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This study uses phenomenographic research methodologies to identify qualitatively different ways engineering and architecture students conceptualize design creation; it seeks to discover if and how their conceptualizations of design creation relate to their conceptualizations of knowledge generation. This work extends prior research by King and Kitchener (1994) and others (Baxter Magolda, 1992; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Hofer & Pintrich, 2002; Perry, 1970) about the ways students develop increasingly sophisticated ways of: understanding and conceptualizing knowledge; sources of truth; how to evaluate various opinions and points-of-view; and ways to assess truthfulness and validity of new ideas. This project stems from the proposition that this development process manifests itself somewhat differently in fields that deal with physical sciences than in those grounded in the social sciences—the realm where these theories were established and defined. King and Kitchener (1994) have shown that conceptualizations of knowledge vary from one field to the next, yet little if any work has been done to assess and compare patterns of conceptualizations in the fields of architecture and engineering. Many national regulatory boards urge engineering to change its educational practices to elicit high levels of student engagement and self-directed learning, and achieve outputs more like those associated with architectural education. An extensive report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Boyer and Mitgang, 1996) was conducted on behalf of the five organizations regulating the education and practice of architecture in the USA. That report described very high levels of student learning and engagement and recommended that the methods used to teach architecture be transferred for use in more fields. The current study provides additional understanding of this topic, identifying the various concepts that architecture students hold about knowledge and design as well as how these conceptualizations are both similar and different to engineering students’ conceptualizations. An outcome of this study is increased understanding about aspects of the learning experience and the learning environment that capture students’ attention and elicit their engagement. With this knowledge, educators can do more to encourage reflection, exploration, and self-directed learning among students. This is a work in progress, and the first phase has been a pilot study. This paper reports results of the pilot as well as the context, rationale, and design of the overall study. The pilot was the first step in a study seeking to provide new understandings: (1) spanning multiple professions; (2) identifying the various concepts that architecture and engineering students hold about the generation of new designs; and (3) describing how these conceptualizations compare within and between fields. The second phase will use phenomenographic methodologies to identify qualitatively different ways engineering and architecture students conceptualize knowledge and design. To date, the study has been designed and has gained approval to proceed from our ethics review board. Three pilot interviews have been conducted and these have been used to adjust the research design and widen the parameters for the sample group. The research team secured ethics approval for the proposed changes. This paper describes the overall design of the study and what was learned from the pilot interviews.

The purpose of this work is to contribute to the debate on the best pedagogical approach to developing undergraduate mechanical engineering skills to meet the requirements of contemporary complex working environments. The paper provides an example of using student-entrepreneur collaboration in the teaching of modules to Mechanical Engineering final year students. Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of the most significant recent innovations in the area of education for the professions. This work proposes to make an original contribution by simulating a real-life entrepreneur interaction for the students. The current literature largely confines simulation-based learning to computer applications such as games. However, this paper argues that role-playing by students interfacing with technology start-ups can also be regarded as “simulation” in a wider sense. Consequently the paper proposes the concept of simulation-action learning (SAL) as an enhancement of PBL and to distinguish it from computer simulation. Yes

Even though astronomy is the oldest science, it is still an open question how to evaluate students’ understanding in astronomy. In spite of the fact that some methods and evaluation tools have been developed for that purpose, the sources of students' difficulties in astronomy are still unclear. This paper presents an investigation of the changes in conceptual frameworks in astronomy among 50 engineering students as a result of learning a general course in astronomy. A special tool called Conceptual Frameworks in Astronomy (CFA), which was initially used in 1989, was adopted to gather data for the present research. In its new version, the tool includes 23 questions and five to six optional answers to each question. Each of the answers characterizes one of the four conceptual frameworks: pre-scientific, geocentric, heliocentric and sidereal. These four conceptual frameworks act as a taxonomical system that enables us to evaluate astronomical understanding. The paper describes the background of the CFA, its development, and discusses its validity and reliability. Using the CFA we were able to: (1) identify the students’ conceptual frameworks at the beginning of the course and at its end, (2) to evaluate the students’ paradigmatic change following the course. It was found that the measure of the students’ improvement (gain index) was g = 0.37. Approximately 45% of the students in the course improved their conceptual frameworks in astronomy and 26% deepened their understanding of the heliocentric or sidereal conceptual frameworks. The CFA can also be applied as an evaluation tool in all schools and institutions that teach astronomy. Key words: astronomy education, conceptual framework, diagnostic tool, engineering students.

