(309e) Identifying Factors That Aid Students in Developing “Engineering Intuition”

Research in psychology has indicated that “intuition” is the ability to subconsciously and quickly draw from previous experience to make a (better) decision. In engineering, intuition is a highly desirable characteristic of the practicing engineer, but an intangible learning objective in the classroom.

In an effort to better understand how students develop engineering intuition, we have compared common factors among students who naturally display high engineering intuition with respect to technology-aided problem solutions. We administered open-ended simulation or other technology-aided problems to chemical and aerospace engineering students. In each case, the problem was solvable but not necessarily realistic. Students were asked to provide a recommendation or prompted to otherwise comment on the feasibility of the solution. Evaluating the solution feasibility required students to integrate knowledge not explicitly stated in the problem, but within the body of their expected knowledge. We refer to these as “stretch” problems, as they “stretch” beyond the calculations directly asked for in the problem.

Students’ success with assessing “stretch” problems’ feasibility was studied with respect to a number of factors: internship experience, program of study, ideal job choice, overall GPA, engineering GPA, STEM GPA, and learning preferences. Internship experience and GPA each showed statistically significant correlations with students’ engineering intuition, and further inspection revealed distinct trends with respect to not only correctly answering the problem, but also with students’ likelihood to attempt the problem. While it may not be surprising that internship experience and GPA rose to the forefront of factors studied, it is interesting to note that students with high overall GPA were more likely to both attempt “stretch” problems and answer them correctly. This GPA trend did not hold true when engineering or STEM-specific GPA was isolated.

This multi-disciplinary study is ongoing at two U.S. non-PhD granting institutions. Short-term future work includes expanding the number of study sites and disciplines to more strongly support identified factors. We will then work to better understand what aspects of these factors or experience contribute to development of “engineering intuition”, and develop course interventions that strive to incorporate similar aspects to the classroom experience in an attempt to better enable students to develop “engineering intuition.”