student perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship: an exploratory study

April 2006 Journal of Engineering Education 153

NADA DABBAGH

Instructional Design and TechnologyGeorge Mason University

DANIEL A. MENASCÉ

Department of` Computer ScienceGeorge Mason University

ABSTRACT

This study examines students’ overall perceptions of the engineer-ing profession in a first-year course in engineering, and the effectof a pedagogical approach aimed at exposing students to engineer-ing entrepreneurship and their perceptions of engineering entre-preneurship. The approach featured a market game that engaged apilot group of 20 students in forming IT companies and compet-ing for the best design of a travel agent system. The rest of the stu-dents in the course completed the traditional class project, whichinvolved designing and building a land sailer. A pre-post Likert-type survey designed to measure students’ perceptions of the engi-neering profession was administered to all students enrolled in thiscourse. In addition, a short answer questionnaire seeking students’pedagogical perceptions of the market game and the land sailerproject was administered at the end of the course. Results indicatedthat students’ overall perceptions of the engineering professionsignificantly improved by the end of the course. More importantly,the results indicated that students who participated in the marketgame had significantly better perceptions of engineering entrepre-neurship, specifically professional skills, than students who partici-pated in the land sailer project. These findings are of considerableinterest to engineering schools that want to increase student reten-tion and are looking for novel approaches to assist freshmen inchoosing their majors.

Keywords: engineering entrepreneurship, pedagogy, student

retention.

I. INTRODUCTION

While student attrition is a national and institutional phenome-

non, research has shown that engineering programs are particularly

vulnerable [3]. Roughly fifty percent of students who begin their

college education in engineering leave the engineering curriculum

before receiving their degree with half of this attrition occurring

during the freshmen year [1, 20]. Surveys of freshmen intentions

show that approximately 25–30 percent of freshmen intend to

major in science and engineering, however, less than half of those

actually complete a science and engineering degree within five years

[21]. Overall, there has been a 15 percent decline in the number of

engineering bachelors degrees granted from 1997 to 2002 [23].

The problem is even more severe for women and underrepresented

minorities. Minorities entering engineering curricula drop out at

the rate of 70 percent or higher, and women have lower retention

rates than men [2, 9]. In addition, underrepresented minorities, in-

cluding African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans,

drop out of science and engineering majors at a higher rate than

other ethnic groups [21].

The problem of engineering student retention has received con-

siderable national attention [20]. Over the past decade, a large

number of research studies have sought to understand the underly-

ing causes of the high rate of attrition in engineering programs. In a

seven-university study of students who transferred out of science

and engineering programs, Seymour and Hewitt [19] concluded

that problems related to the structure of the educational experience,

and the culture of the discipline as portrayed in the attitudes and

practices of faculty, had a greater impact on student retention than

problems related to aptitude, ability, or appeal to other majors. For

example, Brainard and Carlin [6] found that in many science and

engineering programs, the attitude of faculty and administrative

personnel towards students who switch or drop out has traditionally

been that those students were just in the wrong field and that it was

better for all concerned to weed those students out as early in the

process as possible. Additionally, several studies have suggested that

beginning engineering courses fail to motivate students because

first-year engineering curricula consist primarily of fundamental

courses (e.g., physics, mathematics, chemistry, English) that are con-

sidered essential prerequisites to upper division engineering courses

and, as a result, many potential engineers transfer out of their ma-

jors before they experience what engineers really do in the real

world [18].

Shuman et al. [20] surveyed 203 freshmen students that trans-

ferred out of engineering programs and found that approximately

half of these students felt that their perceptions of engineering did

not match their experiences and that most had little idea what the

engineering profession is about. These researchers concluded that

too many students were drawing improper generalizations from

their introductory course material and that freshmen engineering

curricula were doing little to address these issues. Anderson-

Rowland [1] found similar causes when they surveyed freshmen

engineering students at Arizona State University at the end of the

introductory engineering class. The results of this survey revealed

that beginning freshmen engineering students do not have much

Student Perceptions of EngineeringEntrepreneurship: An Exploratory Study

understanding of an engineering career and may drop out during or

after the first year because they do not see the relevance of begin-

ning engineering courses to the engineering profession. The ques-

tion then is how strongly is this attrition related to students’ percep-

tions (or misperceptions rather) of the engineering profession?

And, what can engineering programs do to better portray to stu-

dents what engineers do in the real world in order to motivate them

to pursue a career in engineering?

II. ENGINEERING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Engineers are increasingly considered as “major agents of civi-

lization change” and “must think about the larger context in which

they pursue their work” [5]. A growing number of engineering

graduates are finding employment in small businesses and start-up

ventures—an environment that requires “a new type of engineer, an

entrepreneurial engineer, who needs a broad range of skills and

knowledge above and beyond a strong science and engineering

background” [8, cited in [17], p. 155]. Nichols and Armstrong [16]

state that an engineering entrepreneur is “one who organizes, man-

ages, and assumes the risk of an engineering business enterprise”

(p. 2). As George Berbeco (an entrepreneur) explained when asked

why engineers should learn entrepreneurial skills, “If an engineer is

not an entrepreneur, [he] is just a tool” [10, p. 4]. Torres, Velez-

Arocho, and Pabon [22] argue that “The contemporary engineer

must be able to (a) effectively communicate orally as well as in writ-

ing, (b) be capable of working in multidisciplinary teams, (c) be able

to attack problems with a global and multilateral focus, (d) have an

entrepreneurial spirit, and (e) be sensible to his cultural, social and

economic environment” (p. 738). Yurtseven [23] adds “the role of

an engineer has evolved from an independent, self-sufficient and

highly motivated inventor to an interdependent team member of a

corporate world, small or large” (p. 17). Therefore, it is no longer

adequate for engineering students to graduate with strong technical

skills [15]. Engineering graduates need a broad range of skills and

knowledge beyond that of the technical [17]. Specifically, engineers

need entrepreneurial skills.

