Entrepreneurship Education & Its Impact on Engineering Student Outcomes: The Role of Program Characteristics and Faculty Beliefs

在过去的十年里，创业精神已经成为工程教育的一个关键方面。在全球经济变化的推动下，创业是工程专业课程发展最快的领域之一，目前有数百门创业课程可供工科学生使用。然而，我们对课程的特点、学习目标、评估实践以及学生的影响知之甚少。这个多学科研究团队将确定招收工程类学生的以工程为中心的创业教育项目的特点，首先对三个成熟的项目进行深入研究。然后，这些结果将被用于对美国各地至少50个额外项目进行清点。收集的信息将确定和定义项目类型、创新的教学方法、学生学习目标和评估实践。此外，还将研究教师对工程创业教育的信念，与创业教师的访谈将探索他们认为学生应该学习什么，应该如何教授创业，以及应该如何评估学生。这些数据将被用来制定一项调查，该调查将被管理给在其他50个项目任教的教师，然后调查将普遍可用。这项研究的结果将包括教学、程序开发和评估方面的最佳实践指南，对于培养在全球经济中具有竞争力的工程师具有重要意义。结果将通过全国大学生发明家和创新者联盟(NCIIA)网络广泛传播，包括为教师举办的讲习班和培训材料，传播用于评估学习结果的工具，以及关于全国创业教育计划状况的详细信息。这将为工程教育者提供资源，使他们的课程现代化，并将使学生受益，他们将有更多机会获得高质量的工程创业教育选择。

Over the past decade, entrepreneurship has emerged as a critical aspect of engineering education. Driven by changes in the global economy, entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing areas of course development in engineering programs, with hundreds of courses in entrepreneurship now available to engineering students. However, we know little about program characteristics, learning goals, assessment practices, and student impacts. This multidisciplinary research team will identify the characteristics of engineering-centric entrepreneurship education programs that enroll engineering students, starting with an in-depth examination of three well-established programs. Then these results will be used to conduct an inventory of at least 50 additional programs across the U.S. Information collected will identify and define program types, innovative teaching methods, student learning goals, and assessment practices. In addition, faculty beliefs about engineering entrepreneurship education will be studied and interviews with entrepreneurship faculty will explore what they believe students should learn, how entrepreneurship should be taught, and how students should be assessed. This data will be used to develop a survey that will be administered to faculty who teach in 50 other programs, and then the survey will be generally available. The results of this research, which will include guidelines for best practices in teaching, program development, and assessment, will have great significance for educating engineers who will be competitive in the global economy. Results will be widely disseminated using network of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) and will include workshops and training materials for faculty, dissemination of tools for evaluation of learning outcomes, and detailed information on the status of entrepreneurship education programs across the country. This will provide resources for engineering educators as they modernize the curriculum and will benefit students who will have wider access to quality engineering entrepreneurship education options.