2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mastery-Based Learning Inspires Persistence and Growth Through Failure

Failure tolerance is a necessary skill for professionals employed in fields demanding innovation and the ability to persist through and learn from failure has been identified as primary outcome of an entrepreneurial mindset (EM). There has been significant interest in developing course structures that facilitate productive failure, particularly within entrepreneurship education, the KEEN network, and broader engineering education. One promising approach is mastery-based learning (MBL), which develops EM by normalizing failure and encouraging students to learn from their past mistakes. In an MBL framework, students must first demonstrate mastery of fundamental skills in order to pass. Their final grades can be improved by mastering increasingly complex skills as the semester progresses. The MBL structure allows students to retake individual assessments as necessary until the course concludes, transforming each failure into a valuable learning experience as they work toward mastery.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate students’ perceptions of failure and assess their tolerance for failure at both the beginning and the end of the semester. To achieve this, a failure tolerance assessment was developed and administered to students enrolled in MBL courses within engineering programs at three small private institutions. Overall, the results indicate that MBL courses positively influence students’ views on failure throughout the curriculum, increasing their motivation to learn from their mistakes.

Authors

Dr. Joshua Gargac Ohio Northern University [biography]

Joshua Gargac is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio Northern University in Ada, OH.
Dr. Shuvra Das http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-0082-9102 University of Detroit Mercy [biography]

Dr. Shuvra Das started working at University of Detroit Mercy in January 1994 and is currently Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Over this time, he served in a variety of administrative roles such as Mechanical Engineering Department Chair, Associate Dean for Research and Outreach, and Director of International Programs in the college of Engineering and Science. He has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and Master’s and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University. He was a post-doctoral researcher at University of Notre Dame and worked in industry for several years prior to joining Detroit Mercy.

Dr. Das has taught a variety of courses ranging from freshmen to advanced graduate level such as Mechanics of Materials, Introductory and Advanced Finite Element Method, Engineering Design, Introduction to Mechatronics, Mechatronic Modeling and Simulation, Mathematics for Engineers, Electric Drives and Electromechanical Energy Conversion. He led the effort in the college to start several successful programs: an undergraduate major in Robotics and Mechatronic Systems Engineering, a graduate certificate in Advanced Electric Vehicles, and a thriving partnership for student recruitment with several universities in China. He has also been the dissertation advisor for and graduated many Ph.D. students.

Dr. Das’s areas of research interests are modeling and simulation of multi-disciplinary engineering problems, modeling multi-physics problems in manufacturing, engineering education, and curriculum reform. He has worked in areas ranging from mechatronics system simulation to multi-physics process simulation using CAE tools such as Finite Elements and Boundary Elements. He has authored or co-authored five books on these topics.
Dr. Kurt M Degoede http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0118-4951 Elizabethtown College [biography]

Professor of Engineering and Physics, Elizabethtown College. His research interests in biomechanics include developing clinical instruments for rehabilitation. Dr. DeGoede teaches upper-level undergraduate mechanical engineering using a Mastery-Based assessment model and design courses and first-year multidisciplinary courses.
Dr. Sara A. Atwood Elizabethtown College [biography]

Dr. Sara A. Atwood is the Dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Science and Professor of Engineering at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. She holds a BA and MS in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College, and PhD in Mecha

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025