Self-report assessments are used frequently in higher education to assess a variety of constructs, including attitudes, opinions, knowledge, and competence. Systems thinking is an example of one competence often measured using self-report assessments where individuals answer several questions about their perceptions of their own skills, habits, or daily decisions. In this study, we define systems thinking as the ability to see the world as a complex interconnected system where different parts can influence each other, and the interrelationships determine system outcomes. An alternative, less-common, assessment approach is to measure skills directly by providing a scenario about an unstructured problem and evaluating respondents’ judgment or analysis of the scenario (scenario-based assessment). This study explored the relationships between engineering students’ performance on self-report assessments and scenario-based assessments of systems thinking, finding that there were no significant relationships between the two assessment techniques. These results suggest that there may be limitations to using self-report assessments as a method to assess systems thinking and other competencies in educational research and evaluation, which could be addressed by incorporating alternative formats for assessing competence. Future work should explore these findings further and support the development of alternative assessment approaches.

In civil and construction engineering education research, a focus has been on using 3D models to support students’ design comprehension. Despite this trend, the predominant mode of design communication in the industry relies on 2D plans and specifications, which typically supersede other modes of communication. Rather than focusing on the presentation of less common 3D content as an input to support students’ understanding of a design, this paper explores more common 2D inputs, but compares different visualization formats of student output in two educational interventions. In the first intervention, students document a construction sequence for wood-framed elements in a 2D worksheet format. In the second, students work with the same wood-framed design, but document their sequence through an augmented reality (AR) format where their physical interactions move full-scale virtual elements as if they were physically constructing the wood frame. Student approaches and performance were analyzed using qualitative attribute coding of video, audio, and written documentation of the student experience. Overall, results showed that the 2D worksheet format was simple to implement and was not mentally demanding to complete, but often corresponded with a lack of critical checks and a lack of mistake recognition from the students. The AR approach challenged students more in terms of cognitive load and completion rates but showed the potential for facilitating mistake recognition and self-remediation through visualization. These results suggest that when students are tasked with conceptualizing construction sequences from 2D documentation, the cognitive challenges associated with documenting a sequence in AR may support their recognition of their own mistakes in ways that may not be effectively supported through 2D documentation as an output for documenting and planning a construction sequence. The results presented in this paper provide insights on student tendencies, behaviors, and perceptions related to defining construction sequences from 2D documentation in order for educators to make informed decisions regarding the use of similar learning activities to prepare their students for understanding the 2D design documents used in industry.

Background: Engineering education seeks to prepare students for engineering practice, but the concept of preparedness is often ill‐defined. Moreover, findings from studies of different populations or in different contexts vary regarding how well new graduates are prepared. These variations, coupled with the lack of clarity, suggest the need to better understand what it means to be prepared for engineering work.Purpose: This study contributes to research on workplace preparation by exploring how new graduates describe being prepared for engineering work.Method: Applying secondary analysis to data from the multi‐institution Capstone To Work (C2W) project, we used thematic analysis to explore new engineers' descriptions of preparedness. We analyzed written responses to structured questions about the school‐to‐work transition collected weekly during participants' first 12 weeks of work; 105 graduates drawn from four universities provided 956 responses, with a mean of 9 (out of 12 possible) responses per participant.Results: Participants' descriptions of preparedness included applying concrete skills, recognizing familiar situations, and having strategies for approaching challenging tasks even when they lacked relevant knowledge or skill.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that although many discussions about workplace preparation implicitly focus narrowly on mastery of skills and knowledge, that focus may not fully capture new graduates' experiences, and may limit discussions about the ways in which school can (and cannot) prepare students for work. A more expansive understanding may better support both student learning and workplace onboarding, though more research is needed across stakeholders to establish shared understanding.