2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Characterizing Perceptions of Engineering Intuition Based on Experience and Gender

Presented at Student Experiences and Development – Session 2

This full paper explores perceptions of intuition among engineering practitioners. Intuition is a characteristic of an expert that plays a role in many professional fields, including engineering. Interviews were conducted with 27 engineering practitioners with up to 26+ years of experience to better understand perceptions and development of intuition in an engineering context. The interviews had three areas of focus: expertise, decision-making, and intuition. This paper considers the area of intuition by addressing the following research questions: ‘How would you define engineering intuition?’ and ‘How does engineering intuition develop?’ Previous work has suggested gendered patterns of how practitioners discuss their expertise and the importance of experience in the development of intuition. These findings informed our specific interest in how level of experience or gender may affect participant responses regarding intuition. Qualitative coding of participant interviews showed that level of experience had no influence on how individuals defined engineering intuition. Gender comparisons revealed men to more often define intuition on the basis of innate ability or gut feeling whereas women more often defined the concept on the basis of past experiences. All participants highlighted the importance of experience in the development of intuition and provided multiple examples of helpful experiences they had, or wished they had experienced, which further underscores the importance of experience. The universal emphasis on experience’s role in intuition development coupled with emergent gender difference in perception of intuition may point to the fact that experiences are not equally available to, or experienced in the same way, for all engineers. This suggests that providing equitable and diverse experiences in engineering education may be critical to foster intuition development.

Authors

Madeline Roth Bucknell University [biography]

Madeline (Maddi) Roth is an undergraduate student with majors in Neuroscience and Psychology and a minor in Education.
Dr. Elif Miskioglu Bucknell University [biography]

Dr. Elif Miskioglu is an early-career engineering education scholar and educator. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (with Genetics minor) from Iowa State University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Ohio State University. Her early Ph.D. work focused on the development of bacterial biosensors capable of screening pesticides for specifically targeting the malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. As a result, her diverse background also includes experience in infectious disease and epidemiology, providing crucial exposure to the broader context of engineering problems and their subsequent solutions. These diverse experiences and a growing passion for improving engineering education prompted Dr. Miskioglu to change her career path and become a scholar of engineering education. As an educator, she is committed to challenging her students to uncover new perspectives and dig deeper into the context of the societal problems engineering is intended to solve. As a scholar, she seeks to not only contribute original theoretical research to the field, but work to bridge the theory-to-practice gap in engineering education by serving as an ambassador for empirically driven educational practices.
Dr. Adam R. Carberry http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0041-7060 Arizona State University [biography]

Dr. Adam Carberry is an associate professor at Arizona State University in the Fulton Schools of Engineering, The Polytechnic School. He earned a B.S. in Materials Science Engineering from Alfred University, and received his M.S. and Ph.D., both from Tufts University, in Chemistry and Engineering Education respectively. His research investigates the development of new classroom innovations, assessment techniques, and identifying new ways to empirically understand how engineering students and educators learn. He currently serves as the Graduate Program Chair for the Engineering Education Systems and Design Ph.D. program. He is also the immediate past chair of the Research in Engineering Education Network (REEN) and a deputy editor for the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE). Prior to joining ASU he was a graduate research assistant at the Tufts’ Center for Engineering Education and Outreach.
Dr. Kaela M. Martin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2359-6332 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Prescott [biography]

Kaela Martin is an Associate Professor and Associate Department Chair of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott Campus. She graduated from Purdue University with a PhD in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. Her research interests in engineering education include developing classroom interventions that improve student learning, designing experiences to further the development of students from novices to experts, and creating engaging classroom experiences.

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