Students, engineers and other people often use problem-solving and problem-solving strategies almost every day in their life. They are introduced to problem-solving by demonstrating real-life applications and finding their solutions.
These problem-solving strategies provide a rather systematic procedure to solve a problem that is efficient as well as gives a logical flow and makes them understand it well.
Exploring engineering mindset
Let’s look at some problem-solving strategies that make it easier for engineers to explore, understand and effortlessly solve the problem.
Defining the problem
For any given problem it must be very important to figure out and define the problem well. Collaboratively defining a problem will help engineering students understand the given problem well. Problem-defining or identifying is extremely difficult but also a very essential step.
It involves focusing on the real problem after diagnosing the situation. Identifying the problem makes it easier to list the possible solution, and also in turn saves our time, extra effort and money. Every engineering student should master defining a problem, and this needs a lot of patience and practice.
Furthermore, how a student frames his/her problem will assist their search for a possible solution.
Listing all the possible solutions –
Once, the problem is well understood and defined, the next step is to list all the possible solutions. By listing and brainstorming viable, possible and as many solutions as possible you can assist yourself effortlessly to find the ideal solution.
It is important to consider many suggestions provided while brainstorming for ideas as well as the information you’ve learned while analyzing the data. Some other things that help while listing all the possible solutions are receiving help from mentors, peers and teachers because they might have some more solutions that you might have not thought of.
Evaluating the listed solution
After creating a list of all the possible solutions, evaluate the list and understand which of that solutions will be the most feasible.
To make that part of the step easier you can, also speculate the positive and negative impact of each listed solution. Then once that part is done compare and analyze the report. You’ll be able to apprehend which of the following listed solutions is the most attainable one.
Make sure the selected solution does not have any loopholes. So that it can be implemented simply, efficiently and is also very practical.
Developing a plan for the most feasible solution
Once we have a practical and simple solution that will help you solve the problem, develop a plan for the same. It is significant to find a way to work around the solution, this makes our work a lot more uncomplicated.
The plan to solve the problem using the obtained solution should be smart, attainable, and relevant. The chosen strategy must be hassle-free to work with, no matter how new the problem and its concept are.
Re-checking the strategy chosen for solving the problem
It is very necessary to recheck the strategy we have chosen to solve our problem. It helps in more than one way like avoiding doing extra work, and ensuring we are using the correct strategy etc. Even if we are very confident about our strategy just confirming and rechecking proves beneficial.
As Camay said, ‘Check, double check, recheck’; so it is always better to do so. Students often ignore this step but sometimes this might disrupt the flow in later steps if the chosen strategy does not work out as we thought. Or maybe it turns out to be difficult to implement.
Once, we recheck we will be confident since that will reduce the chances of any further difficulty and then we can move on to the next step which is implementing the solution.
Implementing the solution
Now, after being done with all the above steps we finally get a good strategy for our problem. Hence, we can now implement the solution.
It is essential to be careful while executing the solution. Small things like paying attention to details, and the completion of all the work are also significant. Also while implementing the solution do keep a check on the action and analyze it well. How we carry out the solution will put an impact on the result we get.
After we complete this step, we can then move to the last step.
Checking the result
Once we implement the solution, we need to evaluate and check our results. Checking how effective the strategy was. Also, check if the current strategy solves the problem well or if the existing plan needs to be revised. Or maybe we need a new and better plan.
Since we have already rechecked our solution earlier there is a very chance to make any changes. But if you are not satisfied with the current strategy and its outcome you can still repeat from step two. So, that you can get the best possible strategy giving us the best solution.
Summary
Even though we do problem-solving almost every day it can sometimes it can be a little difficult. Easy problems can be solved easily without much use of the above-listed steps.
But for engineering students, mostly the problem they have to solve academically or in college life could turn out to be difficult. As well as something that needs good planning. In such cases, the above given described steps could be very useful.
This will help the mind of the students to be at peace and with less stress. So try using it for one of the problems and see if it helps.