Instilling an Entrepreneurial Mindset through IDEAS Studio Courses
- Conference
- Location
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New Orleans, Louisiana
- Publication Date
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June 26, 2016
- Start Date
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June 26, 2016
- End Date
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June 29, 2016
- ISBN
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978-0-692-68565-5
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
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Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division Technical Session 10
- Tagged Division
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Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation
- Page Count
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13
- DOI
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10.18260/p.25739
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/25739
- Download Count
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780
Paper Authors
Charles Kim Bucknell University
Charles Kim is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Bucknell University. He received Ph.D. and M.S.E. degrees from the University of Michigan and B.S. from Caltech. Prof. Kim teaches courses in design and innovation and is currently director of the Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship, Applications, and Systems program at Bucknell.
R. Alan Cheville Bucknell University
Alan Cheville studied optoelectronics and ultrafast optics at Rice University, followed by 14 years as a faculty member at Oklahoma State University working on terahertz frequencies and engineering education. While at Oklahoma State, he developed courses in photonics and engineering design. After serving for two and a half years as a program director in engineering education at the National Science Foundation, he took a chair position in electrical engineering at Bucknell University. He is currently interested in engineering design education, engineering education policy, and the philosophy of engineering education.
Erin Jablonski Bucknell University
Erin received her PhD at Iowa State University with funding from a NSF graduate fellowship before taking a NRC postdoctoral position at NIST. She joined the faculty at Bucknell in 2004 and has taught courses across the curriculum.
Michael J. Prince Bucknell University
Dr. Michael Prince is a professor of chemical engineering at Bucknell University and co-director of the National Effective Teaching Institute. His research examines a range of engineering education topics, including how to assess and repair student misconceptions and how to increase the adoption of research-based instructional strategies by college instructors and corporate trainers. He is actively engaged in presenting workshops on instructional design to both academic and corporate instructors.
Katharyn E. K. Nottis Bucknell University
Dr. Nottis is an Educational Psychologist and Professor of Education at Bucknell University. Her research has focused on meaningful learning in science and engineering education, approached from the perspective of Human Constructivism. She has authored several publications and given numerous presentations on the generation of analogies, misconceptions, and facilitating learning in science and engineering education. She has been involved in collaborative research projects focused on conceptual learning in chemistry, chemical engineering, seismology, and astronomy.
Nathan P. Siegel P.E. Bucknell University
Margot A. Vigeant Bucknell University
Margot Vigeant is a professor of chemical engineering and an associate dean of engineering at Bucknell University. She earned her B.S. in chemical engineering from Cornell University, and her M.S. and Ph.D., also in chemical engineering, from the University of Virginia. Her primary research focus is on engineering pedagogy at the undergraduate level. She is particularly interested in the teaching and learning of concepts related to thermodynamics. She is also interested in active, collaborative, and problem-based learning, and in the ways hands-on activities and technology in general and games in particular can be used to improve student engagement.
Joe Tranquillo Bucknell University
Dr. Joseph (Joe) Tranquillo is an Associate Professor at Bucknell University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, He is also co-director of the Institute for Leadership in Technology and Management, co-director of the KEEN Winter Interdisciplinary Design Program, and chair of the Biomedical Engineering Division of ASEE. Tranquillo has published three undergraduate textbooks and numerous engineering education publications, and has presented internationally on engineering and education. His work has been featured on the Discovery Channel, CNN Heath and TEDx. He was a US Case Professor of the Year nominee and a National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Education faculty member.
Abstract
Over the last three years, we have developed 5 elective courses called IDEAS studios to instill an entrepreneurial mindset in our students. The IDEAS studios focus on practical engagement with topics that include opportunity recognition, customer engagement, design thinking, ideation, fabrication, and scaling. In designing the IDEAS studio courses, we have recognized 7 characteristics that we suspect facilitate student growth in non-cognitive attributes related to an entrepreneurial mindset. The non-cognitive attributes include curiosity, intrinsic motivation, persistence, and a growth mindset. In this paper we describe these 7 characteristics, their specific implementation, and why we believe they have an influence on an entrepreneurial mindset. The 7 characteristics are briefly described here.
• Each IDEAS studio is voluntary. All students enrolled in the IDEAS studios have elected to be in the course, and for most students, the course does not contribute to degree requirements outside of serving as a free elective.
• Most IDEAS studios result in a physical artifact. The artifacts are typically still in rough form and a pedagogical emphasis is placed on “prototyping-to-think.”
• Students in IDEAS studios are motivated by a real problem. Many times the problems are provided by industrial sponsors, but there is also space for independent student ideas developed from recognized opportunities.
• Students apply broad perspectives to their work. In addition to the technical feasibility of their ideas, students must explore social impact, value, market viability, and others.
• Students are encouraged to utilize an open process to their work. In many cases, students explore the process as an outcome for the course, and it is made clear to students that neither the resulting solutions nor the process are deterministic.
• IDEAS studios are open to all disciplines in engineering, and some cases, to all majors throughout the University. The mix of students working together is interdisciplinary.
• The number of students in the IDEAS studios is small. In most cases, enrollment is limited to 16 students.
We conducted a pilot assessment study to determine the effect of these courses and the 7 characteristics on intrinsic motivation and curiosity. We provide brief results of the study in this paper, which show that the IDEAS courses positively affect both curiosity and intrinsic motivation.
Kim, C., & Cheville, R. A., & Jablonski, E., & Prince, M. J., & Nottis, K. E. K., & Siegel, N. P., & Vigeant, M. A., & Tranquillo, J. (2016, June), Instilling an Entrepreneurial Mindset through IDEAS Studio Courses Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.25739
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