Cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset in an undergraduate engineering statistics course using project-based learning

Engineering curricula include fundamental courses, such as Statics and Dynamics, that serve has foundations for later courses. Unfortunately, these courses often have low success rates and are described as poor educational contexts. To gain a better understanding of the learning contexts in fundamental engineering courses, we focus on the perspective of faculty teaching fundamental engineering courses in mechanical engineering. Grounded in expectancy-value theory, we specifically examined faculty perspectives on how they facilitate learning (faculty behaviors) and faculty beliefs about students as learners. Within a sub-sample of a larger dataset, we found that no participants used the exact same strategies but they each used 3 or 4 of the following: facilitating group work, cognitive modeling, scaffolding, demonstrating practical applications, and use of reinforcers. We also found that participants had unique, shared, and differing beliefs about student learning. Participants' beliefs include the ideas that students are still figuring out how to learn engineering, looking for direction from instructors, and are distracted by competing demands on their time. We found differences with regard to perceptions of student motivation, student abilities, and student engagement. Our findings are both consistent with and expand current literature.

- The effectiveness of a series of online quizzes use to "blend" a traditional face-to-face fundamental chemical engineering course is examined. Six quizzes were offered to the students: four counting for grade and two optional, followed by in-class quizzes. All quizzes focused on foundational course concepts. Students were also asked to complete two surveys: one at the beginning of the course to examine their previous experiences with online homework and testing and one at the end of the course to investigate their perceptions about the value and the logistics of this course’s quizzes. 
 Results indicate that students use multiple attempts on the quizzes counting for grade, but do not try the optional quizzes. That happens even though they value the quizzes highly in terms of helping them keep on track with the course material, build problem-solving skills, and improve their critical thinking. Evidence indicates that students favour having similar quizzes in other fundamental engineering courses.

One of the main reasons that engineering students withdraw from their major programs is the discouraging academic performance in fundamental engineering courses. It not only limits students' access to advanced engineering courses, but also diminishes students' attitudes toward engineering. The purpose of this pilot study is to investigate the effect of the proposed peer learning strategy on students' learning of Dynamics, a fundamental engineering course. Research questions of this study include: Q1: To what extent does the proposed peer learning strategy improve students' understanding of engineering dynamics? Q2: To what extent does the proposed peer learning strategy change students' attitudes toward engineering? Seventy students who enrolled in the Engineering Dynamics course in the fall 2014 and spring 2015 participated in this study. Students' performance by question type (PQT) were defined and analyzed to identify students' academic needs and to assign peer learning teams. Results suggested that peer learning strategy proposed in this pilot study had positive impact on students learning of dynamics and attitudes toward engineering. Limitations and future studies were discussed at the end of this WIP.

With the ever-changing technological developments in engineering, educators are constantly trying to have curricula address the changing needs of the workforce. One means is incorporating the Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) into various courses in the form of Entrepreneurial Minded Learning (EML) activities. Although notable strides have been made in the implementation of EML across engineering education, there remain significant challenges to more buy-in from instructors and students alike. Thermodynamics, a notoriously abstract and difficult subject matter to effectively engage students, is not immune to the need to change. Thermodynamics is a fundamental engineering science course that is shared by mechanical, chemical, and similar engineering programs. Adopting new material into such a foundational course can be difficult. Engineering instructors introduce several teaching methods including active learning, interactive lecture demonstrations, video-based lectures, additional online learning activities through learning management systems, project-based learning, and problem-based learning. However, there is still room for improvements in teaching methods for this fundamental class. To reduce the activation barrier and overcome the entropic inertia that resists curriculum changes, this paper addresses a means to create easy-to-adopt EML modules in an introductory thermodynamics course. The goal is to engage the classroom using small snippets of EML at a time – so called Mini-EML Adventures. By taking a modular approach for implementation, instructors have the ability to pick and choose mini EML modules for a given topic to better engage students, with the hope of reducing the amount of work and development time often required in creating new course material. The approach taken by the authors is to create Mini-EML Adventures using different concepts often encountered in thermodynamics and leveraging the three Cs of EM (curiosity, connections, and creating value) to engage the modern, diverse classroom. The main goal is to elevate existing lecture material into something short, interesting, and EML-friendly. These Mini-EML Adventures contain a one-sentence description, the mindset addressed, targeted skillset, course topic, type of activity, time requirements (generally less than a class period), and materials needed. We provide example activities along with a general template for these activities that can help instructors craft their own Mini-EML Adventures. The goal of this work is to make EML more accessible to instructors to implement in their existing thermodynamic courses and beyond.

