PREDICTING SUCCESS IN ENGINEERING STUDIES: CHALLENGES OF EARLY DETECTION OF WEAK SIGNALS OF STEM-RELATED APTITUDES

The theory of signal detection, originated in the second half of the 19th century in psychophysics, has returned to life a century later when it was discovered that sensations generated by neural noise do not fall below the threshold of conscious awareness.More adequately called the theory of "weak signals" detection, the philosophy and model of this theory was conceptualized by both Gaussian and non-Gaussian models.It proved to be useful when earlier the signals are detected, then better.The applications have extended time spectrefrom avoiding a negative phenomenon with rapid evolution (as a situation in medicine or catastrophic earthquakes) to predicting future evolution of a certain system, in a large range of areas: from electronics (circuit analysis) to strategic management (strategic early warning system) and economics (agriculture, market prediction).The decision is also variable as time horizon, depending on area of application, from fractions of seconds to minutes in case of catastrophic events to weeks or months in other cases (agriculture).The scope of work is an area less investigated: education.While the extant literature is rich in many areas (psychophysics, neuroscience, psychology, medicine, electronics and telecommunications, geophysics or economy), the literature related to applications of weak signals theory in education (engineering studies in particular) is rather scarce if not completely missing.Engineering skillspart of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) competenciesare trained during costly engineering studies.However, cases of engineers less talented or unhappy with their engineering jobs are sometimes met.Conversely, authors met young people with various non-engineering backgrounds landing in jobs with technical profiles.Probably, the family influence, and perfectible career orientation are blameable for such cases.Therefore, this essay aims at setting a research framework and a suitable procedure to assess and identify emergent STEM-related aptitudes (as weak signals) during pre-university education cycles to increase the chances of better matching the respective students with their future engineering education and, subsequently, with their careers as engineers.As methodology, the study is based on directly observed and/or personal experienced cases in the Romanian engineering higher education as well as pre-university education cycles, which are complemented by pilot tests designed for this purpose.Secondary research (literature survey) marks the literature gap and complement the matter under investigation.Since this is a pioneering effort, several challenges are foreseen.As a long-term endeavour by its nature, this is a risky project (false positive and false negative results might occur), which recommends a step-by-step approach.Nevertheless, the lessons learnt, and implications are important for the main stakeholders: education policy makers and administrators, students and professors alike.