Background: Prior researchers developed an instrument to measure perceived design thinking ability of first‐year students interested in engineering, and they validated the instrument through exploratory factor analysis.Purpose/Hypothesis: Our study uses the previously developed instrument to evaluate perceived design thinking ability of senior engineering students. We make a cross‐sectional comparison of this measure on a national scale.Design/Method: We surveyed a national sample of senior engineering students in 2018 and conducted a cross‐sectional comparison with results from a 2012 national sample of first‐year students who were interested in declaring an engineering major. Two‐way analysis of variance tests compared average design thinking scores across sample groups. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to improve the design thinking instrument.Results: First‐year students who intended to declare an engineering major score significantly higher (2.80) on the design thinking scale than senior engineering students (2.59) with a medium effect size of 0.4. The senior engineering sample performs significantly worse on the feedback seeking and experimentalism instrument items, but significantly better on the integrative thinking and collaboration items. We found no significant differences in perceived design thinking ability among engineering disciplines among senior students.Conclusions: Feedback seeking and experimentalism are traits that engineering educators should develop in their students to improve perceived design thinking ability. Incorporation of user‐centered design and divergent thinking in the engineering classroom are recommended as avenues to foster feedback seeking and experimentalism. We also offer recommendations to improve the design thinking instrument for future research.

Sustainable construction is fundamentally different than traditional construction because it requires whole systems thinking, early collaboration across stakeholders, and core principles like reducing resource consumption, eliminating toxins, and applying life cycle costing. Construction professionals unfamiliar with this mindset and approach may perceive sustainable construction as risky. One of the global regions in need of more sustainable construction is the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. The MENA region is one of the fastest developing in the world. However, it is the slowest one in implementing sustainable construction practices. Kuwait, in particular, contributes 53% more carbon emissions per capita than the United States. To understand how the Kuwaiti construction industry perceives risks associated with more sustainable construction, a survey was developed with 52 risk elements in which 131 industry professionals responded. The results indicate that industry professionals perceive a lack of public awareness as the risk element with the highest probability of occurrence. The risk element with the highest possible negative impact on future projects is designers’ and contractors’ inexperience with sustainable construction. Other risks were found to include a high initial cost for materials and overall project costs. Educational interventions, changes in risk allocation, and behavioral science to reframe upfront costs as long-term savings are offered as possible solutions.

Climate change has not been well understood by high school students in the US and the topic is often connected to misconceptions, which is especially damaging since accurate understandings of the concepts are strongly predictive of intent to do something about it. We use data from a national (US) survey of first year college students to identify high school experiences which correlate with the belief that climate change is caused by human activities. In-class coverage of climate change is less predictive of belief than time spent on science homework or science-themed extracurricular activities. These correlations suggest that simply covering climate change in class may not necessarily lead to greater belief in the scientific consensus. While deeper understanding is a worthy goal, the results indicate that, when it comes to high school science education, social factors such as the process and culture of education are also important for belief in climate change. These finding aligns with previous research about college students, which suggest student activities are more strongly correlated with student viewpoints than professor beliefs. Given the potential for curricula to become politicized these finding suggests an alternative route to achieve climate change education goals.

This paper presents the results of studying the brain activations of 30 engineering students when using three different design concept generation techniques: brainstorming, morphological analysis, and TRIZ. Changes in students’ brain activation in the prefrontal cortex were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The results are based on the area under the curve analysis of oxygenated hemodynamic response as well as an assessment of functional connectivity using Pearson’s correlation to compare students’ cognitive brain activations using these three different ideation techniques. The results indicate that brainstorming and morphological analysis demand more cognitive activation across the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to TRIZ. The highest cognitive activation when brainstorming and using morphological analysis is in the right dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) and ventrolateral PFC. These regions are associated with divergent thinking and ill-defined problem-solving. TRIZ produces more cognitive activation in the left DLPFC. This region is associated with convergent thinking and making judgments. Morphological analysis and TRIZ also enable greater coordination (i.e., synchronized activation) between brain regions. These findings offer new evidence that structured techniques like TRIZ reduce cognitive activation, change patterns of activation and increase coordination between regions in the brain.

Decision aids, ranging from rating systems to design software to regulatory standards, guide the design and evaluation of infrastructure projects. To present the information in these decision aids, there must first be some options such as, attributes are or are not presented, and, just as in other domains, these factors are likely to influence decisions in infrastructure development. The authors of this paper seek to better understand how choice structures influence engineering decisions. Prospect theory, which is well established in the behavioral sciences, asserts that people tend to think of possible outcomes relative to their starting point, not the resulting end point. For instance, framing a decision outcome as a loss in value (rather than a gain) can reduce the decision makers’ acceptance of risk and, in turn, lead to more conservative outcomes. To measure framing effects in engineering decisions, this paper uses the Envision rating system for sustainable infrastructure, which aims to help ...

The research presented in this paper explores how engineering students cognitively manage concept generation and measures the effects of additional dimensions of sustainability on design cognition. Twelve first-year and eight senior engineering students generated solutions to 10 design problems. Half of the problems included additional dimensions of sustainability. The number of unique design solutions students developed and their neurocognitive activation were measured. Without additional requirements for sustainability, first-year students generated significantly more solutions than senior engineering students. First-year students recruited higher cortical activation in the brain region generally associated with cognitive flexibility, and divergent and convergent thinking. Senior engineering students recruited higher activation in the brain region generally associated with uncertainty processing and self-reflection. When additional dimensions of sustainability were present, first-year students produced fewer solutions. Senior engineering students generated a similar number of solutions. Senior engineering students required less cortical activation to generate a similar number of solutions. The varying patterns of cortical activation and different number of solutions between first-year and senior engineering students begin to highlight cognitive differences in how students manage and retrieve information in their brain during design. Students’ ability to manage complex requirements like sustainability may improve with education.