Early Design Sprint Impact on Engineering Identity and Entrepreneurial Mindset in the First Year

Kathleen Bieryla; Shaghayegh Abbasi; Jordyn Wolfand

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: First-Year Programs Division Technical Session 4: Design Thinking & Entrepreneurship
Tagged Division: First-Year Programs Division (FYP)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47210

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Paper Authors

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Kathleen Bieryla University of Portland

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Kathleen Bieryla is an associate professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering in the Shiley School of Engineering at the University of Portland.

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Shaghayegh Abbasi University of Portland

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Shaghayegh (Sherry) Abbasi received her B.S. in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. She continued her education in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department of the University of Washington where she received her M.S. in 2007 in the field of self-assembly of electronic devices and earned a Ph.D. in 2011 in electrical and computer engineering with an emphasis in novel metal deposition techniques. Her current research interests are related to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), specifically investigating treatment outcomes through a combination of FEM simulation and clinical data analysis. Sherry has worked in industry in the role of a senior system design engineer at Lumedyne Technologies, where she developed a software model for a time-based MEMS accelerometer. She then gained significant academic experience through six years of teaching as an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego. Sherry has been collaborating on a bioengineering research project with the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego since 2016. In addition to technical research, she conducts engineering education research related to project based learning. Sherry aims to apply her knowledge and experience towards creating a dynamic learning environment for students, utilizing a variety of active learning techniques in her classroom and laboratories.

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Jordyn Wolfand University of Portland orcid.org/0000-0003-2650-4373

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Jordyn M. Wolfand earned a B.S. degree in environmental engineering from Tufts University and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree in environmental engineering from Stanford University. She joined the faculty at University of Portland in 2020 and her research interests are in water resources engineering and urban hydrology.

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Abstract

This Complete Research paper describes the impact of a design sprint early in a first-year engineering course on engineering identity and the entrepreneurial mindset. In an introduction to engineering class, many first-year students do not see the connection of small, one-off lab activities, to their engineering identity and the entrepreneurial mindset. Engineering identity is a person’s belief they are an engineer while entrepreneurial mindset is a student’s ability to use curiosity, connections, and creating value to solve problems. The first-year engineering class is a formative class that can be used to shape a student’s engineering identity. Engineering experiences have been shown to improve student’s engineering identity. Furthermore, students struggle with identifying real-world connections from activities completed in an introduction to engineering class. Introducing concepts earlier in the semester to allow these connections to form may also solidify students’ engineering identity. The purpose of this paper was to determine if introducing a design sprint on the second day of class would increase first-year students’ ability to strengthen their engineering identity and entrepreneurial mindset compared to students who did not complete the design sprint early in the semester. Methods In fall 2023, five sections (126 students) of an introduction to engineering class were taught at a predominantly undergraduate, private institution. Three sections (73 students) completed a design sprint activity (experimental) on the second day of class while two sections (53 students) completed an environmental engineering activity (control). The study was approved by the university’s IRB and consent was obtained from all participants. Prior to the second day of class, students completed two surveys. The first asked questions related to engineering identity based on Godwin’s model, which consists of three aspects of identity: interest, performance, and recognition. The second focused on the entrepreneurial mindset. Students assessed the following questions on a Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree: (1) to what extent do you feel capable of exploring multiple solution paths when approaching a problem or challenge; (2) to what extent do you feel capable of making connections between your engineering studies and your everyday life; (3) to what extent do you feel capable of demonstrating empathy in identifying problems and exploring solutions (where empathy can be defined as the ability to take someone else's perspective so you can better understand their thoughts and emotions); and (4) to what extent do you feel capable of creating solutions that meet customer need. The same questions were asked five weeks into the 14-week semester before the final project was introduced. During week eight, the control group will complete the design sprint activity. The surveys will be administered again in week 14. The abstract presents preliminary results from the pre-survey and week five survey. As the data was not normally distributed, nonparametric tests were used for analysis. Change scores were calculated across time, and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to determine if there was a difference in dependent measures between the control and experimental groups. To examine time change differences, independent of the group, a Friedman test was conducted. The analysis was conducted in SPSS v27, with significance set at p<0.05. Results There was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the change scores for engineering identity (p=0.008). The experimental group was higher than the control group for performance metrics (p<0.001), which is a group of five self-reported statements like “I am confident I can do well in engineering.” There was no difference in recognition (“People see me as an engineer.”) or interest (“I enjoy engineering”) between groups. There was a significant increase in overall identity (p<0.001) and performance (p<0.001) from week 1 to week 5 with no change in recognition or interest independent of group. There was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the change scores related to the entrepreneurial mindset. The change scores decreased for all questions for both groups from week 1 to week 5. The question asking students about multiple solutions and the capability of creating multiple solutions decreased significantly from week 1 to week 5, independent of the group. Students’ ability to make connections and demonstrate empathy decreased, though not significantly. Preliminary results suggest the introduction of the design sprint early in the course may impact some metrics of engineering identity, though more importantly, the course improves students’ perception of identity overall. Students’ perception of entrepreneurial mindset decreased over time, indicating the introduction to engineering course may have decreased students’ confidence in engineering problem solving, which is an area for further exploration.

