2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

RFE: Trust but Verify: The Use of Intuition in Engineering Problem Solving

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

Intuition is well-documented as a defining characteristic of experts and as a skill used by professionals in specialized fields such as nursing, business management, and law (Benner, 1984; Richards, 2016; Simon, 1987). From prior work (Authors, 2023), we define intuition as an experience-informed skill subconsciously leveraged in problem solving by engineering practitioners when under pressure from constraints (e.g., lack of time). Practicing engineers use and develop intuition regularly on-the-job, but the use of intuition is often discouraged in undergraduate education. The disconnect between intuition’s use in engineering practice and in education, coupled with our limited knowledge of the relationship between intuition, expertise, and experience, presents an important gap in our existing understanding of engineering problem solving and future workforce preparation. Through a Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) grant, we seek to address this gap by examining the application of intuition by engineering practitioners to generate knowledge that promotes professional formation and development of a stronger engineering workforce through four research questions.

RQ1: How does the application of intuition manifest in engineering problem solving?
RQ2: How does the application of intuition vary when approaching “ill” versus “well” structured engineering problems?
RQ3: How does the domain of practitioner expertise influence the application of intuition when approaching “ill” versus “well” structured engineering problems?
RQ4: How does prior engineering experience influence the application of intuition when approaching “ill” versus “well” structured engineering problems?

To elicit expert knowledge, we are using Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA). CTA is a method that to our knowledge has not been applied to engineering education research but has a strong record of success in social science research, particularly in studies of expert task completion (Crandall et al., 2006). Per best practices, we are mixing CTA methods (Simulation Interviews, Critical Decision Method, and Knowledge Audit Method) to support robust data collection (Crandall & Hoffman, 2013).

Our key findings to date include the creation of an interview protocol and coding of three pilot interviews with engineering experts using the Leveraging Intuition Toward Engineering Solutions (LITES) framework (Authors, 2023). Pilot interview participants were asked to come prepared to discuss an engineering problem they solved in their career (e.g., flight test readiness and fixing manufacturing problems). All participants described ill-structured problems in which they as the problem-solver needed to gather information, collaborate with domain experts, and ultimately exercise their judgment to take action. Past experience emerged as a strong guiding force in each participant’s problem-solving approach and was often credited for how they “knew what to do.” These findings align with what is known about engineering intuition and are an important first step towards demonstrating its direct use in engineering problem solving.

References
Authors (2023).

Benner, P. (1984). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice. Addison-Wesley.

Crandall, B., Klein, G. A., & Hoffman, R. R. (2006). Working minds: A practitioner's guide to cognitive task analysis. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7304.001.0001

Crandall, B. W., & Hoffman, R. R. (2013). Cognitive task analysis. In J. D. Lee & A. Kirlik (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive engineering (pp. 229-239). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199757183.001.0001

Richards, D. (2016). When Judges Have a Hunch: Intuition and Experience in Judicial Decision-Making. ARSP: Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie / Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 102(2), 245-260. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24756844
Simon, H. A. (1987). Making management decisions: The role of intuition and emotion. Academy of Management Perspectives, 1(1), 57-64. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1987.4275905

Authors

Dr. Kaela M Martin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2359-6332 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Prescott [biography]

Kaela Martin is an Associate Professor 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.
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.
Anu Singh The Ohio State University [biography]

Anu Singh is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Engineering Education Department at The Ohio State University. She completed her Ph.D. with a specialization in Engineering Education Research from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her research interests include critical thinking, self-regulation, argumentation, and metacognition.
Dr. Adam R Carberry http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0041-7060 The Ohio State University [biography]

Dr. Adam R. Carberry is Professor and Chair in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University (OSU). 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. He recently joined OSU after having served as an Associate Professor in The Polytechnic School within Arizona State University’s Fulton Schools of Engineering (FSE) where he was the Graduate Program Chair for the Engineering Education Systems & Design (EESD) Ph.D. Program. He is currently a Deputy Editor for the Journal of Engineering Education and co-maintains the Engineering Education Community Resource wiki. Additional career highlights include serving as Chair of the Research in Engineering Education Network (REEN), visiting École Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Rabat, Morocco as a Fulbright Specialist, receiving an FSE Top 5% Teaching Award, receiving an ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division Apprentice Faculty Award, receiving a Frontiers in Education New Faculty Award, and being named an ASEE Fellow.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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