About

John Mendoza-Garcia received his Ph.D. in Engineering Education from the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He also holds a M.S. in Systems and Computing Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia, and a B.S. in Systems (and computing) Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He began teaching in 2004 and has experience as a faculty member at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and as an instructor of record in the First-Year Engineering Program at Purdue University. Additionally, he has industry experience working as an Information Consultant. Dr. Mendoza-Garcia has extensive experience teaching complementary or non-technical skills to engineering students across different academic years and has a strong foundation in understanding students’ learning processes. He employs innovative teaching strategies to promote students’ design thinking and is committed to supporting faculty in learning effective teaching methods through research-based professional development courses. His research focuses on investigating the development of the “Ability to Address Complex Socio-Technical Systems,” a construct that encompasses skills and knowledge necessary for engineers to succeed in professional practice when developing solutions for Socio-Technical Organizations. This construct includes components of systems thinking, design thinking, and participatory leadership, which he researches and promotes within engineering education. Dr. Mendoza-Garcia is a member of the American Association for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the International Council for Systems Engineering (INCOSE).

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Science
• Engineering management
• Political Science
• Pedagogy
• Engineering
• Business
• Manufacturing engineering
• Mathematics
• Industrial engineering
• Psychology
• Management science
• Engineering ethics
• Mathematics education
• Systems engineering
• Public relations
• Knowledge management
• Mechanical engineering

Selected publications

• Assessing Systems Thinking Skills in Engineering Education: Addressing Implementation Challenges and Unintended Consequences in Ill-structured Problems

  2025-08-21

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• WIP: Enhancing Grading Efficiency in Engineering Education Through Automation on a Flipped Classroom

  2025-11-02

  article

  This Work-in-Progress paper and Innovative Practice presents a practical method for efficient grading in engineering education by integrating MATLAB Grader with a custom Python script. The approach addresses challenges in flipped classrooms where timely, accurate assessments are critical. Because MATLAB Grader's integration with LMS platforms like Canvas is limited, the authors developed a Python tool to automate grade extraction, format data for institutional rosters, and facilitate uploads to Canvas, reducing instructor workload and improving grading accuracy. Early feedback indicates increased student satisfaction from immediate feedback and reduced grading time for instructors. This practice highlights how educators can leverage automation to enhance learning, with future work to improve usability and LMS integration.

  PublisherDOI

• Nuestro Impacto: An Insider Look into the Connections between Our Past Experiences and Current Teaching and Mentoring Practices

  2024-02-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  This full research paper discusses the experiences of five Latin/x faculty in engineering and what motivated them towards developing equity-minded educational practices for their undergraduate students. The five faculty participants provided written reflections on how their life and professional experiences have informed said practices. From a social constructionism paradigm and using narrative inquiry methodology, a combination of in vivo and descriptive coding (first cycle) followed by emergent and focused coding (second cycle) were used by the first three authors to generate a codebook. The theoretical frameworks of Community Cultural Wealth, LatCrit, and Hidden Curriculum guided the data analysis and interpretation process. Two layers of member-checking were conducted amongst the last two authors as well as additional Latin/x faculty in engineering who were adjacent to this work and acknowledged at the end of the paper. From the analysis, four themes were identified: (a) Counter-storytelling, (b) Structural Determinism (c) Language Origins, and (d) Community Cultural-Navigational, Aspirational, Social, and Familial Capital. Two emerging themes identified were Arrebatos and Nepantla; and Hidden Curriculum. From the findings, a collective narrative was generated by weaving the stories and experiences of the authors. From the narrative, we conclude with recommendations for future faculty development programs as they consider faculties' non-Monolithic backgrounds, cultures, languages, and experiences in engineering education. It is the hope of this paper that more consciousness is raised on nuestro impacto (our impact) in the practice of engineering education.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessing Student’s Stakeholder Awareness Skills in an Introductory Engineering Design Course through Systems Thinking Scenarios

  2024-02-07

  articleOpen access

  Engineering students need to be trained to deal with complex engineering problems and be capable of developing solutions that meet the needs of stakeholders at different levels, from direct users to regulation entities. Stakeholder awareness is defined as a construct concerning the ability to identify and include relevant stakeholders. A successful engineer should be able to identify various stakeholders, understand their roles, and effectively communicate with them to facilitate the identification and implementation of possible solutions. Therefore, it is important to foster the development of such skills in an introductory engineering design course. The aim of our study reported in this paper is to assess students' level of stakeholder awareness skills and identify the area(s) of development (gaps). The results provide us with insights to develop effective teaching strategies to address these gaps.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Re-designing a Large Enrollment Online Course Using a Learner-Centered Approach

  2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2024-02-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  He teaches professional skills like systems thinking, design thinking, problem-solving and algorithmic thinking.Dr.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• WIP: Assessing Baseline Systems Thinking in an Introductory Engineering Design Course

  2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2024 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Manufacturing engineering
  • Computer Science

