2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this paper, we present results from testing a theoretical model created by Chadha and Hellgardt [1] on the attitudes, behaviours, and cognitive abilities necessary for engineering students to develop their engineering judgement. The model was produced from research conducted with engineering professors and industry professionals affiliated with a research-intensive institution in the UK. The validity, appropriateness and application of such a model among engineering students is what this paper seeks to explore.
Engineering judgement is a necessary professional skill, and yet is fairly abstract and unexplored within engineering education and is thus challenging to teach. Nevertheless, there are certain central concepts that students can learn to make better judgements that lead to more sound decisions as professional engineers. Accreditation requirements stipulate that graduates ought to have developed their engineering judgement within their degree programmes (Institution of Chemical Engineers, Institution of Mechanical Engineers and ABET (formerly the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) as examples). Despite this requirement, there is not an established toolkit or set of resources faculty can use to ensure engineering judgement effectively taught, demonstrated, or assessed.
The model proposed in this paper is currently being tested within various international contexts and in a variety of engineering disciplines for the purposes of further developing the model and its utility. Our aim is to test the model with undergraduate engineering students in their advanced years of study with the research being conducted via small focus groups and faculty interviews. In reporting these results at this forum, we hope to contribute to a wider discussion on how engineering judgement can become a more mainstream and explicit topic within engineering curricula in higher education, and how we can support the use of the model in a diverse set of courses, disciplines, and institutions.

References
[1] Chadha, D. and Hellgardt, K., 2024. A case of conceptualisation: using a grounded theory approach to further explore how professionals define engineering judgement for use in engineering education. European Journal of Engineering Education, 49(2), pp.348-369.