Systems thinking skills of undergraduate engineering students

Abstract

High order thinking skills include critical, logical, reflective, metacognitive, and creative thinking. They are activated when individuals encounter unfamiliar problems, uncertainties, questions, or dilemmas. Successful applications of the skills result in explanations, decisions, performances, and products that are valid within the context of available knowledge and experience and that promote continued growth in these and other intellectual skills. This research aimed to identify high order thinking skills of undergraduate students in Biology Education Department. This research was descriptive research (at the first academic year 2016/2017) in Biology Education Department, Universitas Lambung Mangkurat. This instrument was validated by expert judgment and tested toward 50 students. The results showed that the ability to analyze (C4), the ability to evaluate (C5), and the ability to create (C6) respectively were 31.81%, 69.88 %, 50.21 %. Overall the high-level thinking skills of students at Biology students is better.

Self-Efficacy Analysis of Student Learning in Systems Engineering

“…In this study, systems thinking skills were defined as the "critical competencies that enable engineering students to solve problems, communicate, use data, and design components and systems, with greater success" [9]. The results of this study showed that there is a need to improve the systems thinking skills of systems engineering students.…”

“…Interestingly, another recent study aimed at investigating the systems thinking skills of undergraduate engineering students, and comparing the effectiveness of the instruments used to assess those skills [9]. In this study, systems thinking skills were defined as the "critical competencies that enable engineering students to solve problems, communicate, use data, and design components and systems, with greater success" [9].…”

Assessing conceptual mapping based active learning for advancing engineering diagnostic skills

“…Questionnaire is commonly used for collecting cross-comparison data, and we develop a eight-qualitative-question student satisfaction survey similar to those adopted by Huang et al 30 and Wei and Yue 9 . The data is then analyzed using only descriptive statistics.…”

The Impact of Functional Modeling on Engineering Students' Mental Models

“…[9] Camelia et al also describe systems thinking as a "bridge between theory and practice" (p. 2) as well as between abstract, concrete, practical, and intellectual domains. Huang et al [4] identify thinking holistically as a primary competency of a systems thinker. Derro and Williams [10] note the ability to find patterns across a system, and Chan [18] adds that effective systems thinkers see factors that influence a system and their importance to the outcome.…”

“…Systems thinking is an important skill in many fields, including engineering. The ability to think holistically and effectively pull from an interdisciplinary knowledge base is critical for engineers and companies to design effective systems [4]. There have been studies to gauge the systems thinking ability of students and professional engineers [5,6,7,8,9,10], but these studies often require specialized simulation equipment or utilize a questionnaire, limiting the amount of information one can gather about design tendencies.…”