Group projects are expected in contemporary engineering curricula, and yet they often pose a challenge to students and instructors alike. Could making projects personally relevant help? The present study created and tested a conceptual framework regarding the impact of personal relevance on groupwork in a project-based learning (PBL) course. We examined how measures of personal relevance (PR), both at the course level (value, interest in specialisation) and specifically regarding projects (interest and investment in the project, and contribution to the project idea) relate to students’ expectancy, group connectedness, team dynamics (effectiveness, conflict, satisfaction, interdependence, and cohesiveness), and perceived effort; whether PR differs based on students’ gender, academic year, or time of the semester; and whether PR predicts students’ project performance. Seventy-one undergraduates in a project-based computer science course at a large public US university completed surveys assessing these constructs at five timepoints during the semester. Our findings suggest PR is related to positive outcomes in PBL courses, with interest and investment predicting an increase in the project grade. Similarly, gender predicted project grade with female students having significantly higher scores overall, above and beyond other measures. We discuss implications for creating project-based courses in higher education engineering courses.

In engineering studies, there is a shift to new teaching methodologies with focus on the student involvement, like project-based learning. Project-based learning courses, however, often relay on a previous course where the technical background to be used in the projects is taught, requiring this way two terms for an area. In this paper, we consider a project-based course on computer network applications, which has been designed to cover both the technical and non-technical content in only one term. In the three years we have been teaching this course, our observation based on questionnaires is that the organization of the course allows to successfully reaching the course objectives. We feel, however, that we do not fully exploit the learning potential the course could have in the first few weeks of the course. We describe how the course is organized and the problems we have identified. We propose a project demonstration tool and describe how our solution improves towards our goals. With the proposed tool, the students should better obtain already in the very first days of the course a clear vision about the projects, allowing fully taking advantage of the opportunities which the course offers. format.

Project-Based Learning as the Vehicle for Social Responsibility and Social Justice Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a pedagogy that centers learning around projects that involve students in design, problem solving, decision making, and other investigative activities. Students engaged in PBL typically work autonomously over extended periods of time to create realistic products or presentations [1]. PBL allows students to serve specific groups of people in our society, while enriching students’ learning, retention and commitment by enhancing their interest, motivation and ability to see the relevance of classroom activities to solving real world problems [2-5]. PBL is also an excellent vehicle to make visible the intertwined social and technical dimensions of engineering. This allows for deep, authentic learning of important themes such as social justice (SJ) and social responsibility (SR), which otherwise currently exist primarily on the fringes of mainstream engineering curriculum. Thus, four faculty members in both the Petroleum Engineering (PE) Department and the Division of Engineering, Design, and Society (EDS) at the same engineering university used PBL to teach students to recognize, value, and begin applying SJ and SR in courses that focus on extractive industries, sustainable community development, and assistive technologies. This work-in-progress paper will provide a brief overview of PBL – the main principles, opportunities, hurdles, requirements, and a framework of best practices. Then, it will make an argument for using PBL as a vehicle for teaching SR and SJ, as compared to other methods of teaching. Next, concrete examples of how four faculty members have used PBL to deepen students’ understanding of SJ and SR will be presented. As these courses are being completed throughout the 2017/2018 academic year, only limited analysis as to their efficacy in teaching SJ and SR will be completed, and experiences teaching these courses compared. Finally, the paper will provide suggestions and a set of preliminary best practices for faculty who would like to bring SJ- and SR-themed PBL into their own courses. [1] Thomas, J. (2000). A Review of Research on Project Based Learning. San Rafael, CA. [2] Bielefeldt, A., Paterson, K., and Swan, C. Report from the February 2009 NSF Summit on Measuring the Impacts of Project Based Service Learning on Engineering Education. February 19-20, 2009. Washington, D.C. [3] Astin, A., Vogelgesang, L., Ikeda, E., and Yee, J. (2000). How Service Learning Affects Students. Retrieved on December 6, 2009 from the Higher Education Research Institute. <www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/PDFs/HSLAS/HSLAS.PDF> [4] Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: goals, structures, and student motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(3), 261 – 271. [5] Duffy, J., Barry, C., Barrington, L., and Heredia, M. (2009). Service-learning in engineering science courses: Does it work? Proceedings of the 2009 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition.

