Title: Pedagogical research on understanding and misconceptions of system design

Authors: Rashmi Jain; Anithashree Chandrasekaran; George Elias

Addresses: Department of Information Management and Business Analytics, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey 07043, USA ' 6206 Hollydale Ridge Lane, Katy, TX 77494, USA ' Department of Information Management and Business Analytics, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey 07043, USA

Abstract: Systems engineering is a life cycle approach to engineering design: the integration of numerous technical and non-technical disciplines in the development of new products, systems and services (Sage, 1992). While there is clear evidence of the expansion of SE as a field of engineering, there is surprisingly little research on core concepts and common misconceptions particular to the field. A recent review of literature found no systematic studies of engineering students' conceptual understanding of fundamental engineering concepts - including those pertaining to SE - despite much research on important concepts in the sciences (Streveler et al., 2004). This paper is based on authors' research to identify and define the foundational concepts of system design. This paper proposes five key concepts of systems engineering, namely, context, interdisciplinarity, value, trade-offs, and abstraction (Jain and Chandrasekaran, 2008). The understanding of these concepts was tested on students to identify their misconceptions based on "intuitively formed understandings and misinformation learned elsewhere".

Keywords: concept inventory; system design; SD; design context; value; tradeoffs; abstraction; pedagogy; interdisciplinarity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2017.087833

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2017 Vol.27 No.4, pp.526 - 556

Received: 08 Jun 2015
Accepted: 30 Aug 2015
Published online: 06 Nov 2017 *

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