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Board 337: Measuring the “Thinking” in Systems Thinking: Correlations between Cognitive and Neurocognitive Measures of Engineering Students

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

9

DOI

10.18260/1-2--42950

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/42950

Download Count

169

Paper Authors

biography

Tripp Shealy Virginia Tech Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4255-3266

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Tripp Shealy is an Associate Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. He is also the director of the interdisciplinary Sustainable Land Development Graduate Program. His research is focused on helping improve engineering design. He teaches classes about sustainable engineering design, human behavior and infrastructure systems, and adaptive reuse.

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biography

John S. Gero University of North Carolina, Charlotte Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9026-535X

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John Gero is Research Professor in Computer Science and Architecture at UNCC He was formerly Research Professor in Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, and Research Professor in Computational Social Science at George Mason University and Professor of Des

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Paulo Ignacio Jr.

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the cognitive and neurocognitive measures of students when thinking in systems. Systems thinking is critical for engineering students to solve complex and ill-structured design problems. Systems thinking requires making connections between disparate pieces of information and using these connections to generate new ideas and relationships. Concept mapping is a tool for systems thinking. We asked (n=28) engineering students to develop concept maps while we measured changes in the oxygenated hemoglobin in their prefrontal cortex. Increased oxygenated hemoglobin is a proxy for increased cognitive effort. We then asked students to develop design problem statements and measured the uniqueness of their problem statements using the semantic distance between words. Data analysis is ongoing, but greater cognitive effort while concept mapping positively correlated with more semantically different problem statements. The more cognitive effort spent on concept mapping, the better students’ subsequent performance designing. These findings advance our understanding of brain behavior and student performance and provide new insights about the benefits of design techniques, like concept mapping, to enhance engineering students’ design ability. This research is supported through the NSF Program in Research in the Formation of Engineers.

Shealy, T., & Gero, J. S., & Ignacio Jr., P. (2023, June), Board 337: Measuring the “Thinking” in Systems Thinking: Correlations between Cognitive and Neurocognitive Measures of Engineering Students Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42950

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