Assessing and Justifying the Reasonableness of Answers to Open-Ended Problems

Engineering students have little practice solving the ill-defined problems they will encounter as professional engineers. Our research team has created an Open-ended Modeling Problem (OEMP) for students to begin practicing engineering judgment. This study investigates one aspect of engineering judgment, evaluating what is a good enough solution, or reasonableness. After solving an assigned OEMP, students were asked if their solutions were reasonable and to justify their answer. This paper examines the different justifications students provided and the assignment factors that may have led to those responses. This work has implications for designing future ill-structured problems and engaging students in engineering judgment.