2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Systems engineering involves designing and managing complex systems interacting with human, environmental, and technological factors. Identifying and planning how to address potential implementation challenges early ensures the system is both theoretically sound and practical for real-world use. This proactive approach facilitates risk mitigation and resource optimization and helps meet intended needs and standards. Given the complexity of these systems, even well-intentioned decisions can lead to unintended consequences. These outcomes often arise from not fully understanding the system's complexity. By training students to anticipate and address such consequences, we prepare them to become responsible, ethical, and effective engineers.

In our study, first-year engineering students were tasked with completing a scenario-based assessment developed by Grohs et al. (2018), which focuses on systems thinking and problem-solving. Respondents were evaluated on their ability to assess a given scenario and identify unintended consequences and implementation challenges. We evaluated participant responses based on answers that highlighted challenges in implementing the plan, particularly the unintended consequences that could arise, both technical and contextual. We identified responses that included consideration for how these consequences might interact and affect both the short- and long-term outcomes.

When it came to implementation challenges, all students identified at least one short-term challenge related to either the technical or contextual (economic, political, environmental, social, time, etc.) aspects of the scenario. However, many struggled to recognize the interactions between different constructs at a higher level of complexity and had difficulty considering long-term challenges. Similarly, regarding unintended consequences, most students could identify potential issues related to technical or contextual factors, but they often overlooked the interactions between these various aspects.

The findings demonstrate that while students can identify short-term challenges and potential unintended consequences in isolation, they may lack the deeper understanding necessary to recognize the complexity of interactions between different aspects of a system. This highlights the need for enhanced educational strategies that emphasize the importance of considering both the interconnectedness of system components and the potential long-term consequences of decisions. This study's results help create effective teaching strategies to foster systems thinking skills in engineering students.