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1. Situating intuition in engineering practice

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20521  

   Miskioğlu, Elif Eda ; Aaron, Caitlyn ; Bolton, Caroline ; Martin, Kaela M. ; Roth, Madeline ; Kavale, Sanjeev M. ; Carberry, Adam R. ( March 2023 , Journal of Engineering Education)

   A defining characteristic of expertise is the use of intuition to navigate tasks. The construct of intuition and its importance is well‐studied in other disciplines, but little is known about how it translates to engineering. Existing literature on intuition does not clearly define the construct and its relationship to problem solving, which creates a substantial gap in our understanding of intuition and its applicability to engineering.

   This study's purpose is to better understand the relationship between expertise, decision‐making, and intuition from the perspective of engineering practitioners. We additionally seek to define engineering intuition from this same perspective.

   Seventeen semi‐structured interviews were conducted with engineering practitioners with at least 6 years of experience. Sensitizing concepts tied to models of expertise development and dual process cognition were used to guide the study's design and data analysis. Iterative qualitative analysis culminating in code mapping supported the development of a definition and theory of engineering intuition.

   This study's result is an emergent definition of engineering intuition and a complementary framework called Leveraging Intuition Toward Engineering Solutions (LITES). LITES uniquely situates intuition as part of the problem‐solving process among experienced engineering practitioners and describes how practitioners use their intuition.

   This work advances knowledge of the relationship between intuition and expertise in engineering education by providing a definition of engineering intuition and a framework describing intuition's role in engineering problem solving. This contribution furthers efforts to equip current and future engineers with the necessary skills to navigate existing and upcoming societal challenges.

    

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2. Lessons Learned About Designing and Conducting Studies From HRI Experts

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.772141  

   Fraune, Marlena R. ; Leite, Iolanda ; Karatas, Nihan ; Amirova, Aida ; Legeleux, Amélie ; Sandygulova, Anara ; Neerincx, Anouk ; Dilip Tikas, Gaurav ; Gunes, Hatice ; Mohan, Mayumi ; et al ( January 2022 , Frontiers in Robotics and AI)

   The field of human-robot interaction (HRI) research is multidisciplinary and requires researchers to understand diverse fields including computer science, engineering, informatics, philosophy, psychology, and more disciplines. However, it is hard to be an expert in everything. To help HRI researchers develop methodological skills, especially in areas that are relatively new to them, we conducted a virtual workshop, Workshop Your Study Design (WYSD), at the 2021 International Conference on HRI. In this workshop, we grouped participants with mentors, who are experts in areas like real-world studies, empirical lab studies, questionnaire design, interview, participatory design, and statistics. During and after the workshop, participants discussed their proposed study methods, obtained feedback, and improved their work accordingly. In this paper, we present 1) Workshop attendees’ feedback about the workshop and 2) Lessons that the participants learned during their discussions with mentors. Participants’ responses about the workshop were positive, and future scholars who wish to run such a workshop can consider implementing their suggestions. The main contribution of this paper is the lessons learned section, where the workshop participants contributed to forming this section based on what participants discovered during the workshop. We organize lessons learned into themes of 1) Improving study design for HRI, 2) How to work with participants - especially children -, 3) Making the most of the study and robot’s limitations, and 4) How to collaborate well across fields as they were the areas of the papers submitted to the workshop. These themes include practical tips and guidelines to assist researchers to learn about fields of HRI research with which they have limited experience. We include specific examples, and researchers can adapt the tips and guidelines to their own areas to avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls in their research. 

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3. Update on is it Rocket Science or Brain Science? Developing an Approach to Measure Engineering Intuition

   Miskioglu, Elif ; Carberry, Adam ; Martin, Kaela ; Kavale, Sanjeev ; Bolton, Caroline ; Aaron, Caitlyn ; Roth, Madeline ( August 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Engineering problem solving has become more complex and reliant on technology making engineering judgement an increasingly important and essential skill for engineers. Educators need to ensure that students do not become rote learners with little ability to critically analyze the result of solutions. This suggests that greater focus should be placed on developing engineering judgement, specifically engineering intuition, in our students who will be the future engineering workforce. This project is focused on the following four 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 engineer decision-making and problem-solving processes? 3) How does the motivation and identity of practicing professional engineers relate to discipline-specific intuition? 4) What would an instrument designed to validly and reliably measure engineering intuition look like? Literature from the fields of nursing (Smith), management (Simon), and expertise development (Dreyfus) suggest intuition plays a role in both decision making and becoming an expert. This literature is used to support our definition of engineering intuition which is defined as the ability to: 1) assess the feasibility of a solution or response, and 2) predict outcomes and/or options within an engineering scenario (Authors). This paper serves as an update on the progress of our work to date. The first three research questions have been addressed through interviews with engineering practitioners at various stages in their careers, from early career to retired. Emergent findings have allowed us to construct a modified definition of engineering intuition, while also identifying related constructs. In Spring 2021, we created and tested an instrument to measure intuition. This instrument was re-deployed in Fall 2021. Preliminary results from the project’s qualitative and quantitative efforts will be presented. Our ultimate aim of this project is to inform the creation of classroom practices that improve students’ ability to develop, recognize, and improve their own engineering intuition. Select References: Authors (2020). Dreyfus, Stuart E., and Hubert L. Dreyfus. A five-stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition. No. ORC-80-2. California Univ Berkeley Operations Research Center, 1980. Smith, Anita. "Exploring the legitimacy of intuition as a form of nursing knowledge." Nursing Standard (through 2013) 23.40 (2009): 35. Simon, Herbert A. "Making management decisions: The role of intuition and emotion." Academy of Management Perspectives 1.1 (1987): 57-64. 

