2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Micromoments targeted toward indoor air quality were introduced to students in an Air Quality Engineering course to enhance their entrepreneurial mindset. Students generated concept maps pre-and post- micromoment intervention, and these maps were used to assess changes in students’ entrepreneurial mindset (EM).
Core air quality engineering content (i.e., indoor air concentrations, material balances to describe the flow of pollutants in an indoor environment, air exchange rates, and health impacts of various pollutants) along with generalized information on the 3 Cs framework of EM (i.e., curiosity, connections, and creating value) were introduced to students. Before introducing the micromoments, students were asked to create digital concept maps (using the freely available CMap Tools software) to address the 3 Cs in relation to the theme of “sources, levels, and control of indoor air pollution”. Students were provided with the initial node as well as three branches from the node that each related to curiosity, connections, and creating value, and subsequently asked to finish creating the concept map with just the information that they had gathered from the basic class lectures, their personal experiences, and a Corsi Rosenthal cube (a do-it-yourself structure that has recently become popular as an inexpensive way to reduce indoor particle pollution) that was brought to class. The first concept maps were designated as the baseline concept maps. Subsequently, during class time, three micromoment activities, i.e., “Question Frenzy”, “Make It Relevant”, and “How Do We Make It Better?” that are linked, respectively, to the curiosity, connections, and creating value elements of EM were deployed in the class. Subsequent to the three micromoment activities, students were asked to return to their original concept map and adjust their maps, if they wished, in light of the three micromoment activities that they undertook. The digital concept maps were scored using the traditional scoring approach, and the scores were used to provide a quantitative assessment of whether EM-oriented micromoments enhanced students’ entrepreneurial mindset. A separate survey was also administered to the students to determine how (or if) the introduction of the micromoments impacted their understanding and concept mapping activities. Responses were provided on a Likert scale and in free response form. The Likert scale survey results indicated scores of at least 4.2 on a 5.0 scale, suggesting relatively strong agreement from students that the in-class micromoment activities did indeed increase their understanding of EM. Students’ opinions were reinforced when looking at the results of the concept map scoring for students (n=8) who submitted their maps. On average, a significant increase in average concept map scores from the baseline average score of 30 to the after-intervention maps average score of 99 was noticed, with much of the scoring increase attributed to an increase in the number of concepts, i.e., the parameter that correlates to the breadth of understanding. For two students who worked as a team and submitted their concept maps, a significant number of crosslinks were added in the updated concept maps, suggesting increased recognition of the connections between concepts. This result could lead to enhanced teamwork learning experiences using micromoments and concept maps. Overall, this study shows the value of using micromoments in an air quality engineering class and provides a quantitative framework that may be broadly applied across different engineering fields for enhancing and assessing students’ understanding of EM.