Learning styles of most engineering students and teaching styles of most engineering academic staff are incompatible in several dimensions. Many or most engineering students are visual, sensing, inductive and active, whereas engineering education is mostly verbal (auditory), abstract (intuitive), deductive, passive and sequential. These mismatches lead to poor student performance, professorial frustration and a barrier to produce many potentially excellent engineers. The modern method of engineering education involves contemporary teaching and learning practices using project and program based learning, work integrated learning and integrative learning approaches. Project-based learning (PBL) is acknowledged as a collaborative, progressive, student-centred, interactive, active and deep learning approach. The paper investigates the learning styles of engineering students, teaching approaches of engineering academic staff, the role of smart technologies and their applications for the implementation of PBL in engineering education at the United Arab Emirates University. Students and academic staff were surveyed to understand their learning and teaching styles respectively. Most engineering students are observed active (57%), sensory (71%), visual (83%) and sequential (68%). Surveyed engineering academic staff exhibited their strong preference to expert, delegator and facilitator style of teaching. Students were observed to use different educational technologies frequently and approximately 52% students were identifi ed using electronic media and technology as their learning resources. Only 22% of students indicated small group work as their learning resources, which indicates lack of collaborative learning of students. Previous studies discovered that PBL approach prefers facilitator style of teaching rather than expert or delegator styles. The paper discusses the improvement of PBL in engineering education through understanding of learning and teaching styles Refereed/Peer-reviewed

A professional course like engineering strives to get maximum number of its students placed through campus interviews. While communication skills have been added in all the engineering courses with the aim to improve their performance in placement, the syllabus mostly concentrates on the development of four language skills. The students are not made aware of the employability skills and their significance. the increasing competition makes it imperative that apart from a regular degree certain skills are required by engineers. Industries while advertising for various posts even mention essential skills required along with the essential qualification. However skills and the significance of skills while applying for jobs or while facing interviews is a topic which is rarely given consideration while preparing for job interviews or while entering the job market. This paper intends to enlist the importance of skills and why students need to be aware of the skills they possess and how they can work on packaging their candidature around a few skills. Different profession requires different skills and if students identify their skills or acquire certain skills they can unquestionably have an added advantage in the interview and placement. Hence, this paper intends to enlist the skills, the importance of skills, ways to create awareness of individual skills specifically in engineering students who will step into the industry in near future.

—“Transfer shock” is a well-known phenomenon during the process of articulation, when students move from short-cycle applied programs to more academic longer-cycle study programs. In the US context this problematic transition has been observed in students transferring from community colleges into the traditional university system. In Ireland’s binary higher education structure, one set of institutions, known as Institutes of Technology (IoTs) allow for this transition to take place entirely within individual institutions. This paper is part of an ongoing investigation into one such IoT, where engineering students who achieve high grades at the end of 3-year (so-called Level 7) “ordinary degree” programs frequently transfer into the 3rd year of 4-year Level 8 “honors degree” programs, with surprisingly successful outcomes. One surprise derives from the fact that the students who enter Level 7 engineering programs are deemed at the outset to be academically less able, particularly in mathematics, than those who go directly into Level 8 programs from secondary school. Relatively little work has been done on this transition to date. In the 3rd and 4th year of many honors engineering programs within this institution it is not unusual to have 30-50% of the students coming from an ordinary degree background, the majority from within the institution itself – with others transferring from other IoTs in Ireland. Previous research has shown that students from this background initially struggle in the 3rd year of the honors degree program when compared with students who have proceeded directly through the honors program, before going on to successfully graduate. Can this be attributed to ‘transfer shock’; even though most of these students are continuing in an institution and with faculty that they are already familiar with? In order to examine this phenomenon we interview students from several engineering disciplines at various points in this transition. We explore the perceptions of the students regarding this transition and, based on the information coming from the interviews, we conduct a large scale survey to be administered to articulating students across engineering programs in the institution. The preliminary results of this survey are also presented here.

The paper demonstrates the results of the experimental research conducted during the first semester of the academic year 2020/21, including the remote learning period due to the Covid19 pandemic situation, at the lessons of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (with students of Specialties 208 “Agrarian Engineering” and 141 “Electrical Engineering and Energy”) at the State Agrarian and Engineering University in Podilia, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine. The research basically analyses how TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Talks impact university students’ listening comprehension and speaking skills. Online study support for ESP was personally created by the educators as a four-credit course due to ECTS in the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) with the application of TED Talks, which was used for study purposes on the B1 level. The research sample is represented by 50 students majoring in Agrarian Engineering and 50 students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Energy, all of them enrolled in the mandatory subject of ESP. The subjects (students) were divided into the experimental and control groups. At the beginning of the course, the students wrote the pre-test, for their start level to be evaluated, and at the end of the semester - the post-test was done to check the achievements and probable benefits of TED Talks. The experiment results demonstrated the improvement of both groups while it was proved statistically that the experimental group showed better outcomes both in listening comprehension and speaking skills respectively. The questionnaires, distributed among the students, consisted of 5 questions, where they expressed their personal opinions about the e-learning process, and according to which the TED Talks influence on their listening and speaking skills was evaluated. The feedback of the questionnaires proved that the students mostly had a positive attitude concerning engaging TED Talks into the learning process, especially those who were involved in the experiment.

This paper presents the didactic problem based learning method in general use at Aalborg University as applied to Electric Mobility. Advantage is taken of this method to link student learning to current research projects. This offersadvantages to the students and the researchers. The paper introduces the subject, presents the research of the Department of Energy Technology and describes the relevant syllabus. It continues to present a range of titles of previous research linked student project projects, and to fill in some of the detail, an example of such a student project. The paper discusses some advantages and drawbacks of this method, and concludes on the usefulness of applying the method.

This paper investigates the learning styles of first year, Level 7, mechanical and electrical engineering students at DIT, using the index of learning styles survey as developed by Felder and Soloman [1]. Student learning styles on these programmes are compared with the results from other such surveys. The correlation between student performance and their individual learning styles is examined in outline. Knowledge of the strongly visual learning style of these cohorts of students may be used to improve the learning environment.

Lean Thinking is a philosophy which principles were redesigned from Toyota Production System (TPS) by Womack and Jones of MIT. Currently, Lean Thinking principles are taught in the academy and are applied in all sectors, from production to services. Services is what is provided to students in a university. Teachers provide a service to them, and they are the clients of this service. As so, teachers want to provide the best service, adding value to the client product. In order to do so, they search for new methods that create flow in the way students learn what they need to learn. Lean Thinking have been providing tools to the classroom to obtain such flow. This paper intends to present a tool, an A3 report, which was used by engineering students to analyze, interpret and report a published case study. This was a team assignment task among others. This task was assessed as a component for the final grade of a course of third year of Master Integrated of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM). The presentations, A3 reports and discussions results were analyzed and compared using Bloom taxonomy levels and 3H taxonomy to infer about students learning. Main findings obtained were very positive., FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(UIDB/00319/2020)

In recent years, the University of Windsor has seen a significant increase in international student enrolments, especially in the graduate engineering programs. Previous studies indicate that international students often have difficulties in developing information literacy skills. Furthermore, many engineering students lack library research skills essential for succeeding in academic study. However, there is a scarcity of studies focusing on information literacy instruction for international engineering students and existing research in this area seldom utilizes statistical analysis methods to determine the effectiveness of the instruction. This paper aims to fill in the literature gap by examining the impact of an information literacy session geared towards international graduate engineering students at the University of Windsor. Statistical analysis of the paired pre-post survey tests reveals that the session has significantly improved the students' understanding of certain aspects of information literacy, including searching and locating information, but not the areas of identifying and evaluating information. Further instructions and additional support integrated into graduate seminars or other classes as well as offered outside of classrooms will be beneficial to these students, particularly in the areas of identifying information, evaluating information, finding scholarly sources, and other more advanced information literacy topics.

Our diverse team of educators at Colorado State University are redefining what it means to teach and learn in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Supported by a five-year “RED” grant from the National Science Foundation, we are, in effect, throwing away courses to overcome the challenges of the current engineering educational system. Approaching the degree from a holistic perspective, we no longer view our program as a set of disparate courses taught by autonomous (and isolated) faculty, but as an integrated system that fosters collaboration among faculty and students. This paper describes our new organizational and pedagogical model, which emphasizes knowledge integration and interweaves thematic content threads throughout the curriculum. We also share our process for implementing the new approach, along with the successes and challenges that we have experienced along the way. Through this project, we strive to become a catalyst for change in engineering education.

