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This paper describes the results obtained for the affective engagement of students with systems thinking (ST). In prior work, the authors have developed and validated a questionnaire instrument for measuring affective engagement of undergraduate engineering students with ST. This paper presents results obtained when the questionnaire was used with undergraduate students. Two surveys with different versions of the questionnaire, one using positive grammar questions only and the other using a mix of positive and negative constructs, were used to measure the students’ engagement with ST and its relationship with gender, age, and work experience. Each questionnaire version was applied to a different sample, the first, 186 participants, completed the positive grammar version, and, the second group of 163 completed the mixed version. The results show that participants in both studies valued ST in each of the three dimensions of the ST construct. Statistical tests confirmed no significant gender differences in either study. Student engagement with the practical dimension of ST was shown to vary, with statistical significance, with groups of age, years of work experience, and country of the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper demonstrated on a large scale that explicit articulation of creativity-related learning goals on engineering syllabi is quite limited, and primarily limited to the first year of study. Engineering educators may need to do more to ensure creativity is explicitly addressed as an expected learning outcome within engineering syllabi. Background: Prior studies have shown inclusion of creativity within engineering syllabi and course activities are generally limited. Students may perceive educators do not value creativity, and their studies have limited influence on their creative skills. Studies conflict on whether creativity skills increase over completing an engineering degree. Creativity has been demonstrated to be an important skill for engineering professionals, but one not necessarily appropriately addressed in engineering programs. Few studies have attempted to quantify coverage of creativity material on a nation-wide scale, as opposed to in a single or select few institutions. Research Questions: 1) To what extent do engineering educators explicitly articulate creativity and innovation-related learning goals and material on their course syllabi? and 2) To what extent do engineering educators explicitly articulate exposure to, or instruction in the use of, creativity heuristics within their course syllabi? Methodology: The online publicly accessible course outlines of 1109 compulsory courses from 42 degree programs accredited by two national engineering accreditation bodies were qualitatively analyzed in a two-stage approach using document analysis. Findings: Approximately 2% of compulsory electrical engineering course outlines explicitly articulate creativity-related material; only one course articulated engaging students in using creativity heuristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]