Promoting Entrepreneurial Mindset Development in Engineering Students: Combining Story-based Learning with Experiential Design

This Innovative Practice Full Paper focuses on the development of the entrepreneurial mindset in junior-level engineering students by combining experiential design project learning with a real-life story on entrepreneurial capacity development. The entrepreneurial mindset has been defined as a specific state of mind which orientates human conduct towards entrepreneurial activities and outcomes. The development of entrepreneurial mindset is particularly important in bridging education to the future in which individuals must be sensitive to and be able to identify and respond appropriately to the constant changes and associated opportunities that characterize the future. While different approaches are being employed to inculcate and develop this mindset in engineering students. the heavy technical course load as well as the technically-oriented mindset that many engineering students have, pose great challenges to entrepreneurial mindset development. In order to overcome these challenges, an innovative approach in which teams of interdisciplinary engineering students participate in two semesters design courses that combine engineering design with the entrepreneurial mindset has been implemented. In the first semester, the focus was on the customer discovery process to identify and evaluate opportunities, and engineering design. In the second semester, the course combines engineering design with an entrepreneurial story component. In 14 out of the 16 weeks' course period in the second semester, students were required to read a short chapter every week outside class from the book: Rich Dad's Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki. Unlike most hooks used in schools, the book uses a real-life story to teach important entrepreneurial concepts. The chapters are easy to read and are based on the true story of how Rich Dad taught Robert Kiyosaki how to develop the entrepreneurial mindset and capacity. The students were required to answer a short quiz every week after reading each chapter. They were also required to reflect on and document in their journals the lessons learned and how to apply it to themselves. The goal is that the students can better relate to the character and the context of the story thereby facilitating the learning of important entrepreneurial concepts. The development of the entrepreneurial mindset of the students will be assessed through reflection analysis. The study will provide insights into the change in the students' entrepreneurial mindset as a result of combining design with story-based learning in the second semester as against the first semester where design and customer discovery process was employed. The findings from this preliminary study may provide an efficient and effective strategy for developing the entrepreneurial mindset in engineering students.