skip to main content


Search for: All records

Award ID contains: 2013144

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Creativity plays an important role in engineering problem solving, particularly when solving an ill-structured problem, and has been a topic of increasing research interest in recent years. Prior research on creativity has been conducted in problem solving settings, predominantly focusing on undergraduate engineering students, including how faculty can foster creativity in engineering students, how engineering faculty perceive their students’ creativity, and how to measure it. However, more work is needed to examine engineering faculty and practitioner perspectives on the role of creativity when they solve an engineering problem themselves. Since engineering students learn problem solving, at least initially, mainly from their professors, it is essential to understand how faculty perceive their own creativity in problem solving. Similarly, given that practitioners solve ill-structured engineering problems on a regular basis in the workplace and that most of the students go on to work in the engineering industry when they graduate and ultimately become practitioners, it is also important to explore practitioner perspectives on creativity in problem solving settings. As part of an ongoing NSF-funded study, this paper investigates how engineering faculty’s and practitioners’ creativity influences their problem solving processes, how their perspectives on creativity in a problem solving environment differ, and what factors impact their creativity. Five tenure-track faculty in civil engineering and five practitioners were interviewed after they solved an ill-structured engineering problem. Participants’ responses were transcribed and coded using initial coding. This paper discusses their responses to semi-structured interview questions. The findings suggest that faculty and practitioners feel more creative when they are familiar with the subject area of a problem. If they are aware of a particular solution that has been developed and used before or have access to resources to look them up, they may not necessarily embrace creativity. The findings indicated differences not only across faculty and practitioners but also within the faculty and practitioner participants. Similarities and differences between faculty and practitioners in creative problem solving and the themes emerged are discussed and recommendations for educators are provided. 
    more » « less
  2. Problem solving is an essential part of engineering. Research shows that students are not exposed to ill-structured problems in the engineering classrooms as much as well-structured problems and do not feel as confident and comfortable solving them. There have been several studies on how engineering students solve and perceive ill-structured problems, however, understanding engineering faculty’s perceptions of teaching and solving such problems is important as well. Since it is the engineering faculty who teach students how to approach engineering problems, it is essential to understand how they perceive solving and teaching of these problems. The following research question has guided this research: What beliefs do engineering faculty have about teaching and solving ill-structured problems? Ten tenure-track or tenured faculty in civil engineering from various universities across the U.S. were interviewed after solving an ill-structured engineering problem. Their responses were transcribed and coded. The findings suggest that faculty generally preferred to teach both well-structured and ill-structured problems in their courses. They also acknowledge the advantages of ill-structured problems, in that they promote critical thinking, require creativity, and are more challenging. However, the results showed that some are less likely to use ill-structured problems in their teaching compared to well-structured problems. We also found that faculty became more comfortable teaching ill-structured problems as they gain more experience in teaching these types of problems. Faculty’s responses showed that while they solve ill-structured problems as part of their research on a regular basis, some faculty do not integrate these problems in the classes that they teach. These results indicate that although faculty recognize the importance of using ill-structured problems while teaching, the lack of experience with teaching these problems, other faculty responsibilities, and the complex nature of these problems make it challenging for engineering faculty to incorporate these problems into the engineering classroom. Based on these findings, in order to improve faculty’s comfort and willingness to use ill-structured problems in their teaching, recommendations for faculty are provided in the paper. 
    more » « less
  3. Solving open-ended complex problems is an essential part of being an engineer and one of the qualities needed in an engineering workplace. In order to help undergraduate engineering students develop such qualities and better prepare them for their future careers, this study is a preliminary effort to explore the problem solving approaches adopted by a student, faculty, and practicing engineer in civil engineering. As part of an ongoing NSF-funded study, this paper qualitatively investigates how three participants solve an ill-structured engineering problem. This study is guided by the following research question: What are the similarities and differences between a student, faculty, and practicing engineer in the approach to solve an ill-structured engineering problem? Verbal protocol analysis was used to answer this research question. Participants were asked to verbalize their response while they worked on the proposed problem. This paper includes a detailed analysis of the observed problem solving processes of the participants. Our preliminary findings indicate some distinct differences between the student, professor, and practicing engineer in their problem solving approaches. The student and practicing engineer used their prior knowledge to develop a solution, while the faculty did not make any connection to outside knowledge. It was also observed that the faculty and practicing engineer spent a great deal of time on feasibility and safety issues, whereas the student spent more time detailing the tool that would be used as their solution. Through additional data collection and analysis, we will better understand the similarities and differences between students, professionals, and faculty in terms of how they approach an ill-structured problem. This study will provide insights that will lead to the development of ways to better prepare engineering students to solve complex problems. 
