Assessing authentic problem-solving in heat transfer
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
- Page Count
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15
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--40752
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/40752
- Download Count
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282
Paper Authors
Jiamin Zhang Auburn University
Jiamin Zhang, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer in physics at Auburn University. Her research focuses on studying authentic problem-solving in undergraduate engineering programs and what factors impact student persistence in STEM. She earned her PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Soheil Fatehiboroujeni Cornell University
Soheil Fatehiboroujeni received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Merced in 2018 focused on the nonlinear dynamics of biological filaments. As an engineering educator and postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Soheil worked in the Active Learning Initiative (ALI) to promote student-centered learning and the use of computational tools such as MATLAB and ANSYS in engineering classrooms.
In Spring 2022, Soheil joined Colorado State University as an assistant professor of practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research is currently focused on the long-term retention of knowledge and skills in engineering education, design theory and philosophy, and computational mechanics.
Matthew Ford University of Washington
Matthew J. Ford (he/him) received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to complete his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. After completing a postdoc with the Cornell Active Learning Initiative, he joined the School of Engineering and Technology at UW Tacoma to help establish its new mechanical engineering program. His teaching and research interests include solid mechanics, engineering design, and inquiry-guided learning. He has supervised undergraduate and master's student research projects and capstone design teams.
Eric Burkholder Stanford University
Eric Burkholder is an assistant professor of physics and of chemical engineering at Auburn Univeristy. He received his PhD in chemical engineering from Caltech and spent three years as a postdoc in Carl Wieman's group at Stanford University. His research focuses broadly on problem-solving in physics and engineerin courses, as well as issues related to retention and equity in STEM.
Abstract
Problem-solving is an essential skill for engineers-in-training to develop. Although engineering programs often stress the importance of teaching problem-solving skills, there are frequently reported gaps between the skills graduating engineers have and what engineering employers demand. Part of the reason for this gap is that many of the problems students solve, particularly in engineering science courses like thermodynamics, fluid or solid mechanics, bear little resemblance to the authentic, unstructured problems they will be expected to solve as practicing engineers. Recent work has characterized authentic problem-solving as a finite set of decisions common across experts in different STEM fields. These decisions represent specific, measurable skills that can be practiced with appropriate feedback to develop problem-solving expertise. In this paper, we describe the development of an assessment to measure decision-making in the context of engineering heat transfer. This assessment represents a departure from typical assessments in that it is not designed to rank students relative to one another, but to measure the progression of students’ expertise toward a standard established by a consensus of experts. We tested the assessment with 12 engineers highly skilled in heat transfer and transport phenomena, as well as 12 undergraduate engineering students who had previously taken a heat transfer course. From this data, we developed a scoring rubric that maximizes the discrimination between expert thinking and student thinking. On many decisions, students are far from expert-like, whereas for others, students are much closer to the expert thinking. In some areas where expert responses differ from one another, our think-aloud interviews reveal how the specific decisions made by experts depend on their interpretations of the goals in an unstructured problem-solving context. We hope to encourage other educators to use this assessment in their courses to measure how well they are preparing their students to solve real-world engineering problems.
Zhang, J., & Fatehiboroujeni, S., & Ford, M., & Burkholder, E. (2022, August), Assessing authentic problem-solving in heat transfer Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40752
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