A Multi-institution Investigation into Faculty Approaches for Incorporating the Entrepreneurial Mind-set in First-year Engineering Classrooms

Abstract

Krista received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering at The Ohio State University in 2006 and received her M.S. from Ohio State in 2007. In 2012, Krista completed her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at Ohio State. Her engineering education research interests include investigating first-year engineering student experiences, faculty experiences, and the connection between the two.

Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Student EM Using the ESEMA Self-Report Survey

“…Studies in the area of longitudinal EM development often assess students at different curriculum levels at the same time to determine overall progression [9,18,[21][22]. It has been shown that senior level students often showcase greater levels of entrepreneurial interest and curiosity, innovation and design skills, motivation, and making connections than lower level undergraduates [9,[21][22].…”

“…Research seems to indicate that incorporation of entrepreneurially minded learning (EML) throughout engineering curricula encourages EM growth [13,[32][33], though many studies have addressed the need for more research on the impact of these initiatives [18,31,[33][34]. There are a lack of studies that address longitudinal EM development by following a single cohort of students.…”

“…Due to the nature of most EM studies, survey data is often only gathered for one class level such as during the first year or senior year [4,6,8,[18][19][20]. Various studies have led to the inference that EM in students grows throughout their college curriculum [9,13,18,[21][22], though very few studies have been done that actually measure longitudinal development of EM across multiple years and/or using the same cohort of students [22].…”

“…Due to the nature of most EM studies, survey data is often only gathered for one class level such as during the first year or senior year [4,6,8,[18][19][20]. Various studies have led to the inference that EM in students grows throughout their college curriculum [9,13,18,[21][22], though very few studies have been done that actually measure longitudinal development of EM across multiple years and/or using the same cohort of students [22]. In order to properly validate that engineering students' EM changes over time through curricular interventions, it is necessary to build upon this existing foundation and follow the same cohort of students over time.…”

Preparing Instructors to Encourage an Entrepreneurial Mindset

“…Our first EML-focused efforts included re-structuring the design-build project in our standard sequence of the FYP to more formally include EML concepts. We started that work by visiting other KEEN institutions to learn about their first-year engineering initiatives related to EML [9,10]. We also worked through a backwards design process supported by our teaching and learning center to establish a set of new learning objectives that could guide our curriculum developments moving forward within the first-year and beyond [11,12].…”