Engineering professional identity practices

Investigating the use of web search in collaborative decision making

Abstract

Collaborative learning and problem solving are important aspects of engineering professional practice that need to be addressed in preparing competent engineering graduates and forming their professional identities. Taking the learning as becoming a professional perspective, we illustrate the diversity of engineering practices in a collaborative decision-making episode, where students' participation in the activity is mediated by their use of web search. We present how our development of the implied identity approach could help to understand how technology mediates collaborative sense making in relation to professional practices and identities. We illustrate this by providing examples of ways in which students use web information to justify their decision making.