Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

1 Are engineers also systems thinkers? Bringing up Holistic and Systematic Decision-Making in Engineering through a Systems-Centered Educational Framework

Abstract Engineering is design, analysis and synthesis. Analytical and systematic skills have been emphasized as one of the most important professional abilities for the XXI century. Hence, the need for instilling in engineering students those skills has been reinforced (e.g. ABET’s A-K required outcomes for accreditation). But how math and engineering courses in fact promote the acquisition of those skills is still not clear. One tool developed to assess people’s understanding of basic systems concepts is the systems thinking inventory, STI. The STI has been used with different populations of students in different countries. The results have consistently shown that people have poor understanding of systems concepts. We also propose for as a topic for further research that the problem might reside in the educational framework commonly used in the engineering classroom and propose that more research on the system-centered approach is needed since it requires an increased emphasis on teacher’s contributions as learning facilitators. We present the results of applying two of the STI tasks, to sixty-eight Industrial Engineering undergraduate students whose level range from 4th to last semester before graduation. It is hypothesized that students in the last semesters of IE training would have a better understanding of system dynamics. The results with controls of gender, high school of origin, and English language proficiency will be discussed.

Index Terms – Systems thinking evaluation, engineering education outcomes, skills assessment, industrial engineering, systems-centered framework

I. Introduction Recently, problems with organizations, structures, and society that have a huge technological component alert us to the fact that there is a growing gap between the nature of our problems, our ability to solve these and understand their consequences in the future. It is also a truism that the world has evolved from a simple setting to a very complex socio-technical system of systems and information networks. Cascade effects of our problems are increasing faster than we can handle and it is time for us to develop new strategies and methods to resolve these issues. Engineering education has since tried to cope with this change by addressing complexity with specialization. More and more humans, and therefore engineers, are becoming specialized in narrow areas of knowledge (e.g. services, health care, disaster relief, nanotechnology, biotechnology, transportation, airport security, optimization to name a few. This constant changing context and the accelerated development process of engineering practice highlights some discontinuities and shortages in the engineering specializations. Few cases in point can provide us with enough substance for explaining the importance of having a holistic view of engineering problems. Looking back at cases that could be deemed infamous engineering flaws, such as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster in Washington in 1940, the failure of the levees built in New Orleans in 2005, the

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Molina, G., & Idrisu, A., & Medina-Borja, A., & Marian, A. (2007, June), Are Engineers Also System Thinkers? Bringing Up Holistic And Systematic Decision Making In Engineering Through A Systems Centered Educational Framework Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--1494