2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Complete Research paper describes the impact of a design sprint early in a first-year engineering course on engineering identity and the entrepreneurial mindset. In an introduction to engineering class, many first-year students do not see the connection of small, one-off lab activities, to their engineering identity and the entrepreneurial mindset. Engineering identity is a person’s belief they are an engineer while entrepreneurial mindset is a student’s ability to use curiosity, connections, and creating value to solve problems. The first-year engineering class is a formative class that can be used to shape a student’s engineering identity. Engineering experiences have been shown to improve student’s engineering identity. Furthermore, students struggle with identifying real-world connections from activities completed in an introduction to engineering class. Introducing concepts earlier in the semester to allow these connections to form may also solidify students’ engineering identity. The purpose of this paper was to determine if introducing a design sprint on the second day of class would increase first-year students’ ability to strengthen their engineering identity and entrepreneurial mindset compared to students who did not complete the design sprint early in the semester.
Methods
In fall 2023, five sections (126 students) of an introduction to engineering class were taught at a predominantly undergraduate, private institution. Three sections (73 students) completed a design sprint activity (experimental) on the second day of class while two sections (53 students) completed an environmental engineering activity (control). The study was approved by the university’s IRB and consent was obtained from all participants. Prior to the second day of class, students completed two surveys. The first asked questions related to engineering identity based on Godwin’s model, which consists of three aspects of identity: interest, performance, and recognition. The second focused on the entrepreneurial mindset. Students assessed the following questions on a Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree: (1) to what extent do you feel capable of exploring multiple solution paths when approaching a problem or challenge; (2) to what extent do you feel capable of making connections between your engineering studies and your everyday life; (3) to what extent do you feel capable of demonstrating empathy in identifying problems and exploring solutions (where empathy can be defined as the ability to take someone else's perspective so you can better understand their thoughts and emotions); and (4) to what extent do you feel capable of creating solutions that meet customer need. The same questions were asked five weeks into the 14-week semester before the final project was introduced. During week eight, the control group will complete the design sprint activity. The surveys will be administered again in week 14.
The abstract presents preliminary results from the pre-survey and week five survey. As the data was not normally distributed, nonparametric tests were used for analysis. Change scores were calculated across time, and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to determine if there was a difference in dependent measures between the control and experimental groups. To examine time change differences, independent of the group, a Friedman test was conducted. The analysis was conducted in SPSS v27, with significance set at p<0.05.
Results
There was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the change scores for engineering identity (p=0.008). The experimental group was higher than the control group for performance metrics (p<0.001), which is a group of five self-reported statements like “I am confident I can do well in engineering.” There was no difference in recognition (“People see me as an engineer.”) or interest (“I enjoy engineering”) between groups. There was a significant increase in overall identity (p<0.001) and performance (p<0.001) from week 1 to week 5 with no change in recognition or interest independent of group.
There was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the change scores related to the entrepreneurial mindset. The change scores decreased for all questions for both groups from week 1 to week 5. The question asking students about multiple solutions and the capability of creating multiple solutions decreased significantly from week 1 to week 5, independent of the group. Students’ ability to make connections and demonstrate empathy decreased, though not significantly.
Preliminary results suggest the introduction of the design sprint early in the course may impact some metrics of engineering identity, though more importantly, the course improves students’ perception of identity overall. Students’ perception of entrepreneurial mindset decreased over time, indicating the introduction to engineering course may have decreased students’ confidence in engineering problem solving, which is an area for further exploration.