BRIDGES AND PROBLEM SOLVING - Swedish Engineering Students Conceptions of Engineering in 2007

Mattias Wiggberg, Peter Dalenius

2009

Abstract

Swedish engineering students’ conceptions of engineering is investigated by a large nation-wide study in ten Swedish higher education institutions. Based on data from surveys and interviews, categories and top-lists, a picture of students conceptions of engineering is presented. Students’ conceptions of engineering, are somewhat divergent, but dealing with problems and their solutions and creativity are identified as core concepts. The survey data is in general more varied and deals with somewhat different kinds of terms. When explicitly asking for five engineering terms, as in the survey, a broader picture arises including terms, or concepts, denoting how students think of engineering and work in a more personal way. For example, words like hard work, stressful, challenging, interesting, and fun are used. On the other hand, it seems like the interviewed students tried to give more general answers that were not always connected to their personal experiences. Knowledge on students’ conceptions of engineering is essential for practitioners in engineering education. By information on students’ conceptions, the teaching can approach students at their particular mindset of the engineering field. Program managers with responsibility for design of engineering programs would also benefit using information on students’ conceptions of engineering. Courses could be motivated and contextualized in order to connect with the students. Recruitment officers would also have an easier time marketing why people should chose the engineering track.

References

  1. Adams, R., Fincher, S., Pears, A., Börstler, J., Boustedt, J., Dalenius, P., Eken, G., Heyer, T., Jacobsson, A., Lindberg, V., Molin, B., Moström, J.-E., and Wiggberg, M. (2007). What is the Word for Engineering. in Swedish: Swedish Students Conceptions of their Discipline. Technical Report 2007-018, Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Box 337, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden.
  2. Dolde, C. and Götz, K. (1995). Subjektive Theorien zu Lernformen in der betrieblichen DV-Qualifizierung. Unterrichtswissenschaft, 23:264-287.
  3. Downe-Wamboldt, B. (1992). Content analysis: Method, applications, and issues. Healt Care for Women International, 13:313-321.
  4. Eris, O., Chen, H., Bailey, T., Engerman, K., Loshbaugh, H. G., Griffin, A., Lichtenstein, G., and Cole, A. (2005). Development of the Persistence in Engineering (PIE) Survey Instrument. In Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education, Oahu, Hawaii.
  5. Fincher, S. and Tenenberg, J. (2006). Using theory to inform capacity-building: Bootstrapping communities of practice in computer science education research. Journal of Engineering Education, 95(4):265-278.
  6. Flanagan, J. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51(4):327-358.
  7. Furusten, T. and Lundh, A. (2007). Utvärdering av arbetet med breddad rekrytering till universitet och högskolor - en samlad bild. Högskoleverkets rapportserie. Högskoleverket.
  8. Goel, S. and Sharda, N. (2004). What do engineers want? Examining engineering education through Bloom's taxonomy. In 15th Annual Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, pages 173-185.
  9. Hsieh, H.-F. and Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis. Qual Health Res, 15(9):1277-1288.
  10. Inkinen, M., Furusten, T., and Olsson, N. (2007). Minskad tillströmning till högre utbildning - analys och diskussion om möjliga orsaker. Number 2007:42 R in Högskoleverkets rapportserie. Högskoleverket, Stockholm, Sweden.
  11. Klein, G. (1999). Sources of Power - How People Make Decisions. MIT Press.
  12. Klein, G., Calderwood, R., and MacGregor, D. (1989). Critical decision method for eliciting knowledge. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 19(3):462-472.
  13. Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien (2003). Skolans bild av ingenjören - utbildningen och yrket. Vad tycker lärare samt studie- och yrkesvägledare? Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien, Stockholm, Sweden.
  14. Kvale, S. (1997). Den kvalitativa forskningsintervjun. Studentlitteratur, Lund.
  15. Loui, M. C. (2005). Ethics and the development of professional identities of engineering students. Jornal of Engineering Education.
  16. Maury, C. (2004). An External View on the Swedish System of Engineering Education - Contribution to the IVA project 'Engineers of Tomorrow' . Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), Stockholm, Sweden.
  17. Mayring, P. (2000). Qualitative content analysis. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal].
  18. Mosborg, S., Adams, R., Kim, R., Atman, C. J., Turns, J., and Cardella, M. (2005). Conceptions of the engineering design process: An expert study of advanced practicing professionals. In 2005 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition: The Changing Landscape of Engineering and Technology Education in a Global World, page 27 pp, Portland, OR USA.
  19. Novak, J. D. (1998). Learning, creating, and using knowledge: Concept maps as facilitative tools in schools and corporations. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
  20. Pears, A. N., Pettersson, L., and Erickson, C. (2003). Enriching online learning resources with 'explanograms'. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 35(3).
  21. SCB (2006). Registrerade studenter höstterminen 2006, för riket och per högskola, fördelade efter studieinriktning, kön och ålder. Technical report, Statistiska Centralbyrån.
  22. Turns, J., Temple, J., and Atman, C. J. (2000). Students' Conceptions of their Engineering Discipline: A Word Association Study. In 2000 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition: Engineering Education Beyond the Millennium, St. Louis, MO, USA.
  23. Weber, R. P. (1990). Basic Content Analysis. Quantitative Applications in the Social Science. SAGE University Paper, Newbury Park, CA.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Wiggberg M. and Dalenius P. (2009). BRIDGES AND PROBLEM SOLVING - Swedish Engineering Students Conceptions of Engineering in 2007 . In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-8111-82-1, pages 5-12. DOI: 10.5220/0001862500050012


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu09,
author={Mattias Wiggberg and Peter Dalenius},
title={BRIDGES AND PROBLEM SOLVING - Swedish Engineering Students Conceptions of Engineering in 2007},
booktitle={Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2009},
pages={5-12},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001862500050012},
isbn={978-989-8111-82-1},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - BRIDGES AND PROBLEM SOLVING - Swedish Engineering Students Conceptions of Engineering in 2007
SN - 978-989-8111-82-1
AU - Wiggberg M.
AU - Dalenius P.
PY - 2009
SP - 5
EP - 12
DO - 10.5220/0001862500050012