Enhancing multiple thinking through the engineering design process

Abstract

The impact of the quality of engineering students' education on the industry of a country cannot be underestimated. While there are numerous studies on the types of qualities that graduate engineers should have, the extent to which undergraduate engineering students choose to acquire these qualities or skills depends greatly on the type of epistemic beliefs that they have. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the epistemic beliefs of first year engineering students. It is the first part of a study aiming to establish both the general epistemic beliefs [1] of engineering students, as well as if and how these beliefs relate to students' Engineering Habits of Mind [2]. The primary instrument used in this first phase of the study was Schraw, Dunkle, and Bendixen's (2002) Epistemic Belief Inventory (EBI) [3]. The instrument is in the form of a questionnaire and it was administered to 39 female students in their freshman and sophomore years in an engineering college in the Arabian Gulf. The results showed that there was very little variation between the two levels of students, indicating that the issue of developing students' epistemic beliefs needs to be addressed more thoroughly. This could be done possibly in the introductory engineering courses or as curriculum infused in other Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses.