The Use of Executive Control Processes in Engineering Design by Engineering Students and Professional Engineers

A cognitive construct that is important when solving engineering design problems is executive control process, or metacognition. It is a central feature of human consciousness that enables one "to be aware of, monitor, and control mental processes." The framework for this study was conceptualized by integrating the model for creative design, which illustrates the co-evolution of the problem and solution spaces during engineering design problem solving, with executive control processes such as planning, monitoring, and evaluation. According to Maher, Poon, and Boulanger (1996), whenever engineers are solving design problems, their problem and solution spaces co-evolve with an interchange of information between the two mental spaces. This study investigates if there are differences in the cognitive process of mechanical engineering students and professional mechanical engineers as they use executive control processes (i.e., planning, monitoring, and evaluation) in the problem and solution spaces while solving an engineering design problem conceptually. The findings from this qualitative study confirm previous findings of other studies and provide useful insights about the executive control processes of student and professional mechanical engineer designers. Three conclusions were drawn from the findings: (1) That expert planning and monitoring is driven by propositions, while the novice planning and monitoring is influenced by analogical comparisons; (2) That mental representations are used mostly when the engineering student and professional engineers are monitoring their design solutions, and the professional engineers are more balanced than the students in their use of analogies and propositions; and (3) That evaluation plays a larger role in the solution space of professional engineers, while engineering students do more planning in the problem space. The findings indicate that the engineering students did more planning than the professional engineers. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)