  Prior to her current position, Mengyu worked as a product developer at a manufacturing company, where she was able to apply ISE principles and knowledges in an industrial setting. This work resulted

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessing the Effectiveness of Open-ended Engineering Design Projects in a First-Year Engineering Programming Course for Improving Students’ Problem-Solving Styles

  2024-08-03

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  respectively.He teaches and investigates the development of professional skills such as problem-solving, systems thinking, and design thinking.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Student Goal Formulation in an Introductory Engineering Design Course through Systems Thinking Scenarios

  2024-08-04 · 1 citations

  article

  Abstract One key process of Systems Design is goal formulation. It should be conducted with consideration of short- and long-term goals from both technical and contextual aspects. To be competitive in professional practice, engineering graduates should be able to engage in and complete such activities with a high level of competency. In our study, first year engineering students were asked to engage in a scenario-based task with goal formulation activities. Results from this study contribute to the development of effective teaching strategies to educate engineering students in their development of Systems Thinking Skills. Study participants were tasked to complete a scenario-based assessment proposed by Grohs, et al. (2018) that focuses on systems thinking and problem-solving by responding to a scenario. The scenario prompts (Prompt 5 and 6) asked students to formulate goals for a specific issue. Data was collected electronically and analyzed using qualitative coding methods by applying the assessment tool rubric to evaluate students' ability to identify both short-term and long-term goals from both technical and contextual aspects. We rated their answers on the expectations of a successful plan and a draft idea of it, which according to the authors, elicits students' goal formulation skills. Results show that when given design constraints (e.g., budget) and instructions (Prompt 6), more participants properly formulated their goals with consideration of short- and long-term plans from both technical and contextual aspects. However, the percentage dropped when the information was not provided, and the participants had to make reasonable assumptions (Prompt 5). The majority of the participants managed to formulate long-term goals. The findings demonstrate that most engineering students recognize that systems change and evolve with time, therefore the importance of addressing the changing problems with short- and long-term goals. However, many of them need scaffolding to assist their goal formulation activities, such as design constraints and guidelines. Systems engineering educators might consider teaching contents that would train students to gather necessary information and build scaffolding on their own through the goal formulation activities.

  PublisherDOI

• Blended Phenomenography: An Alternative to Investigate Learning

  2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  • Sociology

  Abstract Phenomenography is a research approach that has been widely used in Engineering Education to study student’s experiences with various phenomena such as Human-Centered Design, interdisciplinary learning, multiple solutions, conditional and repetition structures, among others. Still, researchers face different issues when working with phenomenography. One of the key ones is the unawareness of the existence of two or more different approaches. The Swedish educational researcher Ference Marton has developed two approaches (first and second phenomenography). John Bowden, an Australian researcher, developed another that is called Developmental phenomenography, and other Nordic researchers have developed other variations. In this paper, we want to contribute to the differentiation of two relevant approaches: Marton’s second and Bowden’s developmental. Each of these phenomenographic approaches has different implications that researchers should follow for valid data collection, data analysis, and outcome spaces. One of these differences can be seen in data collection. Using Marton’s second phenomenography approach implies the collection of data with participants addressing the same task. This is because, according to Marton, that makes visible what the participant knows about an object of learning. On the contrary, a researcher using the developmental phenomenography approach will collect data on interviews with participant’s describing their experiences with an object of learning. Similarly, in data analysis, there are key differences. For example, in the developmental approach, the unit of analysis is the whole transcript, while in the Marton’s first and second, the unit of analysis are quotes from the interviews. Similarly, the outcome spaces are different. Beyond such differentiation, in this paper, we will share our experience on blending these two approaches for studying Engineering Problem-Solving. We used Marton’s second Phenomenography for data collection, and a first data analysis phase to find, according to Variation Theory, the critical aspects and critical features of the object of learning. Accordingly, we will share our process of finding the right tasks, the interview process, and our data analysis process. In addition, we will describe how we used Bowden’s developmental approach for the second phase of our data analysis to discover a developmental path for our object of learning. We believe that blending phenomenography has advantages of the two phenomenographic methods, and it can be a valuable approach for researchers and practitioners when trying to identify and understand the learning trajectory of an engineering object of learning.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Work In Progress: From Face-to-Face to Online Learning Environments: A Transition to a Learner-centered Approach

  2020-09-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  He teaches professional skills like systems thinking, and design thinking

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mengyu Li

  Universidad Nacional de Colombia

  20 shared

• Andrea Goncher

  University of Florida

  20 shared

• Heather T. D. Maness

  University of Florida

  16 shared

• Alejandra J. Magana

  Bridge University

  10 shared

• Manaz Taleyarkhan

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  10 shared

• Chandan Dasgupta

  Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

  10 shared

• Şenay Purzer

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  9 shared

• Monica Cardella

  Hill College

  8 shared

Education

• PhD, Engineering Education

  Purdue University

  2016

Awards & honors

• Summer Research Grant (2015)
• Bisland dissertation fellowship (2014)
• Honors Degree, Magíster en Ingeniería de Sistemas y Computac…