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1. Practicing Engineers’ Definition of Their Expertise: Emergent Themes and Frequency by Gender Identity and Role Change into Management

   Bolton, C.; Miskioğlu, E.; Martin, K. M.; Aaron, C.; Carberry, A. R. (January 2021, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   null (Ed.)

   This full paper seeks to characterize how gender and career-related identity may affect a practicing engineer’s description of their expertise. This work is situated within a larger effort to disentangle the construct of intuition from expertise in engineering. Our findings will inform further data collection and analysis by shedding light on gender and career-related identity as potential confounding variables. Numerous models of expertise development note intuition as important or essential, yet intuition as a construct has yet to be defined, particularly within an engineering context. From literature on expertise development and cognition, we have synthesized a proposed definition of engineering intuition as the ability to assess solutions and predict outcomes in a timely manner. Our larger study is focused on developing an emergent characterization of engineering intuition informed by perceptions of practicing engineers, allowing us to disentangle intuition from expertise and identify its characteristics and co-dependent constructs. We also seek to characterize salient differences between demographic groups, and in the work presented here we focus on gender and whether the individual has had a significant role change in their career to date. We define a significant role change specifically as the transition from a technical role to a managerial role. 

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2. 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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3. Is it Rocket Science or Brain Science? Developing an Approach to Measure Engineering Intuition

   Miskioglu, E.; Martin, K. M.; Carberry, A. R.; Bolton, C.; Aaron, C. (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Annual Conference)

   Engineering judgement has become an increasingly more important skill for engineers as engineering problem solving has grown more complex and reliant on technology. Judging the feasibility of solutions is required to solve 21st century problems, making this an essential 21st century engineering skill. Those tasked with preparing the future engineering workforce should avoid educating students to become rote learners who simply take output at face value without critical analysis. Engineering educators need to instead focus efforts toward developing students with improved engineering judgement, specifically engineering intuition. The 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? The idea or notion of engineering intuition is based in literature from nursing (Smith) and management (Simon) and links expert development to intuition (Dreyfus). This literature is used to support the hypothesis that engineering intuition is defined as the ability to: 1) assess whether engineering solutions are reasonable or ridiculous, and 2) predict outcomes and/or options within an engineering scenario. We seek to answer research questions 1-3 using interviews with engineering practitioners at various stages in their careers (early to retired). These interviews will allow us to construct a modified definition of engineering intuition and identify related constructs. These results will be leveraged to subsequently create an instrument to reliably measure intuition. The ultimate goal of this project is to use what is learned via research to create classroom practices that improve students’ ability to develop, recognize, and improve their own engineering intuition. Select References: 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. Toward an Understanding of the Relationship Between Race/Ethnicity, Gender, First-generation Student Status, and Engineering Identity at Hispanic-serving Institutions

   Arnett, Stephanie M.; Way, Sandra M.; Ortiz, David G.; Humble, Lorissa B.B.; Martinez, Analyssa D. (July 2021, ASEE annual conference proceedings)

   This research paper investigates the relationship between race/ ethnicity, gender, first-generation college student status, and engineering identity using cross-sectional data from early-career engineering majors. Measures of engineering identity are increasingly used in models of engineering education to evaluate how identity contributes to success and persistence of engineering students. Engineering identity is generally assumed to contribute to educational success, with stronger engineering identity leading to persistence. At the same time, data clearly shows that persistence of engineering students varies by race/ethnicity and gender. Given these previous findings, we would expect to find that engineering identity will vary by race/ ethnicity, gender, and first generation status. Yet, relatively little work has quantitatively compared how engineering identity differs across racial/ ethnic groups and gender. While researchers are increasingly trying to gain a better understanding of engineering identity among Latina students, for example, the literature has not yet adequately accounted for how Latina students differ from their non-Hispanic white peers. This works seeks to address that gap in the literature with an exploration of the ways that race/ethnicity, gender, and first generation status work together to impact engineering identity among early-career engineering students at four public Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) in the Southwestern United States. We conducted surveys as part of a longitudinal study on STEM education. Data discussed here comes from baseline surveys of three cohorts of engineering students (N=475). Approximately two-thirds of the respondents were attending a traditional 4-year university while the remainder (N=159) were attending community college at the time of the survey. Approximately two-thirds of the respondents identified as Latinx, 27% identified as female, and 26.5% reported that they were first-generation college students. While expectations were that engineering identity would vary by race/ethnicity and gender, preliminary analyses of our data unexpectedly reveal no significant differences between Latinx and White students in terms of their engineering identity and no significant differences in engineering identity between male and female students. Interactions between race/ethnicity and gender were also tested and yielded no significant differences between early-career Latinx and White students in terms of their engineering identity. Finally, students who reported that they will be the first in their family to get a college degree had significantly lower engineering identity scores (=-.422; p=.001). These results lead us to conclude that first generation status at HSIs may be more important than gender and race/ ethnicity in the development of engineering identity for early career students. 

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5. BOARD # 441: RFE: Trust but Verify: The Use of Intuition in Engineering Problem Solving

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--55821  

   Martin, Kaela; Miskioglu, Elif; Singh, Anu; Carberry, Adam (June 2025, ASEE Conferences)

   We all have moments when we are struck by a “gut feeling” or a “sixth sense” about something. It could pertain to a relationship or task at work. That sense can be broadly termed intuition. Intuitive decisionmaking is an essential characteristic of individuals who have attained a certain level of expertise. The development of expertise and intuition are heavily influenced by experience. Engineering intuition is defined as an experience-informed skill subconsciously leveraged in problem solving by engineering practitioners when under pressure from constraints such as lack of time. Practicing engineers use and develop intuition regularly on-the-job, but the use of intuition is often discouraged in undergraduate education. The disconnect between intuition’s use in engineering practice and in education, coupled with our limited knowledge of the relationship between intuition, expertise, and experience, presents an important gap in our existing understanding of engineering problem solving and future workforce preparation. Through this Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) grant, we seek to address this gap by examining the application of intuition by engineering practitioners to generate knowledge that promotes professional formation and development of a stronger engineering workforce. 

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