    more » « less
  4. Workplace engineering problems are different from the problems that undergraduate engineering students typically encounter in most classroom settings. Students are most commonly given well-structured problems which have clear solution paths along with well-defined constraints and goals. This paper reports on research that examines how undergraduate engineering students perceived solving an ill-structured problem. Eighteen undergraduate civil engineering students were asked to solve an ill-structured engineering problem, and were interviewed after they completed solving the problem. This qualitative study is guided by the following research question: What factors do students perceive to influence their solving of an ill-structured civil engineering problem? Students’ responses to seven follow-up interview questions were transcribed and reviewed by research team members, which were used to develop codes and themes associated with these responses. Students’ transcripts were then coded following the developed codes. The analysis of data revealed that students were generally aware of the main positives and negatives of their proposed solutions to the ill-structured problem and reported that their creativity influenced their solutions and problem solving processes. Student responses also indicated that specific life events such as classes that they had taken, personal experiences, and exposure to other ill-structured problems during an internship helped them develop their proposed solution. Given students’ responses and overall findings, this supports creating learning environments for engineering students where they can support increasing their creativity and be more exposed to complex engineering problems. 
    more » « less
  5. This research paper elaborates on the process used by a team of researchers to create a codebook from interviews of Civil Engineers, which included students, professors, and professionals, solving ill-structured problems. The participants solved two ill-structured problems while speaking aloud their thought process. In addition to recording the participant verbalization, the solution to their problems were also collected with the use of a smart pen. Creating a codebook from interviews is a key element of qualitative analysis forming the basis for coding. While individuals can create codebooks for analysis, a team-based approach is advantageous especially when dealing with large amounts of data. A team-based approach involves an iterative process of inter-rater reliability essential to the trustworthiness of the data obtained by coding. In addition to coding the transcripts as a team, which consisted of novice, intermediate, and experts in the engineering education field, the audio and written solution to the problems were also coded. The use of multiple data sources to obtain data, and not just the verbatim transcripts, is lesser studied in engineering education literature and provides opportunities for a more detailed qualitative analysis. Initial codes were created from existing literature, which were refined through an iterative process. This process consisted of coding data, team consensus on coded data, codebook refinement, and recoding data with the refined codes. Results show that coding verbatim transcripts might not provide an accurate representation of the problem-solving processes participants used to solve the ill-structured problem. Benefits, challenges and recommendations regarding the use of multiple sources to obtain data are discussed while considering the amount of time required to conduct such analysis. 
    more » « less
  6. One of the main skills of engineers is to be able to solve problems. It is generally recognized that real-world engineering problems are inherently ill-structured in that they are complex, defined by non-engineering constraints, are missing information, and contain conflicting information. Therefore, it is very important to prepare future engineering students to be able to anticipate the occurrence of such problems, and to be prepared to solve them. However, most courses are taught by academic professors and lecturers whose focus is on didactic teaching of fundamental principles and code-based design approaches leading to predetermined “right” answers. Most classroom-taught methods to solve well-structured problems and the methods needed to solve ill-structured problems are strikingly different. The focus of our current effort is to compare and contrast the problem solving approaches employed by students, academics and practicing professionals in an attempt to determine if students are developing the necessary skills to tackle ill-structured problems. To accomplish this, an ill-structured problem is developed, which will later be used to determine, based on analysis of oral and written responses of participants in semi-structured interviews, attributes of the gap between student, faculty, and professional approaches to ill-structured problem solving. Based on the results of this analysis, we will identify what pedagogical approaches may limit and help students’ abilities to develop fully-formed solutions to ill-structured problems. This project is currently ongoing. This work-in-progress paper will present the study and proposed methods. Based on feedback obtained at the conference from the broader research community, the studies will be refined. The current phase includes three parts, (1) problem formulation; (2) protocol development; and (3) pilot study. For (1), two different ill-structured problems were developed in the Civil Engineering domain. The problem difficulty assessment method was used to determine the appropriateness of each problem developed for this study. For (2), a protocol was developed in which participants will be asked to first solve a simple problem to become familiar with the interview format, then are given 30 minutes to solve the provided ill-structured problem, following a semi-structured interview format. Participants will be encouraged to speak out loud and also write down what they are thinking and their thought processes throughout the interview period. Both (1) and (2) will next be used for (3) the pilot study. The pilot study will include interviewing three students, three faculty members and three professional engineers. Each participant will complete both problems following the same protocol developed. Post-interview discussion will be held with the pilot study participants individually to inquire if there were any portions of the tasks that are unclearly worded or could be improved to clarify what was being asked. Based on these results the final problem will be chosen and refined. 
    more » « less