Resumen de Developing measures of roughness: problem solving as a method to document student thinking in engineering

Tamara J. Moore, Margret A. Hjalmarson

• The purpose of this study was to analyze the quality and content of responses to a nanotechnology modeling task in a first-yearengineering course. Student teams had to determine a method for measuring the roughness of the surface of gold using digital imagesgenerated by atomic force microscopy. This study illustrates how modeling tasks of this type document student thinking, the variety ofmeasures and methods students used in response to the task, and the range of performance demonstrating the ability of first-yearstudents to apply their current ways of thinking to solve complex engineering problems.