Citation
Format

Bieryla, K., & Abbasi, S., & Wolfand, J. (2024, June), Early Design Sprint Impact on Engineering Identity and Entrepreneurial Mindset in the First Year Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47210

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This Complete Research paper describes the impact of a design sprint early in a first-year engineering course on engineering identity and the entrepreneurial mindset. In an introduction to engineering class, many first-year students do not see the connection of small, one-off lab activities, to their engineering identity and the entrepreneurial mindset. Engineering identity is a person’s belief they are an engineer while entrepreneurial mindset is a student’s ability to use curiosity, connections, and creating value to solve problems. The first-year engineering class is a formative class that can be used to shape a student’s engineering identity. Engineering experiences have been shown to improve student’s engineering identity. Furthermore, students struggle with identifying real-world connections from activities completed in an introduction to engineering class. Introducing concepts earlier in the semester to allow these connections to form may also solidify students’ engineering identity. The purpose of this paper was to determine if introducing a design sprint on the second day of class would increase first-year students’ ability to strengthen their engineering identity and entrepreneurial mindset compared to students who did not complete the design sprint early in the semester. 
Methods
In fall 2023, five sections (126 students) of an introduction to engineering class were taught at a predominantly undergraduate, private institution. Three sections (73 students) completed a design sprint activity (experimental) on the second day of class while two sections (53 students) completed an environmental engineering activity (control). The study was approved by the university’s IRB and consent was obtained from all participants. Prior to the second day of class, students completed two surveys. The first asked questions related to engineering identity based on Godwin’s model, which consists of three aspects of identity: interest, performance, and recognition. The second focused on the entrepreneurial mindset. Students assessed the following questions on a Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree: (1) to what extent do you feel capable of exploring multiple solution paths when approaching a problem or challenge; (2) to what extent do you feel capable of making connections between your engineering studies and your everyday life; (3) to what extent do you feel capable of demonstrating empathy in identifying problems and exploring solutions (where empathy can be defined as the ability to take someone else&#39;s perspective so you can better understand their thoughts and emotions); and (4) to what extent do you feel capable of creating solutions that meet customer need. The same questions were asked five weeks into the 14-week semester before the final project was introduced. During week eight, the control group will complete the design sprint activity. The surveys will be administered again in week 14. 
The abstract presents preliminary results from the pre-survey and week five survey. As the data was not normally distributed, nonparametric tests were used for analysis. Change scores were calculated across time, and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to determine if there was a difference in dependent measures between the control and experimental groups. To examine time change differences, independent of the group, a Friedman test was conducted. The analysis was conducted in SPSS v27, with significance set at p&amp;lt;0.05.
Results
There was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the change scores for engineering identity (p=0.008). The experimental group was higher than the control group for performance metrics (p&amp;lt;0.001), which is a group of five self-reported statements like “I am confident I can do well in engineering.” There was no difference in recognition (“People see me as an engineer.”) or interest (“I enjoy engineering”) between groups. There was a significant increase in overall identity (p&amp;lt;0.001) and performance (p&amp;lt;0.001) from week 1 to week 5 with no change in recognition or interest independent of group. 
There was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the change scores related to the entrepreneurial mindset. The change scores decreased for all questions for both groups from week 1 to week 5. The question asking students about multiple solutions and the capability of creating multiple solutions decreased significantly from week 1 to week 5, independent of the group. Students’ ability to make connections and demonstrate empathy decreased, though not significantly. 
Preliminary results suggest the introduction of the design sprint early in the course may impact some metrics of engineering identity, though more importantly, the course improves students’ perception of identity overall. Students’ perception of entrepreneurial mindset decreased over time, indicating the introduction to engineering course may have decreased students’ confidence in engineering problem solving, which is an area for further exploration.

AU  - Kathleen Bieryla
AU  - Shaghayegh Abbasi
AU  - Jordyn Wolfand
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Early Design Sprint Impact on Engineering Identity and Entrepreneurial Mindset in the First Year
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/47210
ER  -