Considering context: A engineering students study of first-year

High-quality engineering design requires an understanding of how the resulting engineered artifact interacts with society, the natural environment, and other aspects of context. This study examines how first-year engineering undergraduates approached two engineering design tasks. We focused on how much students considered contextual factors during problem-scoping, a critical part of the design process. As part of a larger, longitudinal study, we collected data from 160 students at four U.S. institutions. Students varied in their consideration of each design task's context, and women's responses were more likely to be context-oriented than men's. Overall, context-orientation was positively correlated between the two design tasks, despite differences in data collection and analysis. Having found that beginning engineering students, particularly women, are sensitive to important contextual factors, we suggest that efforts to broaden participation in engineering should consider legitimizing and fostering context-oriented approaches to engineering earlier in the curriculum.