Work in progress - Analyzing engineering student conceptions of modeling in design

Modeling is a pervasive feature in any engineering curriculum that is rarely taught as an explicit topic to engineering learners. The implicit inclusion of modeling often results in conceptions of models being primarily descriptive – visual and physical representations – that originate from everyday and coursework use. A broader understanding of modeling is achieved when students are given opportunities to learn about the predictive nature of some modeling applications. Exploratory studies have shown that significant shifts occur in the modeling conceptions of senior engineering students when taught an explicit modeling intervention. Descriptive-centric conceptions remained prevalent with an additional focus on predictive mathematical models. The following work in progress describes the next steps of our study focused on expanding earlier findings. Student, and additionally faculty conceptions, will be observed to gain a greater understanding of modeling conceptions. Index Terms – Adaptive Expertise, Engineering Design, Modeling