Dr Elif Miskioğlu – Dr Kaela Martin – Dr Adam Carberry | Fostering Intuition in Engineering Students to Solve 21st Century Challenges

Towards this aim, Drs. Elif Miskioğlu, Kaela Martin and Adam Carberry at three US universities set out to develop new tools to define and assess engineering intuition.

To gain insight into what defines ‘engineering intuition’, they first conducted interviews with experienced engineers. Many reported that their intuition allowed them to reliably assess situations and predict future outcomes. In this way, engineering intuition is a problem-solving skill that guides engineers in devising feasible solutions.

Using these insights, Miskioğlu, Martin and Carberry developed ‘LITES’, which stands for Leveraging Intuition Toward Engineering Solutions. LITES is a framework that characterises the various elements of engineering intuition. It also outlines the factors that encourage engineers to use their intuition, such as a supportive workplace, and inhibiting factors, including stress.

Based on this framework, the team also developed a questionnaire to evaluate engineering problem-solving in educational settings. They named it PEEPS, which stands for Predicting and Evaluating Engineering Problem Solving.

PEEPS presents students with a series of problems to solve and assesses how they use their intuition to devise solutions. This tool is a first attempt at enabling educators to assess students’ engineering intuition before and after taking part in interventions designed to foster this valuable ability.

The team’s work will also inform the development of such interventions, towards cultivating a new generation of intuitive engineers who are empowered to tackle 21^st Century challenges.