A bridge to systems thinking in engineering design: An examination of students’ ability to identify functions at varying levels of abstraction

Abstract

This paper aims to situate functional abstraction in light of systems thinking. While function does not extensively appear in systems thinking literature, the literature does identify function as part of systems thinking that enables us to recognize and connect that function has a role in building a systems thinking approach for students. A systems thinking approach is valuable for students since it helps them view a system holistically. In this research, we measure how well students are able to abstract function. We asked students to generate functions for two different products and examined how students taught functional modeling and function enumeration compare to students who are only taught function enumeration. The student responses were examined using a rubric that we developed and validated for assessing function. This rubric may be used to classify functions by correctness (correct, partially correct, and incorrect) and categories (high level, interface, low level, and ambiguous). On questions where students were not explicitly asked to write a high-level function or low-level function, and so on, students who were taught functional modeling were able to better demonstrate systems thinking in their responses (low-level and interface functions) than those students who were only taught function enumeration.

A Longitudinal Exploration of Students’ Functional Modeling Abilities

“…Results are presented from a longitudinal research study investigating how engineering students in a design-oriented, engineering curriculum abstract systems through function and how this ability to abstract systems through function changes as the student progresses through their undergraduate engineering career. This paper builds off previous research exploring how functional modeling correlates with the development of students' systems thinking ability [3,4].…”

Board 18: The Impact of Functional Modeling in an Engineering Design Curriculum

“…Another study completed by the PIs compared students who were taught functional modeling and functional enumeration with students who were only taught functional enumeration [9]. The goal of this comparison was to determine if the different teaching material impacted the students' ability to recognize high level and low level functions.…”

“…A summary of research efforts thus far and their related theme(s) is summarized in Table 1. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] In the 2011 paper surveying functional modeling teaching methods [1] two sub questions were identified to help determine the value functional modeling brings to the design process: 1.) How do you quantitatively assess the quality of any given functional model?…”

“…The initial scoring rubric was successful with relatively high inter-rater reliability [4,5], but also allowed for some interpretation discrepancies [6]. After initial studies using the scaffold approach to teaching and the binary rubric for functional model assessment, additional work sought to assess the impact of teaching function [8,9] as well as rubric refinement [10,12]. Results thus far have indicated that teaching function provides students a mechanism to decompose engineered systems [9,13], and preliminary data suggests the recognition of function improves students' mental models [11].…”

“…After initial studies using the scaffold approach to teaching and the binary rubric for functional model assessment, additional work sought to assess the impact of teaching function [8,9] as well as rubric refinement [10,12]. Results thus far have indicated that teaching function provides students a mechanism to decompose engineered systems [9,13], and preliminary data suggests the recognition of function improves students' mental models [11]. Follow on work will continue to explore the link between functional modeling skills and the ability to generate accurate mental models.…”