First-year undergraduate students’ economic decision outcomes in engineering design

Abstract

Abstract Economic decisions are a crucial part of the engineering design process as designers aim to minimize the cost and maximize the system’s benefits. This study focuses on first-year undergraduate students’ economic decision-making process when they trade off costs and benefits during a design challenge. In addition, we characterized students’ patterns of outcomes derived from economic decisions using the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) method during the design process. Our results suggest that students took different approaches, such as being conservative, moderately conservative, moderate, and aggressive when they tradeoff their design goals. Implications of this study relate to (a) the characterization of different approaches for trading-off design goals and (b) the use of the cost-benefit analysis method as a tool to assess students’ final designs to decide which alternative design is better. In addition, students can use the CBA method to make informed decisions while designing to optimize their design solutions.