Understanding industry experiences: From problem solving to engineering students´ learning gains

This paper reports the findings from surveying a diverse group of undergraduate engineering students (N~100) who participated in summer industry experiences. The goal was to capture and understand (a) the nature of industry experiences and (b) students´ learning outcome gains (cognitive and affective) during these industry experiences. Ultimately, we aim to understand how students learn in real-world problem solving contexts in order to transfer such learning and such experiences into the engineering classroom. In undergraduate curriculum, well-structured problems with known solutions acquired through preferred solution methods are encountered more frequently than ill-structured problems. The linear process of problem solving teaches students a procedure to be memorized, practiced, and habituated, a process that emphasizes getting answers over making meaning. Real-world problem solving, though, commonly encountered in industry experiences suffused with complex and ill-structured problems, foster cognitive development of essential, problem-based, and globally competitive problem solving skills. Although industry experiences offer many benefits and enable engineering students to begin the practice of solving real-world complex problems, there is limited research on students´ learning outcomes and skill gains as a result of participating in such experiences. Further, there is a lack of understanding of characteristics of the problems or projects that students work on. Our research serves to address these limitations.