Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 92 de 957
the great number of uses for models in engineering design. By making modeling steps
more explicit it helps students to recognize the value of the predictive nature of modeling,
and leads to changes in what is conceived as modeling. As we continue this research, we
aim to shed light on how to effectively teach modeling, so that the implicit activities of
modeling, i.e. the process, are given as much attention as the tools or products of modeling
thereby helping students to develop more sophisticated conceptions of a core engineering
skill.
Table 2: t-values for codes with significant changes between pre and post-survey
Conclusions, Implications, & Future Work
Modeling is an important part of engineering and the design process. Our initial findings
suggest that students often do not have very nuanced conceptions of the full power and
use of models in the context of a senior design course. We have indicated that students
describe multiple ways to use models in a design solution and that most students view
models as a means to visualize and test their solutions. However, when presented with an
activity that explicitly embeds detailed steps of mathematically modeling in the context of
design, student responses include increased mention of the predictive power of modeling.
While our work has provided useful insights, additional studies are needed to further
investigate the modeling conceptions of engineering students at all levels in all disciplines.
This type of crossdisciplinary and multiple year data can inform how modeling might be
taught throughout the engineering curriculum.
Explication of modeling depends highly on the current curriculum used at a given
institution. In some instances the changes may simply be for analysis-focused courses to
be more explicit about how modeling is used in the context of setting up a problem and
deriving a solution. Other situations may call for a necessary embedding of modeling as a
core component of design-focused courses. Changes in the way modeling is taught can
improve the way that students perceive modeling and increase their modeling expertise.
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011