Collaborative Research: Investigating the Innovation Capabilities of Undergraduate Engineering Students

德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校（博士授予大学）和马萨诸塞州达特茅斯大学（MS授予机构）之间的合作项目正在调查本科工程课程对本科工程学生创新能力的影响。两所大学的机械工程系正在研究学生的创新能力，并寻找他们的课程与创新能力变化之间的相关性。本研究的目的在于探讨工科本科课程对研究生创新能力的提升程度。该项目正在建立衡量学生创新能力的工具，其中包括概念生成练习，让学生解决开放式设计问题，以及调查学生创造性自我效能的调查。这些工具包含用于评估学生设计的原创性和技术可行性水平的指标，并被用来确定完整的本科课程的效果和个别课程（例如设计导向课程）对学生创新能力的影响。这是通过在课程的入口和出口以及选定课程的开始和结束时评估学生的创新能力来实现的。这项研究还将创新能力与学生的技术表现联系起来，这是用学生的绩点比来衡量的。由于这项工作是使用非常独特的学生群体进行的，这项工作将产生全国性的影响。该项目的主要贡献包括评估创新能力的工具，以及更好地理解工程课程与培养创新工程师之间的关系。

This collaborative project between the University of Texas at Austin (a PhD granting university) and the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth (an MS granting institution) is investigating the impact of undergraduate engineering curricula on the innovation capabilities of undergraduate engineering students. The mechanical engineering departments at both universities are studying innovation capability of students and looking for correlations between their curricula and changes in innovation ability. The goal of the research is to determine to what extent the undergraduate engineering curriculum improves graduate innovation capability. The project is establishing instruments for measuring the innovation capability of students that consist of concept generation exercises where students solve open-ended design problems and a survey to investigate student creative self-efficacy. These instruments contain metrics for assessing the level of originality and technical feasibility of student designs and are being used to determine the effect the complete undergraduate curriculum and the effect of individual courses (design-oriented courses, for example) on student innovation capabilities. This is being accomplished by assessing student innovation capabilities at the entry and exit points of the curriculum and at the beginning and end of selected courses. The research is also correlating innovation capability with student technical performance as measured using the student's grade-point ratio. Because the work is being carried out using very distinct student populations, the work will have a national impact. Major contributions of the project include an instrument for assessing innovation capabilities and a better understanding of the relationship between engineering curricula and the development of innovative engineers.