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4. Work In Progress: Experts’ Perceptions of Engineering Intuition

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--35633  

   Miskioğlu, Elif ; Martin, Kaela M. ; Carberry, Adam R. ( July 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   This work in progress paper describes preliminary findings from interviews intending to develop a definition of and method for measuring “engineering intuition.” Engineers are asked regularly in their profession to judge situations and predict or estimate results in order to minimize the potential for error. The need for this ability has been amplified with the pervasiveness of computer-aided problem solving in engineering. It is now mandatory for practicing engineers to quickly and accurately evaluate software results as part of the problem-solving process. We hypothesize that the ability to undertake such actions is heavily influenced by discipline-specific intuition, which has been previously explored in the disciplines of nursing and business management. The following study presents preliminary results attempting to define the construct of “engineering intuition.” Semi-structured interviews with practicing nurses, business managers, and engineers were conducted using: 1) implicit discussion around intuition informed by literature, and 2) critical incident technique, i.e., explicit discussion around the concept of intuition. Each interview sought to identify practitioner decision-making and problem-solving processes on the job. The combined dataset and supporting literature are planned to be used as the basis of our future work, which ultimately aims to develop a psychometrically tested instrument capable of accurately measuring engineering intuition. Dissemination of these preliminary results are intended to elicit feedback on our methodologies and findings before moving to the second phase of our research study. 

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5. What do Undergraduate Engineering Students and Pre-service Teachers Learn by Collaborating and Teaching Engineering and Coding Through Robotics?

   Kidd, J. ; Kaipa, K. ; Sacks, S. ; Ringleb, S. ; Pazos, P. ; Gutierrez, K. ; Ayala, O. M. ; de Souza Almeida, L. M. ( June 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Online)

   This research paper presents preliminary results of an NSF-supported interdisciplinary collaboration between undergraduate engineering students and preservice teachers. The fields of engineering and elementary education share similar challenges when it comes to preparing undergraduate students for the new demands they will encounter in their profession. Engineering students need interprofessional skills that will help them value and negotiate the contributions of various disciplines while working on problems that require a multidisciplinary approach. Increasingly, the solutions to today's complex problems must integrate knowledge and practices from multiple disciplines and engineers must be able to recognize when expertise from outside their field can enhance their perspective and ability to develop innovative solutions. However, research suggests that it is challenging even for professional engineers to understand the roles, responsibilities, and integration of various disciplines, and engineering curricula have traditionally left little room for development of non-technical skills such as effective communication with a range of audiences and an ability to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams. Meanwhile, preservice teachers need new technical knowledge and skills that go beyond traditional core content knowledge, as they are now expected to embed engineering into science and coding concepts into traditional subject areas. There are nationwide calls to integrate engineering and coding into PreK-6 education as part of a larger campaign to attract more students to STEM disciplines and to increase exposure for girls and minority students who remain significantly underrepresented in engineering and computer science. Accordingly, schools need teachers who have not only the knowledge and skills to integrate these topics into mainstream subjects, but also the intention to do so. However, research suggests that preservice teachers do not feel academically prepared and confident enough to teach engineering-related topics. This interdisciplinary project provided engineering students with an opportunity to develop interprofessional skills as well as to reinforce their technical knowledge, while preservice teachers had the opportunity to be exposed to engineering content, more specifically coding, and develop competence for their future teaching careers. Undergraduate engineering students enrolled in a computational methods course and preservice teachers enrolled in an educational technology course partnered to plan and deliver robotics lessons to fifth and sixth graders. This paper reports on the effects of this collaboration on twenty engineering students and eight preservice teachers. T-tests were used to compare participants’ pre-/post- scores on a coding quiz. A post-lesson written reflection asked the undergraduate students to describe their robotics lessons and what they learned from interacting with their cross disciplinary peers and the fifth/sixth graders. Content analysis was used to identify emergent themes. Engineering students’ perceptions were generally positive, recounting enjoyment interacting with elementary students and gaining communication skills from collaborating with non-technical partners. Preservice teachers demonstrated gains in their technical knowledge as measured by the coding quiz, but reported lacking the confidence to teach coding and robotics independently of their partner engineering students. Both groups reported gaining new perspectives from working in interdisciplinary teams and seeing benefits for the fifth and sixth grade participants, including exposing girls and students of color to engineering and computing. 

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