Origins of Requirement Development Skills in Engineering Undergraduates: Students’ Initial Thinking and Use in Engineering Decisions

Andrew Olewnik; Vanessa Svihla; William Wild

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: First-Year Programs Division Technical Session 9: Decision Making, Problem-Based Projects, Role-Play, and a Nontraditional Project Theme
Page Count: 19
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--40773
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/40773
Download Count: 208

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Paper Authors

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Andrew Olewnik University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

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Assistant Professor | Engineering Education | University at Buffalo

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Vanessa Svihla University of New Mexico

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Dr. Vanessa Svihla is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico (UNM) with appointments in learning sciences and engineering. Her research, funded by an NSF CAREER award, focuses on how people learn as they frame problems and how these activities relate to identity, agency and creativity.

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William Wild University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

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Abstract

A key challenge in engineering design problem framing is defining requirements and metrics. This is difficult, in part, because engineers must make decisions about how to treat qualitative and subjective issues, like stakeholder preferences, about how to prioritize different requirements, and about how to maintain tentativeness and ill-structuredness in the solution space. And this is made more challenging in light of the function of requirements in other types of engineering problems, like feasibility analysis, in which the requirements should converge on a decision. Given these challenges, it is unsurprising that there is limited research on how first-year students approach such work, how they make sense of requirements, and how their conceptualizations of requirements change with instruction. Our purpose in this study is to investigate students’ initial understanding and use of engineering requirements in a specific problem solving context. We developed a survey to measure students’ perceptions related to engineering requirements based on constructs derived from the literature on engineering requirements. We implemented the survey in a first-year and in senior courses for the purpose of validating items using factor analysis. Following this, we conducted analysis of survey and interview data restricted to the first-year course, including epistemic beliefs and analysis of students’ agency. Through exploratory factor analysis, we found that factors did not converge around constructs as described in the literature. Rather, factors formed around the forms of information leveraged to develop requirements. Through qualitative analysis of students’ responses on the survey and to interviews, we evaluated the extent to which students expressed agency over their use of requirements to make decisions within a course project. We describe implications of this exploratory study in terms of adapting research instruments to better understand this topic. Further, we consider pedagogical implications for first year programs and beyond in supporting students to develop ownership over decision making related to engineering requirements.

Citation
Format

Olewnik, A., & Svihla, V., & Wild, W. (2022, August), Origins of Requirement Development Skills in Engineering Undergraduates: Students’ Initial Thinking and Use in Engineering Decisions Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40773

TY - CPAPER
AB - A key challenge in engineering design problem framing is defining requirements and metrics. This is difficult, in part, because engineers must make decisions about how to treat qualitative and subjective issues, like stakeholder preferences, about how to prioritize different requirements, and about how to maintain tentativeness and ill-structuredness in the solution space. And this is made more challenging in light of the function of requirements in other types of engineering problems, like feasibility analysis, in which the requirements should converge on a decision. Given these challenges, it is unsurprising that there is limited research on how first-year students approach such work, how they make sense of requirements, and how their conceptualizations of requirements change with instruction. Our purpose in this study is to investigate students’ initial understanding and use of engineering requirements in a specific problem solving context.
We developed a survey to measure students’ perceptions related to engineering requirements based on constructs derived from the literature on engineering requirements. We implemented the survey in a first-year and in senior courses for the purpose of validating items using factor analysis. Following this, we conducted analysis of survey and interview data restricted to the first-year course, including epistemic beliefs and analysis of students’ agency.
Through exploratory factor analysis, we found that factors did not converge around constructs as described in the literature. Rather, factors formed around the forms of information leveraged to develop requirements. Through qualitative analysis of students’ responses on the survey and to interviews, we evaluated the extent to which students expressed agency over their use of requirements to make decisions within a course project. We describe implications of this exploratory study in terms of adapting research instruments to better understand this topic. Further, we consider pedagogical implications for first year programs and beyond in supporting students to develop ownership over decision making related to engineering requirements.
AU - Andrew Olewnik
AU - Vanessa Svihla
AU - William Wild
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Origins of Requirement Development Skills in Engineering Undergraduates: Students’ Initial Thinking and Use in Engineering Decisions
UR - https://peer.asee.org/40773
DO - 10.18260/1-2--40773
ER -