2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

First year civil engineering students often take an introductory engineering design course that is meant to orient them to the field, give them opportunities to work in teams, and practice design thinking and problem solving. The introductory design course may introduce students to open-ended, ill-structured design problems that are solved by coupling creativity with foundational skills, such as math, to determine a feasible solution to the problem. One challenge with the first-year design experience is that students come in with different levels of preparedness in these foundational skills. The level of preparation can impact how students approach a problem, which can lead to a number of creative assumptions and solutions. The objective of this study was to investigate how first-year civil engineering, construction engineering, and construction management students with varied levels of math preparedness approach math calculations in a design course. Data was collected from 5 course sections over 3 semesters (n=119 students). Students’ math preparedness for all majors ranges from Foundational Math to Ordinary Differential Equations. The design challenge had students work in teams to propose concrete mixes and a canoe design for the American Society of Civil Engineers Concrete Canoe Competition. We analyzed the approaches students took to make calculations of canoe volume. We found students took a variety of approaches and assumptions to their calculations: Volume was calculated either by an area of shapes approach, a prism approach, or via engineering software. Only some groups calculated the volume of a hollow canoe. Calculations did not necessarily reflect the highest level of math preparation by one member of the team. Some complex solutions were performed by students enrolled in Trigonometry and by those in Linear Algebra, while some simple solutions were performed by students in Pre-Calculus. All teams were able to produce a final calculation for the size of their canoe. These findings indicate that civil and construction engineering and construction management students, even with their varied math backgrounds, can come up with creative approaches to solve ill-structured problems based on their existing preparedness.