A focus of engineering education is to prepare future engineers with problem solving, design and modeling skills. In engineering education, the former two skill areas have received copious attention making their way into the ABET criteria. Modeling, a representation containing the essential structure of an event in the real world, is a fundamental function of engineering, and an important academic skill that students develop during their undergraduate education. Yet modeling process remains under-investigated, particularly in engineering, even though there is an increasing emphasis on modeling in engineering schools (Frey 2003). Research on modeling requires multiple perspectives, that of cognition, affect, and knowledge expansion. In this dissertation, the relationship between engineering modeling skill and students' cognitive backgrounds including self-efficacy, epistemic beliefs and metacognition is investigated using model-eliciting activities (MEAs). The impact of each cognitive construct on change in modeling skills was measured using a growth curve model at the sophomore level, and ordinary least squares regression at the senior level. Findings suggest that self-efficacy, through its direct and indirect (moderation or interaction term with time) impact, influences the growth of modeling abilities of an engineering student. When sophomore and senior modeling abilities are compared, the difference can be explained by varying self-efficacy levels. Epistemology influences modeling skill development such that the more sophisticated the student beliefs are, the higher the level of modeling ability students can attain, after controlling for the effects of conceptual learning, gender and GPA. This suggests that development of modeling ability may be constrained by the naiveté of one's personal epistemology. Finally, metacognition, or 'thinking about thinking', has an impact on the development of modeling strategies of students, when the impacts of four metacognitive dimensions are considered: awareness, planning, cognitive strategy and self-checking. Students who are better at self-checking show higher growth in their modeling abilities over the course of a year, compared to students who are less proficient at self-checking. The growth is moderated by the cognitive strategy and planning skills of the student. Therefore, inherent metacognitive abilities of students can positively affect the growth of modeling ability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-11232010-172425 |
| Date | 26 January 2011 |
| Creators | Yildirim, Tuba Pinar |
| Contributors | Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Larry Shuman, Jayant Rajgopal, Rip Correnti, Lisa Maillart |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11232010-172425/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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