A phenomenographic analysis of first-year engineering students\u27 experiences with problems involving multiple possible solutions

Engineers are expected to solve problems that are ill-structured. These problems are presented with a lack of necessary information and allow for different ways of engaging with the problem; they are open-ended and involve multiple possible solutions with multiple means of evaluation. In order to allow maximum time for students to develop skills for solving such problems, undergraduate engineering programs can introduce such problems during the first year of students’ education, in the form of cornerstone design tasks. This provides students with more opportunities to develop their ability to engage with ill-structured problems, which are characteristic of engineering work. Researchers have documented variation within both the behavior and perceptions of students’ early experiences with design problems. General themes include novice-like design behavior, discomfort with lack of information, difficulty with problem scoping, and resistance to ambiguity. To build on these generalizations of students’ experiences, a more thorough understanding of the variation in how students experience this phenomenon of engaging with ill-structured problems is needed to design effective learning environments. This work presents the qualitatively different ways that engineering students experience problems with multiple possible solutions during their first year of engineering studies. Using phenomenography as the methodological framework, data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 27 first-year engineering students. The iterative, phenomenographic analysis resulted in seven descriptive categories for the ways participants experienced problems involving multiple possible solutions. The names of these categories represent the different foci of the students’ experiences: completion, transition, iteration, organization, collaboration, reasoning, and growth. These categories are organized along two crucial dimensions of variation: reaction to ambiguity and role of multiple perspectives. In general, less comprehensive ways of experiencing the phenomenon include seeking information to make the problem more well-structured and thereby allowing the completion of a classroom task. Movement towards more comprehensive ways of experiencing include accepting ambiguity as inherent to the problem, and utilizing multiple perceptions to develop a design solution. The most comprehensive ways of experiencing included experiences that embraced ambiguity as an integral part of the problem solving process and internalized multiple perspectives through working with and learning from others. The resulting outcome space is of practical use to engineering educators who wish to create more inclusive and effective cornerstone design learning environments. The findings demonstrate that significant variation is present in the way that a small group of first-year engineering students from a single university experience engaging with problems that involve multiple possible solutions. Powerful ways of experiencing this crucial aspect of engineering education include appreciation of the multiple ways of perceiving an ill-structured problem as well as an ability to accept the ambiguity that is associated with engaging with these types of problems. While some students are capable of such an experience, others do seek a single correct answer through an attempt to eliminate ambiguity. Knowing these key axes of variation informs educators’ ability to accommodate a range of ways of experiencing design tasks and to design learning environments that foster development in these identified aspects of the experience to promote more meaningful learning experiences