International audience; Although Product-Service Systems (PSS) are recognized as a promising model in literature, they are still not widely implemented in companies, mainly due to cultural barriers. Education should play a major role in removing these barriers and fostering the diffusion and implementation of PSS. This paper focuses on engineering education for graduate students and presents an original training program that was built and implemented at the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne (EMSE). The main characteristics of this program are (i) multidisciplinarity, in terms of mixing PSS engineering and managerial approaches, and (ii) mixing theory, case studies and the use of simulation, based on several educational tools. The program is assessed out of the gathering of students’ perceptions, which contributed to elaborate on some requirements regarding teaching servitization and PSS based on experiential learning theory.

The paper dwells on the psychological and pedagogical conditions of implementing learner-centered approach in teaching foreign language to engineering students at the Tomsk Polytechnic University. The concept of learner-centered approach in teaching foreign language was in detail pedagogically, psychologically and methodologically studied, foreign language teaching regulatory documents in the technical university were analyzed, teaching methods and learning outcomes in accordance with the existing English language teaching methodology were presented, results of the engineering students’ questionnairing and key techniques to improve teaching foreign language based on the learner-centered approach were proposed.

Summarization: The ability to read research articles is considered an essential skill for undergraduate students. However, previous works on explicitly training engineering undergraduates in reading the specific genre is scarce. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative pre-Test/post-Test think-Aloud study that aimed to explore the possible reading behavior changes of four Greek undergraduate engineering students who received genre analysis and metacognitive strategy training for one academic semester. Our findings suggest that the course enhanced students' familiarity with the research article genre and benefited their reading strategy use. Presented on

[Abstract] The Poly(DL-lactide-co-glycolide) copolymers (PDLGA) have designed and performed as biomaterials, taking into account their biodegradability and biocompatibility properties. These materials have a wide range of application in medicine such as orthopedic implants, general surgical implants (suture materials), osteosynthesis, bone cement, among many others. For these reasons, in this paper, we present an intelligent educational environment that can be used for both, researchers and students interested in the analysis of the biomaterial behavior under certain conditions. Our platform includes a Learning Objects (LOs) for MOODLE, and in the same way, implements several digital image processing techniques as well as a decision support module based on a random forest algorithm and statistical modeling. With the aim of determining the real feasibility of this proposal, we have presented the system to 34 Ecuadorian engineering students. After testing the platform, the students answered a survey aimed at determining their perception of the system. The results provide several guidelines to continue with the developing of the platform.

Identifying people interested into starting-up a business is becoming more and more relevant. As widely recognized, two key aspects affecting on start-up are the role of the external context factors and the influence of entrepreneurial competencies. With this in mind, the paper shows an application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour with the aim to assess factors believed to affect entrepreneurial intent among engineering students. As the use of well thought-out and research-tested intent models is believed to provide a good means of examining the precursors to business start-up, the survey provides a test of the robustness of the intent approach and then examines the influence of some predictors within the contextual factors. Consistently with other leading articles, the results evidence that attitudes and perceived behavioural control effectively predicts entrepreneurial intent, while social norms have no effects. As regards the role of contextual factors and entrepreneurial competencies, they exhibit indirect effects on intent via entrepreneurial attitudes and perceived behavioural control. Thus, their contribution to favour academic entrepreneurship is confirmed. The result of the study also has valuable implications for the university system.

This paper reports on a study carried out to validate the employability skills (ES) measurement model for engineering students. A total of 280 respondents were involved in this research. Data were analyzed descriptively for reliability (Cronbach Alpha values) and confirmatory factor analysis was utilized in order to find measurement models for each of the constructs using AMOS software. The results showed that the Cronbach Alpha on the classification was higher than 0.70. The results of the first and second order CFA confirmed that data collected fit with model. Thus, the measurement model was suitable to be used to study the employability skills acquired by engineering students in the context of education in Malaysia.

