TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessment of Changes in Engineering Students' Problem-Solving Strategies in a Senior Level Review Class
AU - Vaughn, Jacob
AU - Taraban, Roman
AU - Khatib, Sheima
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
PY - 2022/8/23
Y1 - 2022/8/23
N2 - Engineering students are trained to solve a multitude of problems ranging from those that are well-defined to those that require intuition and creativity. Although engineering educators have researched strategies that students utilize when problem solving, there is essentially no research on how engineering students change their strategies over time. The goal of this study was to gain information on how students proposed to change their strategies after problem-solving review activities and being prompted to reflect on how they would change their strategies on subsequent problems. The participants were chemical engineering students enrolled in a 3-hour senior level review course designed to prepare them to take the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam. Data were collected through responses on a weekly survey for which students received a small homework credit. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were applied to the data. This research provides novel insights into how advanced students reflect on their problem-solving behaviors, which could be of pedagogical value to engineering educators. However, there was no evidence that the frequency of reflection on problem-solving strategies improved subsequent performance on the FE exam.
AB - Engineering students are trained to solve a multitude of problems ranging from those that are well-defined to those that require intuition and creativity. Although engineering educators have researched strategies that students utilize when problem solving, there is essentially no research on how engineering students change their strategies over time. The goal of this study was to gain information on how students proposed to change their strategies after problem-solving review activities and being prompted to reflect on how they would change their strategies on subsequent problems. The participants were chemical engineering students enrolled in a 3-hour senior level review course designed to prepare them to take the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam. Data were collected through responses on a weekly survey for which students received a small homework credit. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were applied to the data. This research provides novel insights into how advanced students reflect on their problem-solving behaviors, which could be of pedagogical value to engineering educators. However, there was no evidence that the frequency of reflection on problem-solving strategies improved subsequent performance on the FE exam.
KW - Education
KW - Metacognition
KW - Problem-Solving Strategies
KW - Reflection
KW - Strategy Adaptation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85138229024&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85138229024
SN - 2153-5965
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
T2 - 129th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: Excellence Through Diversity, ASEE 2022
Y2 - 26 June 2022 through 29 June 2022
ER -