Investigation of Context Across Engineering Domains: Bridging the Eye-Mind Divide

本研究将确定在当代交通和水资源工程实践以及本科工程课程中使用的背景类型，包括图片、草图和图表。该项目将调查已确定的工程问题背景对学生和实习工程师在解决这些问题时的表现的影响，以及他们在解决问题过程中注意的事项。在解决问题的过程中，参与者将佩戴移动眼动仪，并回答有关他们正在做什么的问题。将对这两组数据进行分析，以确定工程问题的不同元素对于得出解决方案的重要性。有了这些知识，工程教育工作者和研究人员将能够开发出更好的材料，最大限度地提高工程学生的学习能力，更好地为他们理解在真实的工程实践中使用的各种环境做好准备。美国国家研究委员会（National Research Council）已将培养工程专业学生的实际或真实的工程知识和思维方式确定为优先事项，并从理论上期望这将使学生更有能力进行创新的工程设计。在这个方向上的进展需要对真实的工程实践环境如何影响新手和专家的认知和学习进行基础研究，并结合研究性课程的设计。本研究的具体目标是通过一种创新的研究方法，综合新手和专家工程师对交通和水利工程概念的心理表征，该研究方法结合(1)与实践工程师和工程教师的工程和学术背景识别，(2)实时思考访谈，(3)眼球追踪，(4)反思性临床访谈。这些知识将进一步加深我们对工程问题关键要素的理解，并用于开发工程教育研究的新实践，以及在新开发的工程课程中深思熟虑地纳入背景。

This research will identify the types of contexts, including pictures, sketches and diagrams, which are utilized in contemporary transportation and water resources engineering practice and in undergraduate engineering curricula. The project will investigate the influence of the identified engineering problem contexts on students' and practicing engineers' performance in solving these problems and what they pay attention to during the solution process. While the problems are being solved, participants will be wearing a mobile eye-tracker and responding to questions about what they are doing. These two sets of data will be analyzed to determine how important different elements of the engineering problems are to arriving at solutions. With this knowledge engineering educators and researchers will be able to develop better materials that maximize the learning of engineering students, better preparing them to understand what kinds of contexts are used in authentic engineering practice. Developing situated or authentic engineering knowledge and ways of thinking in engineering students has been identified as a priority by the National Research Council, with the theoretically founded expectation that it will result in students who are more capable of innovative engineering design. Progress in this direction requires fundamental research on how contexts authentic to engineering practice influence cognition and learning in novices and experts, coupled with the design of research-based curriculum. The specific goals of this research are to synthesize novice and expert engineers' mental representations of transportation and hydraulics engineering concepts using an innovative research methodology combining (1) identification of engineering and academic contexts with practicing engineers and engineering faculty, (2) real time think-aloud interviews, (3) eye-tracking, and (4) reflective clinical interviews. This knowledge will further our understanding of critical elements of engineering problems and be used to develop new practices for the conduct of engineering education research and the thoughtful inclusion of context in newly developed engineering curricula.