The educational objectives of professional courses at tertiary level are usually stated in terms of (a) imparting knowledge and (b) developing problem-solving skills. In engineering, however, little empirical research has been undertaken into the problem-solving skills of either students or professionals.
The paper examines the responses of second and third year engineering students in the University of Melbourne to a number of open-ended exercises which tap problem-solving skills in engineering design. The results show two major features of interest. First, an extremely wide variety of student response was observed, and secondly, there was little correlation between the students' problem-solving skills and their academic record. The educational implications of these findings are discussed.
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