytical problem solving remains a central skill. Thus, improving students' analytical problem solving skills remains an important goal in engineering education. This study involves observation of students as they execute the initial steps of an engineering problem solving process in statics. Purpose (Hypothesis ) (1) What knowledge elements do statics students have the greatest difficulty applying during problem solving? (2) Are there differences in the knowledge elements that are accurately applied by strong and weak statics students? (3) Are there differences in the cognitive and metacognitive strategies used by strong and weak statics students during analysis? Design /Method These questions were addressed using think‐aloud sessions during which students solved typical textbook problems. We selected the work of twelve students for detailed analysis, six weak and six strong problem solvers, using an extreme groups split based on scores on the think‐aloud problems and a course exam score. The think‐aloud data from the two sets of students were analyzed to identify common technical errors and also major differences in the problem solving processes. Conclusions We found that the weak, and most of the strong problem solvers relied heavily on memory to decide what reactions were present at a given connection, and few of the students could reason physically about what reactions should be present. Furthermore, the cognitive analysis of the students' problems solving processes revealed substantial differences in the use of self‐explanation by weak and strong students.     

Machine diagnostic service centre design under imperfect diagnosis with uncertain error cost consideration

As modern machines are always highly customised, it is important to diagnose the specific maintenance requirement of each machine before performing regular maintenance tasks. However, the diagnosis cannot always be accurate. In this study, we focus on a diagnostic service design problem considering imperfect diagnosis with uncertain error cost, which increases in the inaccuracy of the diagnosis. The service system is modelled as a multiple server queue, with servers performing a sequential diagnosis and customers deciding whether or not to use the service. We consider the case where the expert skill level is exogenous, uncertain and endogenous, respectively. The results suggests that (1) when the expert skill level is exogenous, the congestion of the system increases in expert skill level. In addition, the error costs for the two major stakeholders-the service centre and the customer-may affect the optimal service time and number of experts in different ways; (2) when expert skill level becomes more uncertain, the service centre should improve the optimal service time further and will see a further erosion of the profit; and (3) different from the exogenous expert skill level, high skill level experts always accompany with long service time when expert skill level is endogenous.     

An information management paradigm for statistical experiments

Optimization of engineering processes and products via statistical design of experiments is an approach well known to statisticians but still not popularly used by technical personnel. This paper sets out a pattern of reasoning that would facilitate the appreciation, on the part of non‐mathematicians, of the principles and advantages of using statistical experimental design for process and product modeling and optimization. Use is made of the concepts of information transformation and conservation in a language that is familiar to those of purely technical background, leading to better understanding, acceptance and application of the efficiency and effectiveness of statistical experiments. In today's environment of the prevalence of software and hardware for statistical analysis, engineers concerned with quality and reliability would particularly benefit from such a paradigm for process and product performance improvement. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender and Ethnicity Differences in Freshmen Engineering Student Attitudes: A Cross‐Institutional Study*

We examine the attitudes of entering freshman engineering students and how they change over the course of the first year at 17 institutions. In addition to better understanding these attitudes and the changes that occur, we explore how these changes potentially affect such issues as “first term probation” and attrition from engineering programs. Particular attention is directed at isolating differences due to gender and ethnicity. Thirteen different student attitudes were captured using the Pittsburgh Freshman Engineering Attitude Survey© (PFEAS) at the beginning of the first semester (pre) and at either the end of the first semester or first academic year (post). Definite gender differences were found on the pre‐survey for five of the attitude measures. For all but one of these measures, female engineering students' initial attitudes were more negative than those of male students. Across the sample of institutions, female students consistently began their engineering studies with a lower confidence in background knowledge about engineering, their abilities to succeed in engineering, and their perceptions of how engineers contribute to society than did their male counterparts. However, those same female students were more comfortable with their study habits than were the male students. The post questionnaire data indicated that differences for three of these five attitude measures persisted. Most important, female engineering students continued to maintain a lower confidence in their abilities to succeed in engineering as compared to male engineering students. When the PFEAS data were mapped into EC 2000 outcomes, comparable cross‐institutional gender differences were observed that paralleled those found for the attitudinal measures. Because the number of minority students was relatively small, significant cross‐institutional differences between each minority cohort studied (African American, Asian Pacific, and Hispanic) and the majority cohort, similar cross‐institutional patterns could not be observed. However, possible trends were found between African American and majority students' attitudes for certain measures, while other attitudinal measures were found to be significant when Hispanic students were compared to majority students. Significant attitudinal differences between Asian Pacific and majority students were similar to those found between female and male engineering students. By knowing how attitudinal measures differ among gender and ethnic cohorts, and understanding how those differences relate to attrition from engineering programs, we can then developed more informed programmatic initiatives that can impact these attitude in a positive manner. As a result, we may be able to reduce engineering attrition, especially by underrepresented student cohorts.     

