2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The entrepreneurial-minded learning (EML) strategy has been of recent interest in collegiate-level courses to encourage an application-focused framework of thought. EML approaches to coursework involves the development of assignments or projects that lead students to actively think and participate in designing and justifying the practical application of products. For biomedical engineering (BMEG) students, this approach has particular value due to the high degree of importance that design in healthcare entails. We created an EML project in a sophomore-level biomechanics course that aimed to train students to develop an orthopedic implant using biomechanical concepts. We have previously demonstrated that this approach resulted in a significant increase in ability to create connections between coursework and real-world applications, an ability to communicate the value that the coursework provides, and their curiosity regarding unanswered questions in the field. While these results were encouraging, entrepreneurship and engineering in general is a particularly discrimination-rich landscape due to a historic bias for White and Asian men. Historically marginalized minorities, including women and first-generation college students, are underserved in upper-level education systems. Consequently, it is necessary to investigate the impact of the coursework on historically marginalized groups to generate curricula that encourage and maintain diversity in engineering.

We distributed an EML project containing three sections that: (1) asks students to write a paper on a treatment plan including an orthopedic implant for a provided patient profile, (2) create a presentation presenting this plan to the stakeholders, and (3) determine the biomechanical properties that the implant and any selected materials need to satisfy. Using a pre- and post-project survey from two cohorts of students, we determined the effectiveness of the assignment and gauged the extent to which students believed that their demographics influenced their motivation. Our data demonstrate that EML scores, which is a scale we designed to quantify the successful development of target EML skills, had no consistent pattern based on race, but that female students reported a significantly lower score compared to male students. We additionally developed a panel of questions gauging the extent to which certain groups of students were motivated by their demographics (e.g., gender, race, etc.) and individual economic benefits of BMEG (e.g., high-paying jobs, career preparation, etc.). Female students were also more likely to report that they are motivated by their demographics and had significantly lower self-efficacy scores compared to male students. While race had no impact on final EML score, historically marginalized races were more motivated by their demographics and were equally motivated compared to non-marginalized races by economic benefits. To gain further resolution on failure points of the EML project, we mined short-answer responses using NVivo sentiment analysis methods and report differential patterns depending on demographic.

These data demonstrate low confidence and lower overall EML scores in female students in addition to an increased motivation to pursue BMEG driven by social aspects rather than economic outcomes. The latter result is shared by historically marginalized races, but the average EML score within this group is consistent with that of the non-marginalized group. These data will serve as a roadmap to develop coursework that serves all students.