Measuring Self-Efficacy in Diverse First-Year Engineering Students Exposed to Entrepreneurial Minded Learning

This Innovative Practice Category full paper presents research in which Entrepreneurial Minded Learning (EML) was implemented in introductory engineering classes, as an intervention, to study how EML influences self-efficacy between students of Hispanic and non-Hispanic ethnicities at a Hispanic Serving Institution. The EML tenet is to include the "three C's" in project-based learning: curiosity, connections, and creating value. A key question is whether EML not only influences student learning but also the students' confidence in being successful engineers. Much work has been done studying how EML affects learning, yet few studies look into the effect of the mindset on self-efficacy. Moreover, self-efficacy is known to differ depending on a person's race and ethnicity. We studied three groups: (i) a cohort not exposed to EML; (ii) a cohort exposed to EML design projects lightly guided by a student-mentor; (iii) a cohort exposed to EML design projects heavily guided by faculty and a graduate student. We performed pre- and post-surveys to evaluate how strongly students identify as engineers when exposed (or not) to EML. We find that participation in an introductory engineering course itself may have more influence on students' engineering self-efficacy than the specific level of EML within the course.