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Connecting Entrepreneurial Mindset to Software Development

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

Computers in Education 1 - Programming 1

Tagged Division

Computers in Education

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--36838

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/36838

Download Count

527

Paper Authors

biography

Ben Tribelhorn University of Portland

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Ben Tribelhorn teaches Computer Science at the University of Portland. His research includes machine learning for chaos in Lorenz systems, dynamic obstacle avoidance algorithms for unmanned aerial vehicles, improving software engineering pedagogy, and ethical concerns in artificial intelligence.

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Heather Dillon University of Washington Tacoma Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4467-2306

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Dr. Heather Dillon is Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her research team is working on energy efficiency, renewable energy, fundamental heat transfer, and engineering education. Before joining academia, Heather Dillon worked for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) as a senior research engineer.

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Andrew M. Nuxoll University of Portland

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Andrew began his career as a software engineer. Lately (since 2007) he has been teaching computer science at the University of Portland. He is an active researcher in artificial general intelligence and computer science pedagogy. He also loves playing bridge and being outdoors.

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Nicole C. Ralston University of Portland

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Dr. Nicole Ralston is an Assistant Professor and co-Director of the Multnomah County Partnership for Education Research (MCPER) in the School of Education at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Measurement, Statistics, and Research Design from the University of Washington. An elementary school teacher at heart, she now teaches educational research and STEM methods to undergraduate and graduate students. Her research focus involves bringing active learning strategies to STEM, best practices of research-practice partnerships, and applied research in partnership.

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Abstract

The purpose of this research was to develop classroom project modules that supported students in developing an entrepreneurial mindset in the context of software engineering. The modules connect the software development life-cycle from beginning to end including user focused requirements elicitation and evaluating quality attributes. The modules were implemented in a junior level software engineering course in 2019. A student survey was developed and measured student perceptions of learning objectives that tie directly into ABET accreditation outcomes. Students reported they found the activities most helpful for designing, building, and testing real world systems.

Qualitatively, we found that the student work completed in these modules to be higher quality than similar work submitted in prior years. Exam scores were improved when measuring students ability to create use cases, especially clarity and completeness. Student performance was greatly improved when writing use cases, especially clarity and completeness which was reflected in improved projects. Quantitatively, the same mindset objectives were assessed in other course modules as part a larger curriculum wide effort in Engineering. The numerical results indicate that the modules in this course outperformed other modules in the curriculum for most of the mindset objectives. Ultimately, the results indicate these types of modules may play an important role in entrepreneurial mindset development for computer science students.

Tribelhorn, B., & Dillon, H., & Nuxoll, A. M., & Ralston, N. C. (2021, July), Connecting Entrepreneurial Mindset to Software Development Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36838

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