Track: Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

In order to deal with challenges in daily activities and working hours, engineers need to be able to make decisions. Project failure, late work, and missed chances can all stem from bad decisions. Some of the many elements that influence decision-making and lead to choice errors include heuristic decisions and cognitive biases. These biases can be mitigated by providing decision-makers with greater information about them through training and education. As a result, educational institutions are a valuable resource in the development of good decision-making abilities. The next step in this research is to offer a method for teaching Engineering students about heuristic judgments and cognitive biases in the classroom, using a lecture and a final project. The method was created with the idea of student-centered learning in mind. A pre-survey, a post-survey, and a final survey were created to assess the improvement in decision-making during the process. Because they had more knowledge and could understand the influence of cognitive biases in decision-making, the results demonstrated that the knowledge transfer process could help decision-makers to make better decisions. Furthermore, several of them were inspired to dig deeper into issues and develop strategies for dealing with them.