Most of the engineering courses focus more on theory and very little on hands-on, project-based learning in the classroom. Integration of real-world engineering problems and applications in lower division engineering courses will produce engineering students, who will be technically sound and be able to execute and manage real-world projects, when they will do senior design projects in their final year of engineering study. To overcome the engineering design challenges we have developed iHOP (Ingenieŕia Hands on Project) and integrate it with our lower division engineering courses. iHOP has been developed to emphasis the design component at the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) Engineering Physics curriculum and the project is now an integral part of Introduction to Engineering class. The iHOP project is one that is challenging, fun, requires teamwork, associated with the engineering material being studied, low cost, and doable in a limited amount of time. The experience from iHOP project motivates our freshman students to choose a better senior design project in senior year of their college career. The objectives of the iHOP projects are — to have students develop teamwork skills, and to teach students basic engineering design concepts in a complementary format to the traditional lecture. Various techniques related to team selection, encouraging teamwork, incorporation of engineering topics, keeping costs down, project results presentations, and gathering feedback from students will also be presented in this paper. Integrating iHOP Project with Introduction to Engineering class helped us to improve our retention effort in the engineering department.

Biomedical Engineers (BME) play an important role in medical and healthcare society. Well educational programs are important to support the healthcare systems including hospitals, long term care organizations, manufacture industries of medical devices/instrumentations/systems, and sales/services companies of medical devices/instrumentations/system. In past 30 more years, biomedical engineering society has accumulated thousands people hold a biomedical engineering degree, and work as a biomedical engineer in Taiwan. Most of BME students can be trained in biomedical engineering departments with at least one of specialties in bioelectronics, bio-information, biomaterials or biomechanics. Students are required to have internship trainings in related institutions out of campus for 320 hours before graduating. Almost all the biomedical engineering departments are certified by IEET (Institute of Engineering Education Taiwan), and met the IEET requirement in which required mathematics and fundamental engineering courses. For BMEs after graduation, Taiwanese Society of Biomedical Engineering (TSBME) provides many continue-learning programs and certificates for all members who expect to hold the certification as a professional credit in his working place. In current status, many engineering departments in university are continuously asked to provide joint programs with BME department to train much better quality students. BME is one of growing fields in Taiwan.

Previous research has demonstrated a link between prior knowledge and student success in engineering courses. However, while course-to-course relations exist, researchers have paid insufficient attention to internal course performance development. This study aims to address this gap—designed to quantify and thus extract meaningful insights—by examining a fundamental engineering course, Statics, from three perspectives: (1) progressive learning reflected in performance retention throughout the course; (2) critical topics and their influence on students’ performance progression; and (3) student active participation as a surrogate measure of progressive learning. By analyzing data collected from 222 students over five semesters, this study draws insights on student in-course progressive learning. The results show that early learning had significant implications in building a foundation in progressive learning throughout the semester. Additionally, insufficient knowledge on certain topics can hinder student learning progression more than others, which eventually leads to course failure. Finally, student participation is a pathway to enhance learning and achieve excellent course performance. The presented analysis approach provides educators with a mechanism for diagnosing and devising strategies to address conceptual lapses for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses, especially where progressive learning is essential.

Background: Overall, high rates of American high school seniors lack writing proficiency (75%) and historically underrepresented minority (URM) populations fare even worse (91% of African American, 89% of Latinx) (U.S. Dept of Education, 2011), which suggests that URM college students enter college with lower writing abilities (Bracco et al., 2021). Co-curricular writing instruction could help eliminate writing skill disparities. The Health Science Intensive Writing Workshop (HSIWW) aimed to increase students’ perceived confidence in their writing abilities, encourage and increase academic help-seeking behaviors and networking skills.&#x0D; Description of Practice: A project-based learning methodology proved the best fit because of its focus on real-world problems and assessments, and emphasis on collaboration and revisions of personal work. &#x0D; Outcomes: Eight upper-division health science undergraduate students participated in the 5-day HSIWW. Descriptive statistics indicated increases in perceived ability, confidence in writing abilities, and academic help-seeking behaviors. &#x0D; Conclusion: To the study team’s knowledge, the HSIWW was unique as a co-curricular, project-based course that used high-impact practices to teach public health writing skills to URM students in higher education. HSIWW’s findings suggest a positive impact on student achievement by improving student performance and scaffolding the academic help-seeking behaviors that help keep students on the path to graduation.

