2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Innovation is an important skill for engineers. Previous research has identified experimentation as a key component of innovation. In this research, we explore engineering students’ confidence in experimenting to understand how things work, as well as their interest in experimenting to find new ideas. We compare these attributes across students of different academic ranks (e.g., first-year versus seniors) and course contexts. Surveys were administered at the beginning and end of four engineering courses at a large public institution from Fall 2023 to Spring 2025. These surveys included seven-point Likert-type items validated in prior published research to measure innovation self-efficacy and innovation-related interests, with single items measuring experimentation confidence and interest. Our results show that students’ confidence in their experimentation abilities was more variable than their interest in experimentation (confidence average ranged from 4.0 to 5.8 across classes, while interest averaged from 5.3 to 5.9). Notably, first-year students reported fairly high confidence in their experimentation abilities at the beginning of the second semester, exceeding that of upper-level environmental engineering students entering their junior year. Across many courses, confidence in experimentation increased from pre- to post-assessment, whereas interest levels remained generally stable. Experimentation confidence was moderately or weakly correlated with experimentation interest among students in these courses. Overall, engineering students’ interest in experimentation remained high and stable, while confidence seemed to fluctuate. It is notable that the two items relate to different sub-types of experimentation. Future qualitative research could help explain the quantitative findings.