2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research paper examines the student perception and experience of solving open-ended modeling problems (OEMPs) through an autoethnographic account of the student-authors’ personal reflections about an OEMP completed during an introductory level statics course. Currently, the student perspective is not represented in literature about engineering problem solving. This is significant as the student perspective is integral to understanding how students learn and develop an engineering mindset. By incorporating the student voice through autoethnographic techniques, this study can begin to fill this gap and provide meaningful insights about the student experience and perceived benefits surrounding an OEMP.

Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that incorporates the researcher’s personal experience in conjunction with traditional research methods. The authors believe this is an underutilized research method within engineering education research that could provide additional insights to shift teaching and learning within engineering classrooms. The student-authors reflected on their personal experience solving an OEMP by retroactively responding to several written prompts. We analyzed our responses to determine possible patterns and emerging themes about the student perception of OEMPs.

While instructors make choices about course learning objectives, many times these are primarily based on what instructors historically believe students need to know. Rarely are students given a platform to voice the meaningful knowledge they constructed after course completion. Implications for this work include providing information to instructors on how students view innovative, problem-based work and the benefits to their development as novice engineers. This study also suggests that autoethnography can serve as a valuable research method in engineering education, allowing for a direct examination of students’ own experiences and perceptions.