Technical oral presentations are an integral component of engineering courses, but it is no doubt an anxiety-inducing experience for most engineering students. This paper presents an in-depth qualitative analysis of the sources for anxiety experienced by engineering students in delivering Undergraduate Research Project (URP) oral presentations. The URP oral presentations which are required to be delivered in English are part of faculty graduation requirements. Utilizing a qualitative method of enquiry, focus group interviews were conducted with 6 groups of students, comprising 44 final year engineering students from the Faculty of Chemical and Natural Resources Engineering at Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia. The interviews were conducted after they had completed the URP oral presentations in the 7th semester of their course of study. The results of the study reveal several main sources of anxiety that exist among the students in delivering the presentations, namely demanding and provocative evaluation panels, limited technical knowledge and barriers in students’ English language proficiency. The current findings add substantially to our understanding of contributory factors for anxiety feelings experienced by engineering students in delivering technical oral presentations in English. In addition, the findings have a number of important implications for future practice especially in the decision of the appropriate approach in managing anxiety in students’ presentations towards enhancing their presentation performance. The implications of this study point to the fact that providing for effective technical oral presentations in academic settings is an integral task for students’ preparation for future work-related tasks in their professional setting in today's globalised work environments.

Various tests have been conducted using the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and it has provided adequate evidence to measure anxiety in research and clinical settings. This paper proposes a re-test to evaluate STAI among engineering students in Malaysia. A total 253 engineering students participated in this study. The re-test was presented for reliability, construct validity, and coefficient correlation of State and Trait. The reliability coefficients were computed using Cronbach alpha. In order to determine the validity of the instrument used factor analysis and coefficient correlation were used. Results: The STAI was established with the reliability at .850. In addition, the construct validity of the STAI, as measured by factor analysis were found, the correlation between items (KMO) score .824 (>.30) and p=.000. Where, the State shows KMO=.818, p=.000, and Cronbach alpha found .797. Meanwhile, Trait proved KMO=.783, p=.000, and Cronbach alpha found .781. The results show that the reliability and validity of State Trait Anxiety Inventory was suitable and acceptable. Consistently, strong correlations between State and Trait scale scores provided supportive evidence for the instrument. The results are evident and it can be recommended as an instrument to measure anxiety level for similar studies.

Engineering design activities provide students an opportunity to develop a number of skills. Engineering design experiences not only help students to acquire practical or technical skills, but also may enhance a number of soft (non-technical) attributes and competencies, little is investigated on the impact of engineering design on leadership development. Shell Eco Marathon (SEM) competition is a venue whereby engineering students compete on designing an energy-efficient car that is able to travel furthest given distance within a given time using the least amount of energy. The competition is composed of two categories: First one is a prototype oriented, which focuses on maximum efficiency while passenger comfort takes a back seat. The second category is Urban Concept class that encourages more practical designs. In this paper, analysis of contribution of a complex engineering design experience such as SEM on leadership attributes development is provided. This paper starts with a review on leadership attributes, as well as, recent developments and efforts of incorporating leadership themes in engineering education. Then an overview of the Shell Eco-Marathon competition is provided, with some details on historical background and global organizational structure. Methodology of the impact of SEM on leadership development is then highlighted, and detailed analysis is provided. Impact analysis of the SEM Design Competition incorporates evaluation of data collected through questionnaire with participating students. The paper then discusses students own opinions on leadership skills enhancement spanned over 3 main categories; personality traits, motives, and cognitive factors. The paper concludes with recommendations emerging from the investigation for engineering education academics and engineering curriculum developers. Scopus

The objective of this study is to examine if a link exists between lecture attendance and examination performance of Level 7, Year 1, Electrical Engineering students at Dublin Institute of Technology in the Electrical Systems subject. Lecture attendance was monitored and analysed over four academic years (2007-8, 2008-9, 2009-10 and 2010-11). The average lecture attendance for students in the three academic years from 2007-10 was 55%, increasing noticeably in the 2009-10 academic year. A statistically significant weakly positive correlation between lecture attendance and examination performance was established. Each 10% increase in student attendance at lectures improved both Module 1 examination and terminal examination performance by approximately 3% on average, a finding similar to that reported in other studies.

This contribution reports on research, carried out over three academic years, into the learning styles of engineering students, on a number of Level 7, Level 8 and Level 9 programmes at DIT, using the index of learning styles survey developed by Felder and Soloman (1991). The contribution explores the results obtained in detail, placing them particularly in the national context. The correlation between student performance and individual learning styles is examined. Knowledge of the strongly visual learning style of these cohorts of students may be used to improve the learning environment.

