Undergraduate Students’ Engagement With Systems Thinking: Results of a Survey Study

Abstract

This paper describes the results obtained for the affective engagement of students with systems thinking. In prior work the authors have developed and validated a questionnaire instrument for measuring affective engagement of undergraduate engineering students with systems thinking. This paper presents results obtained when the questionnaire was used with undergraduate students. Two surveys with different versions of the questionnaire, one using positive grammar questions only and the other using a mix of positive and negative constructs, were used to measure the students' engagement with systems thinking and its relationship with gender, age and work experience. Each questionnaire version was applied to a different sample, the first, 186 participants, completed the positive grammar version, and, the second group of 163 completed the mixed version. The results show that participants in both studies valued systems thinking in each of the three dimensions of the systems thinking construct. Statistical tests confirmed no significant gender differences in either study. Student engagement with the practical dimension of systems thinking was shown to vary, with statistical significance, with groups of age, years of work experience and country of the university.

The Effectiveness of a Systems Engineering Course in Developing Systems Thinking

“…A project-based learning approach is considered an appropriate teaching and learning approach to enable students' experiential learning and to provide the motivational context that builds affective learning. This position is supported by the finding of a previous study [8] that showed an experiential learning environment supports the development of students' engagement with ST practice, the affective domain. With a project-based learning approach, over a semester students can TE-2018-000344 7 assume the role of a systems engineer and become involved in the development of a complex systems project, for example the design of a five-star hotel, a water desalination plant, or an amusement or theme park.…”

“…The questionnaire uses a seven-point Likert scale for each item. The scale reflected theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of ST [8], [19].…”

“…To deal with these characteristics, SE education needs to produce graduates with systems thinking (ST) capability, by demonstrating an holistic view and addressing systems element interactions to enable problem solving and justify decision making in SE processes [6]. ST refers to conceptual understanding or mental constructs of the system of interest [7], [8], and involves perceiving and conceptualizing processes that apply systemic rules. These rules include: questioning the system boundary, system structure and interrelationships; adopting multiple perspectives; considering dynamic characteristics; and applying wholeness and a "big picture view" in knowing and using various ST methods or tools.…”

“…Although some studies have assessed students' ST development in other disciplines in various educational grade TE-2018-000344 2 levels, most are based only on the cognitive perspective [7], [8]. Furthermore, studies assessing ST in SE education are limited [7], [8], [13].…”

“…Although some studies have assessed students' ST development in other disciplines in various educational grade TE-2018-000344 2 levels, most are based only on the cognitive perspective [7], [8]. Furthermore, studies assessing ST in SE education are limited [7], [8], [13]. The absence of research on both students' ST development and affective domain development in SE education motivated this study, which evaluated the impact on developing students' ST capacity, in both the cognitive and affective domains in two classes in an undergraduate SE course.…”