2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering judgment is a critical competency for practicing engineers. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) identifies this competency within two of its seven expected student outcomes. However, engineering students have generally not received formal instruction in engineering judgment. Engineering students have also not generally been assessed on this outcome, despite ABET’s expectations. This educational gap prompted funded exploratory research to pursue engineering judgment instruction and assessment in undergraduate education after first establishing a consensus-based definition for it. After completion of a Delphi study with 18 diverse panel members from academia and industry, a working, preliminary definition and process model were established. These were piloted in Junior Design, a required course for electrical and computer engineering majors that aims to prepare them for capstone design. Student feedback from the pilot semester informed instructional and assessment activity in the current semester.
Currently, the engineering judgment (EJ) model is being incorporated to a greater extent in Junior Design for instruction and assessment. Following an enhanced lecture on the model, students applied it using an industry case study as a backdrop – Intel’s 1994 FDIV bug. Students were guided by a short-answer worksheet that prompted them to consider how various elements of the model might relate to their fictitious future role as a design engineer working on the design and testing of the next-generation computer chip. Data from the worksheet underwent an emergent content analysis to address several research questions, which were as follows: 1) How do students plan for skills needed in a future design assignment? 2) How do students view the role their identity might play in a future design assignment? 3) How do students incorporate societal and ethical factors into a future design assignment? and 4) How do students apply critical thinking when errors are uncovered as part of a future design assignment? Results from these questions offer insight for ongoing instruction and assessment of engineering judgment.