2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering students often struggle to connect fundamental concepts with the complexity of real-world systems. In environmental engineering for example, students may find it difficult to conceptualize mass balance when multiple physical, chemical, and biological processes interact. To address this challenge, a low-fidelity maker activity was developed to help students visualize environmental systems and apply mass balance principles through creative prototyping. Students in a senior environmental engineering course designed and built physical models of their system-level projects using simple materials such as cups, sticks, and foil. The activity enhanced curiosity, teamwork, and conceptual understanding while bridging the gap between theory and application.

Building on the success of this pilot, this Work-in-Progress project, emerging from the KEEN MakerSpark: A Framework for Developing Entrepreneurial Minded Making Activities workshop, aims to expand and disseminate maker-based strategies that align with the 3Cs of the Entrepreneurial Mindset: curiosity, connections, and creating value. The project includes refining the mass balance activity, developing new low-cost maker activities across multiple engineering disciplines, and producing faculty toolkits with implementation guides and assessment rubrics. A validated pre/post-assessment instrument will be designed to evaluate student growth in systems thinking and entrepreneurial mindset outcomes. By promoting creative, hands-on learning that strengthens conceptual mastery and mindset development, this project contributes to preparing future engineers who are both innovative thinkers and systems-oriented problem solvers.