Students’ Use of Engineering Judgment on Undergraduate Student Project Teams

This work-in-progress paper examines students' use of engineering judgment while participating in engineering student project teams. Engineering judgment is the development and use of mathematical models for analysis and design. It is an important skill for engineers to have in order to properly model real-world situations, but it is challenging to teach in undergraduate classes. Our research lab has focused on the productive beginnings of engineering judgment (PBJ), which is the development of engineering judgment, in undergraduate students for a number of years now. In the past we have implemented open-ended modeling problems into engineering science classes, mostly at the sophomore level, to elicit PBJ. We now explore the transferability and relevance of that productive beginnings of engineering judgment codebook to students participating in engineering student project teams.