2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering students need to be trained to deal with complex engineering problems and be capable of developing solutions that meet the needs of stakeholders at different levels, from direct users to regulation entities. Stakeholder awareness is defined as a construct concerning with the ability to identify and include relevant stakeholders. A successful engineer should be able to identify various stakeholders, understand their roles, and effectively communicate with them to facilitate the identification and implementation of possible solutions. Therefore, it is important to fostering the development of such skill in an introductory engineering design course. The aim of our study reported in this paper is to properly assess students’ level of the stakeholder awareness skill and identify the area(s) of development (gaps). The results provide us with insights to develop effective teaching strategies to address these gaps.

Study participants were tasked to complete a scenario-based assessment proposed by Grohs, et al. (2018) that focuses on systems thinking and problem-solving as engineers by responding to a scenario that addressed technical and social contexts. The activity focuses on participants’ responses to a given scenario and the prompts intended to guide respondents in a systems-thinking approach. Data was collected electronically and analyzed using qualitative coding methods by applying the assessment tool rubric to evaluate student responses using systems thinking constructs from the framework. We rated stakeholder awareness according to the rubric which rates a respondent’s ability to identify stakeholders across the group categories and the nature of engagement with the stakeholder.

Preliminary results show that most of the participants (approx. 90%) scored high identifying more than one group of stakeholders. However, a lower percentage (35%) of participants talked about collaborative interaction with the different stakeholders and had trouble describing the process of planning a response to the problem.

This study is contributing to laying out the foundation of our overarching project in which we are seeking to develop teaching content that focuses on systems thinking skills by providing a solid understanding of the current systems thinking skill baseline level among university engineering students. Results from this study will also inform the systems thinking community and enrich the literature on human-centered design that discusses how engineering students understand and navigate design problems in complex systems at a design course.