LESSONS LEARNED FROM TEACHING SYSTEM THINKING TO ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Abstract

The primary focus of Engineering Education programs has been to train engineers in various aspects of problem-solving techniques. However, there have been concerns about the types of problems engineering students are exposed to. Most engineering programs train students on solving routine problems, with extension to originative problems in design courses. However, highly complex or “wicked problems” are more rarely explored at the undergraduate level in spite of the fact that they are some of the most important problems faced in society. Systems Thinking has been suggested as a promising approach to addressing wicked problems. We have designed a course in Systems Thinking at the University of Toronto targeted toward students from all disciplines of engineering. The objective of this course is to encourage students to explore the inherent ambiguity of complex problems while introducing them to tools and approaches to visualize their problem space. This paper evaluates the learning experience of students in the first iteration of this course, through a series of analyses performed on their coursework, personal reflections, and interviews. It was hypothesized that teaching Systems Thinking to engineering students would increase their awareness of the problem space, push them to learn about other disciplines outside of engineering, and increase their ability to visualize the elements in the problem. Our results suggest ways in which Systems Thinking has helped engineering students in their problem solving abilities and looks at the specific skills in which engineering students have significantly improved.