2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper describes a design project, the Mars in the Making project, that was developed to encourage more curiosity and connections in first year engineering students, while also enhancing making. The motivation behind the Mars in the Making project is to create a context that will allow students to choose an opportunity/need area to focus on based on their interests and passions, while still ensuring consistency in the amount of effort and complexity of the designs produced. According to self-determination theory, the highest level of self-determination, intrinsic motivation, i.e., doing something for one’s own sake, is achieved when there is a true sense of choice, i.e., a sense of freedom to do something one has chosen to do [1]. Providing an open-ended, real world context and allowing students to identify opportunities has been found to inspire students’ development of an entrepreneurial mindset, including curiosity and connections [2]. The goal of this work is to use the future establishment of a Mars colony and automation as the context for a design project to encourage more motivation, curiosity, connections, and making. The design project was implemented in 3 sections of the Introduction to Engineering course at [Institution] in Fall 2021, 2 sections of the course in Spring 2022, and 7 sections of the course in Fall 2022, with approximately 40 students in each section.

To assess the impact of this design project on student motivation, curiosity, connections, their understanding of the entrepreneurial mindset, and their making skills, a survey instrument will be administered and a written individual reflection about the project experience will be assigned, at the end of the Fall 2022 semester to students enrolled in 7 sections of the course. The survey measures student motivation based on the Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS) [3-4], student curiosity that relates to joyous exploration based on the five-dimensional curiosity scale [5] and curiosity involvement [6], connections based on the connections rubric [7] adapted from the VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) Rubrics [8], and their making skills. The survey responses to the Likert Scale questions will be analyzed quantitatively while the responses to the free response survey questions and the individual reflections will be analyzed using thematic analysis [9] to understand the impact of this design project on students.

In the paper, the design project and its implementation will be described and the assessment results will be presented and discussed.

References

[1] Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

[2] Huerta, M. V., & London, J. S., & Trowbridge, A., & Arévalo Avalos, M., & Huang, W., & McKenna, A. F. (2017, June), Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Mindset through Design: Insights from Thematic Analysis of First-year Engineering Students' Reflections. Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28093

[3] Guay, F., Vallerand, R. J., and Blanchard, C. (2000). On the Assessment of Situational Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS). Motivation and Emotion 24(3), 175-213.

[4] Vallerand, R. J. (2001). A Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Sport and Exercise. In G. C. Roberts (Ed.), Advances in Motivation in Sport and Exercise (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics).

[5] Kashdan, T. B., (2018). The five-dimensional curiosity scale: capturing the bandwidth of curiosity and identifying four unique subgroups of curious people. Journal of Research in Personality, 73, 130-149.

[6] Jeraj, M., & Antoncic, B. (2013). A conceptualization of entrepreneurial curiosity and construct development: A multi-country empirical validation. Creativity Research Journal, 25(4), 426-435. doi:10.1080/10400419.2013.843350

[7] Hylton, J. B., & Hays, B. A. (2019, June), Modifying the VALUE Rubrics to Assess the Entrepreneurial Mind-set. Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33117

[8] Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2009). Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE). https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/value

[9] Braun, V, and Victoria C. (2006), Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology, Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2), 77-101.