2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This GIFTS paper describes an effort to engage first-year engineering students in thinking and analyzing their Personal Grit through a Reflective and Story-based approach.

Almost every “orientation” course covers the basics of advising and essential student success strategies, starts fundamental community building, and works on a career plan. Student success is often tied to grit, which includes a growth mindset and an ability to learn from failure. Orientation courses are essential foundational experiences for first-year retention and success, but it is difficult to cultivate a classroom environment where students feel safe sharing ideas and struggles.

In an effort to foster a classroom environment where students felt comfortable talking about and reflecting on the challenging subject of grit, a new lecture format was introduced in the fall of 2023. The lecture began with the reading (or video) of a children’s book on growth mindset selected by the instructor. The book reading was followed up by a series of activities to discuss the growth mindset. It culminated in creating a short story to complete a pre-written, randomly provided scenario. Activity 1 is for the students to reflect on their experiences with struggles related to the story read by the instructor. In activity 2, the students get into groups, are provided a short scenario, and determine a good strategy to approach the problem that fits a growth mindset. (Example scenario: Jakob noticed that his professor assigns regular math homework and requires the students to submit it. However, the grade is simply for trying and not doing the problems correctly. Therefore, Jakob decides that he is not going to waste time trying to do the homework correctly anymore). Activity 3 continues the group work by asking the students to finish the story with a happy ending, utilizing growth mindset.

This lesson was implemented at two engineering and applied science colleges, both small and in a rural location, which have historically required students to enroll in an “orientation” section. However, XXX University splits the students by major and has “engineering orientation,” while YYY University has more mixtures of students, including STEM-adjacent students enrolled in their orientation sections. Additionally, one university has only an hour timeslot, while the other has an hour and 45 minutes. XXX University is a private institution, and YYY is public, but both serve a high first-generation population.

The activity was completed at both institutions by mid-semester (approximately week 7) of the fall semester. After all the instructors had completed the lecture, the faculty reflected on their initial reactions to the assignment, how they modified it to fit their classroom and teaching style as well as made recommendations for improvements in future iterations. This GIFTS paper will detail the research regarding the benefits of using storybooks with older students, the details (and individual modifications) of the activities done in the orientation courses and the scenarios for storytelling, plans for future assessment of the classroom exercise, and the conclusions drawn from the faculty reflections.