Expert systems and finite element structural analysis — a review

Finite element analysis of many engineering systems is practised more as an art than as a science. It involves high level expertise (analytical as well as heuristic) regarding problem modelling (e.g. problem specification, choosing the appropriate type of elements etc.), optical mesh design for achieving the specified accuracy (e.g. initial mesh selection, adaptive mesh refinement), selection of the appropriate type of analysis and solution routines and, finally, diagnosis of the finite element solutions. Very often such expertise is highly dispersed and is not available at a single place with a single expert. The design of an expert system, such that the necessary expertise is available to a novice to perform the same job even in the absence of trained experts, becomes an attractive proposition. In this paper, the areas of finite element structural analysis which require experience and decision-making capabilities are explored. A simple expert system, with a feasible knowledge base for problem modelling, optimal mesh design, type of analysis and solution routines, and diagnosis, is outlined. Several efforts in these directions, reported in the open literature, are also reviewed in this paper.     

Why Do Students Choose Engineering? A Qualitative,Longitudinal Investigation of Students' Motivational Values

Background Recently published reports call for an increase in the number of engineering graduates and suggest appropriate characteristics that these graduates should embody. Accomplishing such change first requires understanding why students choose to pursue engineering degrees. Purpose (Hypothesis ) Framed in motivation theory, our purpose was to better understand how students choose engineering by answering the question: How do engineering students' engineering‐related value beliefs contribute to their choices to engage and persist in earning engineering degrees? Design /Method This research uses Eccles' expectancy‐value theory in a qualitative, longitudinal examination of undergraduate students' choices to enroll and persist in engineering majors. In particular, the focus of this work is Eccles' subjective task value (STV) construct, which incorporates the personal importance an individual assigns to engaging in an activity. Using a multiple case study method approach, participants included eleven students (five men and six women) at a U.S. technical school. Results Results demonstrate that different patterns exist in the types of value or personal importance that participants assign to earning an engineering degree. Moreover, a primary differentiating feature of these patterns is whether or not participants choose engineering because it is consistent with their personal identity or sense of self. Conclusions We conclude that values are very important in students' choices to become engineers. To increase persistence rates we must focus on values, especially by helping students connect their personal identities to engineering identities.     

Assessing General Creativity and Creative Engineering Design in First Year Engineering Students

Creativity is a vital tool for innovation in engineering. Psychology and engineering faculty developed the Creative Engineering Design Assessment (CEDA) because existing tools are limited. This measure was administered with general creativity measures in 63 engineering (57 males, six females) and 21 non‐engineering (six males, 15 females) students in five week intervals. Inter‐rater reliability showed high consistency overall and between the test and retest administrations. Only engineering males and females significantly differed on the retest. Engineering students with low, medium, and high creative engineering design did not statistically differ in their general creativity, not domain specific to engineering; however, only high scorers were significantly higher on the retest from the other groups. Future research is needed with larger samples.     

Concept Mapping as a Form of Student Assessment and Instruction in the Domain of Bioengineering

This paper describes two pilot studies investigating the use of concept mapping for assessing students' conceptual knowledge at a given point and over time. In Study 1, three groups constructed concept maps in response to the question, “What are the 10–20 most important concepts in biomedical engineering and how are they related?” Group differences were consistent with expert‐novice distinctions in structural knowledge: faculty generated dense networks of higher‐order principles and their applications while students generated fewer connections among concepts pertaining largely to domain content. Study 2 assessed students' conceptual understanding of the biomedical engineering design process in a yearlong design course at three different time points. Later maps contained a greater number of concepts, more precise vocabulary, and were more valid. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theories about the structure of knowledge and identification of the skills associated with a culture of practice.     

The Effects of a First‐Year Engineering Design Course on Student Intellectual Development as Measured by the Perry Scheme

In response to the demand for enhanced design, problem‐solving, and team skills in engineering graduates, Penn State has instituted a number ofteam‐based, project‐learning courses, including one taken by nearly every first‐year engineering student. To determine the impact of these experiences on our students we have begun a cross‐sectional and longitudinal study of their intellectual development based upon the Perry model. In this paper, we describe the research methodology and results for the initial group of first‐year students interviewed. The results of the study include the effects on intellectual development of the first‐year design course, gender, honors status, and the students' academic ability as indicated by SAT scores and grade point average. Design experience was positively related to enhanced intellectual development. Honors status, gender, and academic ability were not significantly related to Perry rating. We discuss the implications of these findings for instruction and curricular reform.