Project-based learning is a teaching method used in classrooms that integrate authentic and real-world problems in the learning environment. In light of the Industrial Revolution 5.0 where humans are working alongside advanced technology and A.I. generated assistance, the research introduces a project-based learning approach in ESL classrooms with the assistance of AI technologies. The project aims to analyse the usefulness and ease of use of AI-based language learning applications in project-based learning among undergraduates in a public university according to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The research focuses on two main theories as a theoretical framework: project-based learning (PBL) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). It is a 6-week proposal writing project conducted with undergraduate students from a public university in Selangor. Project-based learning was introduced, and the participants were informed that they can make full use of any AI-based technologies to support their project. Submission of the proposal was scheduled for the sixth week in which it will be presented in class. A set of questionnaires was used as the instrument to obtain their perception of using AI-based technologies in project-based learning upon task completion. 50 respondents were involved in the study. The findings indicate that students had a positive view of using AI applications in their projects, preferred group work for its enjoyment, challenge, and manageability, and found AI language applications easy to use and beneficial for their learning. Finally, the project’s adaptability makes it suitable for various educational contexts, and integrating AI technology in ESL classrooms helps students complete language tasks effectively.

This paper presents the teaching of an educational innovation and digital technology course using project-based learning in an online learning environment. The objective of this research was to examine the efficiency of teaching using project-based learning in an educational innovation and digital technology course. A total of 470 students in a graduate diploma program in teaching at the Faculty of Industrial Education, Rajamangala University of Technology, Phra Nakhon, Bangkok, Thailand, participated in this study. A mixed methods design was used to collect data from the students. Data from the students’ projects, questionnaires, and grades were analysed. The results indicate that project-based learning is an effective teaching method in an online learning environment.

Self-efficacy is associated with a range of educational outcomes, including science and math degree attainment. Project-based statistics courses have the potential to increase students’ math self-efficacy because projects may represent a mastery experience, but students enter courses with preexisting math self-efficacy. This study explored associations between pre-course math confidence and coding confidence with post-course statistical intentions and perceived achievement among students in a project-based statistics course at 28 private and public colleges and universities between fall 2018 and winter 2020 (n = 801) using multilevel mixed-effects multivariate linear regression within multiply imputed data with a cross-validation approach (testing n = 508 at 20 colleges/universities). We found that pre-course coding confidence was associated with, respectively, 9 points greater post-course statistical intentions and 10 points greater perceived achievement on a scale 0–100 (0.09, 95% confidence interval (0.02, 0.17), p = 0.02; 0.10, 95% CI (0.01, 0.19), p = 0.04), and that minoritized students have greater post-course statistical intentions than nonminoritized students. These results concur with past research showing the potential effectiveness of the project-based approach for increasing the interest of minoritized students in statistics. Pre-course interventions to increase coding confidence such as pre-college coding experiences may improve students’ post-course motivations and perceived achievement in a project-based course. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

In the contemporary landscape of education, integrating Project-Based Learning (PjBL) within online educational environments has emerged as a prominent pedagogical approach, aiming to foster students' critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. This study seeks to evaluate students' experiences with Project-Based Learning in the context of online education, recognizing the significance of understanding the effectiveness and challenges associated with this instructional method. The primary aim of this research is to assess the perceptions and experiences of students engaging in Project-Based Learning within online educational settings. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to capture students' perspectives comprehensively. The study sample comprised students enrolled in diverse online courses across various disciplines, ensuring a broad representation of experiences and insights. The study's main results reveal a nuanced understanding of students' experiences with Project-Based Learning in online educational contexts. Quantitative analysis indicates overall positive perceptions regarding the effectiveness of PjBL in enhancing learning outcomes and fostering student engagement. Qualitative findings further elucidate the multifaceted nature of students' experiences, highlighting both the benefits and challenges of implementing PjBL in online settings. In conclusion, this research underscores the potential of Project-Based Learning as a valuable instructional approach within online education, offering opportunities for meaningful learning experiences and skill development. However, it also identifies several considerations and areas for improvement, such as adequate technological support, clear guidelines, and enhanced facilitation to optimize the PjBL experience in online environments. This study contributes to the field of education by providing empirical insights into implementing Project-Based Learning in online educational contexts. The findings offer valuable implications for educators, curriculum designers, and policymakers seeking to effectively integrate innovative pedagogical approaches into online learning environments, ultimately enhancing the quality and efficacy of online education.