Collaborative Research: Tackling the 'right' problem: Investigating cognitive strategies used in understanding engineering problems

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How do engineers find the 'right' design problem to solve, rather than the one first presented? This project will identify engineers' cognitive strategies for understanding design problems, called Problem Exploration Heuristics. The project is investigating problem exploration in professional design settings and in engineering classrooms through a combination of laboratory experiments and field studies. Engineers at multiple levels of expertise (professional to undergraduate students) working in differing settings are included to improve the generalizability of the findings. The project includes three phases: 1) in-depth interviews, observations, and protocol studies with engineering practitioners; 2) classroom studies of engineering and design students' perceptions of presented problems, and the ways in which they explore problems as individuals and teams; and, 3) synthesis of the findings into teachable heuristics to support STEM education. The intellectual merit of the project includes identification of the nature of these cognitive strategies as they occur in context (including when they are employed, and how they impact outcomes), and will inform the creation of instructional materials to promote innovation in problem exploration. The broader impact of this work includes improvement in the variety, novelty, and quality of designs through the use of problem exploration heuristics. The project findings directly support better design practices to address the core engineering problems of the 21st Century. In addition to support from the IUSE program, this work is also supported by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.