According to the National Academy of Engineering, poor understanding of complex human-technical systems, i.e., systems that have many interacting parts, has been a major cause of “man made disasters” that include, for example, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Various studies show that even well-schooled engineers have difficulty understanding basic concepts of complex human-technical systems. This research will provide insights of the important cognitive (e.g. reasoning, thinking) skills for the understanding of complex systems for both engineering students and working professionals. Examples of cognitive barriers are for example, the experts’ tendency to look at details at the expense of looking at the big picture, the human tendency to focus on short-term as opposed to the long-term outcomes, among others. This research will address the needs of industry and government to educate and develop complex problem solvers for the US workforce so that the US maintains its economic competitiveness, national security, and position as a global leader in innovation. Given that engineers design, build and manage human-technical systems throughout their careers, it is important to study the effect of the cognitive barriers during and after their formal education. From an educational point of view, the research will integrate the results into engineering courses, case studies, team assignments and simulation platforms. From an outreach point of view, the research will use the results for the design and offering of company, government agency, and University workshops.
This is a multi-disciplinary project, which lies at the intersection of complex systems and engineering education and will study undergraduate students with different educational experiences as well as professionals with different work experiences. The research assumes that engineers can recognize and manage system complexity and that classroom education and field experiences can be essential for learning how to understand complex systems. The central research hypothesis is that education in engineering programs and real world experiences influence (positively or negatively) engineers’ understanding of complex systems. In order to investigate the main hypothesis, four specific research questions (RQ1-RQ4) are studied. Three vignettes with different levels of structuredness and complexity representing engineering tasks will be used. The research questions are as follows: RQ1: What is the relationship between engineering students’/professionals’ level of education/expertise and their performance on three vignettes that vary with respect to problem structuredness and complexity? RQ2: What is the relationship between engineering students’/professionals’ perceptions of their own systems thinking competencies and their performance on three vignettes that vary with respect to problem structuredness and complexity? RQ3: How do engineering students and professionals differ in their approaches to solving problems that vary with respect to problem stucturedness and complexity?, and RQ4: How do engineering students and professionals describe how and where they developed their cognitive skills of understanding complex systems?
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