Summary form only given. This paper aims at an integrative and innovative approach to curriculum methods of teaching engineering methodology courses. The course is problem driven where industrial case studies are the basis for the introduction of problems, key concepts, and solution methodologies. The objective of developing this educational environment is to bring the complexity of real world decision making to the classroom and to simulate the dynamics and uncertainties of organisational decision making in a classroom setting.

The circular economyhas become a topic of intense interest for policymakers, scholars and business managers because it has proven to bea new paradigm to achieve the sustainability of our society. However, the main efforts made in thecircular economy cannot be limited tothe actions ofprofessional or experts. We believe that if we intend to meet current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, we mustteach present generations the principles for achievingeconomic, social and environmentalsustainability in the short, mediumand long-term. This paper highlights the use of participatory guided activitiesinstead of traditional coursesto teach and engage engineering students with circular economy practices.

The Research Group on Cooperation and Human Development (GRECDH) of the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) has long promoted Bachelor, Master and PhD Theses in the framework of sustainable energy projects in low income countries. In this way, students combine their work at UPC with tasks in these countries. The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate the program through the experience of several students who participated in sustainable energy projects in Central and South America.

In this paper, we present a novel instructional approach introduced to the final year engineering students with the aim of developing their generic and professional competences. The proposed approach, based on project and problem based learning and ill-structured problem solving, was analyzed in the context of competence development and implications for engineering educators. The results of our action research indicate that the generic competences that were found to be significantly fostered were: systems thinking, ambiguity tolerance, asking questions, solving ill-structured problems, ability to apply knowledge in practice, presentation and generating new ideas. Professional competences that were found to be significantly fostered all belong to higher order thinking skills, and include the ability to design and evaluate, analyze, interpret and create new engineering solutions. These findings provide empirical support for the use of applied student-centered strategies for developing competences relevant for future work, as well as reflections that can support engineering educators in designing similar teaching and learning environments.

The development of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) scheme in Spanish universities implies a greater participation of the students in their own process of learning and competence-based teaching. Competences are the ability to apply knowledge, skills and attitudes and one of such competences is communication. Students must be able to communicate using their mother tongue, but they should be able to use a foreign language, especially English, too. This paper presents strategies applied in the School of Engineering at Manresa (EPSEM) (Barcelona), in order to improve students’ communication skills in English. An experimental research has been conducted, focusing on the point of view of engineering students, to check the efficacy of implementing content and language integrated learning (CLIL). First, second and third year students have been surveyed to test hypotheses about English level and implications on language and subject specific content learning. The data provide support to our hypotheses, showing an increasing positive attitude of the students towards studying subjects in English.

21st century engineering graduates should be proficient in engaging their conceptual thinking and analytical capabilities to proffer solutions to societal problems. Various literatures dwelling on problem-solving skills indicate that fresh engineering undergraduates are not adept at conceptualising solutions to design problems. However, the process of conceptualising solutions to design problems has not been well developed, understood and managed in many engineering curricula. In order to illuminate our understanding in regards to how engineering students conceptualise solutions to design problems at various stages of their educational programme, ten fresh engineering undergraduate and ten engineering postgraduate students were interviewed with a view to exploring: (i) what approaches they employ in identifying design problems? (ii) how they determine the relevance of the identified design problems to the needs of their community? (iii) how they conceptualise design solutions to the identified problems? and (iv) how they organise information when conceptualising solutions to design problems? Subsequent analysis of the responses reveals the existence of variation in the design conceptualisation process of fresh undergraduates and postgraduates. It was established that postgraduate students tend to use broader and more complex strategies in conceptualising solutions to design problems as compared to fresh undergraduates. Furthermore, postgraduate students employed experience, information sources, and prior knowledge acquired from various subject domains to conceptualise solutions to design problems whereas fresh engineering students could only employ previous experience and information sources to identify design problems relevant to their community needs but lack the capability to engage their prior knowledge to conceptualise solutions to design problems. Finally, these findings are expected to assist engineering educators to further understand how to develop an introduction to engineering curriculum to equip students with relevant and core engineering analytical skills for conceptualising solutions to design problems.