2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

However effective it may be pedagogically in teaching engineering analysis, a reductionist approach to engineering problem solving has been widely identified as a barrier to students’ engagement with real-world entanglements and the development of professional skills needed for practice in all but the most constrained engineering problem-solving spaces. One prevalent response to reductionist problem solving is to teach students to engage with the solution-generation process further upstream, to precede solution generation with problem definition. Problem definition is where real-world problems are translated into “engineering” problems, which is to say, problems amenable to engineering analysis. Often referred to as “problem definition and solution,” or PDS, this approach helps students recognize the wide range of contextual factors that influence the reduction of real-world design spaces into a neatly bounded engineering problem. This paper builds upon and expands the PDS approach by positing “problem framing” as a coequal dimension of engineering education alongside “problem solving.” By problem framing we mean to engage students not only in translating real-world problems into engineering problems (i.e., “problem definition”) but also to grapple with the wide-ranging conditions that lead to accepted and acceptable engineering problem statements.
To explore how engineering education can engage more holistic and complex problems by elevating problem framing as a precursor skillset to problem solving, we review a variety of provocations based on our experience in program and curriculum building through sociotechnical integration in multiple academic initiatives within the Engineering, Design, and Society Department (EDS) at the Colorado School of Mines. We discuss interventions that take place across the curriculum, including our first-year introduction to engineering design course, integrating design throughout an engineering curriculum via a design spine, and how we consider problem framing as a core component of our ABET accreditation performance indicators. Rather than attempting to provide a series of “problem-framing best practices,” we seek instead to promote a deeper conversation on how engineering educators perceive and frame engineering problem solving, the assessment of student learning of sociotechnical integration, and engineering judgment post-graduation.