Developing systems thinking skills: A high-school course on engineering design

A unique course has recently been developed at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology for 12th grade students majoring in physics and electronics. During the course students are required to complete – on a team basis – various engineering tasks. The aims of the course are to increase its graduates’ motivation to study science and engineering, to develop their systems thinking skills, and to train them in teamwork. The study described in the paper examined to what degree the course’s second goal (developing systems thinking) had been attained. Thirty-two 12th graders participated in the study, which utilized quantitative tools alongside qualitative ones. The students were asked to fill out an anonymous questionnaire at the beginning and the end of the course. The questionnaire was a five-level Likert scale based on the CEST (Capacity for Engineering Systems Thinking) questionnaire. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were held with students at the end of the course. The study indicates an improvement in students’ systems thinking skills – characterized by a large effect size.