Graduate Students’ Mental Models: An Investigation Into the Role of Function in Systems Understanding

Abstract

Elicited student mental models reveal students’ understanding of a given system as well as their ability to communicate knowledge of that system to others. Understanding how students form and developmental models of systems is critical to the progress of engineering education. In this work, graduate students’ mental models of common household products are measured before and after instruction on functional modeling and functional decomposition. These mental models are measured using previously published, but still developing mental model instruments. The included systems are a hair dryer, clothes dryer, and vacuum cleaner with accompanying scoring rubrics. Results show statistically significant improvements on average mental model rubric scores on all three given systems after the functional modeling intervention. These results suggest that curriculum content on functional modeling and decomposition likely improves students’ mental models of engineering systems and their ability to communicate their knowledge about those systems. As we improve our understanding of how students form, change, and communicate their mental models of engineering systems, educators can shape curriculum to facilitate the skills necessary for comprehensive systems understanding.

Validation of a Mental Model Elicitation Instrument through Deployment of Control Groups in an Undergraduate Engineering Program

“…Mental models are awarded points based on a series of questions, where each question earns either 0, 0.5, or 1 points depending on correctness (some questions can only earn 0 or 1 points because the component the question refers to is either present or not). These rubric questions were created by experts conducting research in the field of engineering design theory and education and have been used to score similar data in previously published work [1,3]. Note that while these rubrics are not immediately generalizable, there is significant similarity between the different rubrics that can be easily adapted to other products.…”

“…Measuring these different mental models poses a unique challenge since conceptualizations are held in the mind and any description of them is simply a representation of the mental model and not the mental model itself; in other words, we are seeing a reflection of the mental model through a dirty mirror. In this work, the previously published instruments used to elicit undergraduate students' mental models [1][2][3] are deployed without intervention to make progress on validation of the instruments for future research studies, therefore cleaning that metaphorical mirror. Despite the impossibility of perfectly representing a mental model, this work takes a step towards the development of a repeatable and reliable experimental instrument for use in academic research and engineering classrooms.…”

“…During the initial phases of the project, students in engineering design courses were given a series of experimental instruments or homework assignments to assess their ability to recognize product functionality, interpret and understand customer needs, and to explain or decompose a complex system. Students in prior studies had either previously learned functional modeling [3] or were taught functional modeling as an intervention between different mental model instrument implementations [1,2,5]. The investigators slowly adapted these instruments to assess students' systems thinking aptitude and have recently begun to investigate the relationship between mental models, recognition of function, and technology literacy and understanding.…”

“…The investigators slowly adapted these instruments to assess students' systems thinking aptitude and have recently begun to investigate the relationship between mental models, recognition of function, and technology literacy and understanding. This paper reports on mental model data collected from juniors and seniors in a mechanical engineering program and serves as a crucial step towards validating the authors' current mental model instrument [1].…”

“…This study is also informed by prior studies using the mental model instrument and accompanying scoring rubrics deployed in this study. Previous work implemented a functional modeling intervention between mental model data collections [1,2] where results showed improvement in mental model score after learning functional modeling. The functional modeling content delivered to students involved elements from the FAST method [34], flow-based method [35], and hierarchical method [36].…”