Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: RUI: Is it Rocket Science or Brain Science? Developing an Approach to Measuring Engineering Intuition

工程师的任务是设计、开发和构建复杂问题的解决方案。从本质上讲，他们的决定可能会产生严重后果，比如挑战者号航天飞机灾难和波音737 Max 8传感器故障事件。在这两次事件中，一名工程师都允许飞行器飞行。避免此类工程错误不仅需要技术知识，还需要快速评估解决方案是否可行和合适的能力。随着工程师越来越远离解决问题的过程，工程直觉的技能（通常被称为“直觉”）变得越来越重要。今天的工程师依赖于复杂的软件工具，这些工具对用户隐藏了导致解决方案的假设和计算。他们必须能够评估计算机的输出是合理的还是荒谬的。这种直觉被认为是通过专业经验发展起来的，但也可以在课堂上获得，作为工程专业知识正式发展的一部分。尽管直觉在发展专业知识中的重要性得到了充分的证明，但目前还没有明确的直觉定义或识别个人直觉水平的方法。关于工程直觉的知识和资源的差距限制了教育者，因为如何在课堂上培养工程直觉没有明确的途径。我们需要一个工程直觉的定义和测量方法，以便为工程教育者提供工具，以创建促进直觉发展的课堂活动，因为目前工程师必须依靠可变的经验和机会来获得直觉。此外，建立直觉有可能培养学生的信心，这不成比例地影响了工程专业和职业中代表性不足的少数民族的坚持和适应能力。直觉、经验和机会之间的联系可以使学生坚持从事工程职业，缩小工程领域现有的机会差距。本项目最初将工程直觉定义为在工程场景中评估解决方案可行性和预测结果或选项的能力。该项目将从采访实践专家工程师开始，以确定他们对直觉的定义与我们的一致，并确定包含工程直觉的结构。本研究将使用混合方法的方法来提供对专家工程直觉的定性见解，可以利用这些见解来创建具有可接受的有效性和可靠性证据的定量工具，以支持工程学者和教育工作者的进一步使用。在Dreyfus模型和fuzzy - trace理论等专业知识发展框架的基础上，该项目旨在回答以下研究问题：(1)实践专业工程师对特定学科直觉的看法及其在工作场所的应用是什么？(2)直觉在专家工程决策和解决问题的过程中体现在哪里？(3)执业专业工程师的动机和身份与特定学科的直觉有何关系？(4)设计用于有效和可靠地测量工程直觉的仪器是什么样的？拟议的研究通过定义直觉及其与其他结构（例如，动机）的关系，并开发一种测量和识别学科特定直觉如何发展的程序，弥合了理论到实践的差距，以发展工程直觉。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Engineers are tasked with designing, developing, and building solutions to complex problems. By nature, their decisions can have critical consequences, such as in the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the Boeing 737 Max 8 faulty sensor incident. In both of these events, the vehicle was cleared to fly by an engineer. Avoiding such engineering mistakes requires not only technical knowledge but also the ability to rapidly assess whether a solution is feasible and appropriate. The skill of engineering intuition (often referred to as a "gut feeling") becomes increasingly important as engineers become further removed from the problem-solving process. Today's engineers rely on sophisticated software tools where the assumptions and computations leading to a solution are hidden from the user. They must be able to evaluate whether a computer output is reasonable or ridiculous. This intuition is thought to be developed through professional experience but could also be acquired in the classroom as part of the formal development of engineering expertise. No clear definition of intuition or methods for identifying an individual's level of intuition exist despite the well-documented importance of intuition in developing expertise. The gap in knowledge and resources around engineering intuition limits educators as there is no clear path on how to develop engineering intuition in the classroom. A definition and means of measuring engineering intuition is needed to equip engineering educators with the tools to create classroom activities that promote intuition development as currently engineers must rely on variable experiences and opportunities to gain intuition. Furthermore, building intuition has the potential to foster student confidence, which disproportionately affects the persistence and resilience of underrepresented minorities in engineering majors and careers. The link between intuition, experience, and access to opportunity can empower students to persist in engineering careers and narrow the existing opportunity gaps in engineering.This project initially defines engineering intuition as the ability to assess solution feasibility and predict outcomes or options within an engineering scenario. The project will begin by interviewing practicing expert engineers to determine the alignment of their definition of intuition with ours and identify the constructs that encompass engineering intuition. This study will use a mixed-methods approach to provide qualitative insights into expert engineering intuition that can be leveraged to create a quantitative instrument with acceptable validity and reliability evidence to support further use by engineering scholars and educators. Grounded in frameworks for expertise development such as the Dreyfus model and Fuzz-Trace Theory, the project aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What are practicing professional engineers' perceptions of discipline-specific intuition and its use in the workplace?; (2) Where does intuition manifest in expert engineering decision-making and problem-solving processes?; (3) How does the motivation and identity of practicing professional engineers relate to discipline-specific intuition?; and (4) What would an instrument designed to validly and reliably measure engineering intuition look like? The proposed research bridges the theory-to-practice gap to develop engineering intuition by defining intuition and its relationship to other constructs (e.g., motivation) and developing a procedure for measuring and identifying how discipline-specific intuition is developed.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.