Task relevant information in engineering problem solving

Identifying task relevant information in an engineering problem solving environment is a critical step in the problem solving process. An experiment was conducted in which engineering students identified task relevant information in a set of engineering problems that differed in terms of information density and relevant information distribution. Signal Detection Theory and duster analysis were used to analyze the results. As expected, students with more expertise were more successful in identifying task relevant information. Other results suggest that the structure of problem descriptions can affect student performance.