In response to the need for engineers to develop entrepreneurial

skills, ABET in 2000 recommended that engineering curricula

(EC) address the following learning outcomes or skills: (a) design-

ing to meet desired needs, (b) teamwork (particularly multidiscipli-

nary teamwork), (c) communication, (d) problem-solving, and

(e) the understanding of engineering practice and its place in society

[17, pp. 155–156]. The American Society for Engineering Educa-

tion (ASEE) also recommended a shift in engineering education to

directly address the needs of a global economy and to foster an un-

derstanding of the relationship between engineering and business

operations in the formal training of engineers.

There seems to be no question among researchers, accreditation

boards, and professional organizations that developing entrepre-

neurial skills is equally valuable to developing technical skills in the

engineering profession. However, engineering students are rarely

exposed to the entrepreneurial perspective of engineering at either

the undergraduate or graduate levels [7, 12, 14]. Rather, “most en-

gineering program curricula have been dominated by design-and-

build projects with an emphasis on technical excellence that has, for

the most part, excluded developing an understanding of market

forces and context” [17, p. 156].

Recognizing the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000)

recommendations, many large four-year institutions have begun to

implement engineering programs and courses designed to promote

entrepreneurial education and foster new venture creation by

tomorrow’s engineer and science graduates. For example, North

Carolina State University has implemented a program called Engi-

neering Entrepreneurs Program (EEP). EEP builds on the cap-

stone senior design course required in most engineering curricula by

allowing students at all levels, freshman through senior, to partici-

pate. Typically, these capstone engineering courses require students

to develop a feasibility plan for a product or idea they have chosen,

or to simulate a start-up or spin-off venture that establishes a busi-

ness relationship with a “parent” company such as a local company

or business. The goal is to cultivate teamwork, communication and

presentation skills, leadership, and knowledge of business processes.

EEP participants have been shown to have higher engineering re-

tention rates and higher grades than non-participants (70 percent

vs. 51 percent and 3.08 vs. 2.83 respectively) [17]. Similar initiatives

exist at UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, UIUC, MIT, Stanford,

University of Nevada Reno (UNR), and Virginia Commonwealth

University (VCU), among others.

For example, Looney and Kleppe [13] applied a very hands-on

approach to teaching electrical engineering students at UNR the

concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship. In a senior capstone

course, students were given the opportunity to experience the prod-

uct development process by learning more about the business side of

product development including formulating an idea for a

product/business, presenting their proposal to faculty, developing a

prototype, researching market potential, and preparing a business

plan for funding. Graduates who took this course were given a head

start towards starting their own company and several of these grad-

uates have been recruited to fill management positions at high tech-

nology firms in a short period of time. Overall, students who took

this course demonstrated improved organizational skills and were

more focused towards developing marketable products.

The above initiatives are a sample of what engineering programs

or curricula nationwide are undertaking to address ABET EC2000

and consequently the issue of engineering student attrition and re-

tention. However most of these initiatives have targeted senior cap-

stone courses. In contrast, this study focuses on a freshman course

because it is at this level that most of the attrition is occurring.

Specifically, the purpose of this study was to examine students per-

ceptions of the engineering profession in Engineering 107, a fresh-

man engineering course at a large mid-Atlantic university’s School

of Information Technology and Engineering (IT&E), and further,

to examine the impact of a novel pedagogical approach on students’

perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship. This novel approach

featured a “market game” or simulation in which teams of students

act as IT (Information Technology) companies in a marketplace

and an “IT design game” in which each team designs and builds a

prototype system to meet a market need. This approach combines

both the technical design-and-build characteristics of classic engi-

neering projects and the entrepreneurial dimension that is often

lacking in engineering curricula.

To implement this novel pedagogical approach we structured

the final project of this first course in engineering (Engineering

107) in two levels. The higher level is defined by a “market game” in

which teams of students act as IT companies. The purpose of this

level is to situate learning in a real world context. In playing the

154 Journal of Engineering Education April 2006

market game, students are introduced to authentic learning activi-

ties including teamwork, competition, collaboration, marketing,

business plans, budgeting, and capitalization. The lower level is an

“IT design game” in which each team solves a moderately complex

problem and builds a prototype of a marketable IT system. The

purpose of this level is to engage students in complex and collabora-

tive problem solving. In playing this “design game,”students are in-

troduced to a variety of basic engineering principles from systems,

computer engineering, and computer science, as well as project

plans, project management, project reviews, presentations, and sat-

isfying customers.

In essence this project design, which we are referring to as the

novel pedagogical approach and the pilot project in this study, em-

beds an IT engineering design project inside a simulated market-

place of IT companies thereby integrating both technical and entre-

preneurial skills. Within such a design we can expose students to

what IT&E professionals do in the real world and satisfy ABET

EC2000 as follows:

(1) the goal is not to study technologies but to produce better

engineers who understand the technologies;

(2) engineers need to know some ad-hoc methods to help them

when the theories fail—a good engineer is grounded in both

theory and practice;

(3) real systems feature messy problems for which the engineer

must find a workable solution;

(4) IT engineers spend more time building systems from avail-

able parts than building new parts from scratch;

(5) engineers need to collaborate and communicate effectively

to serve their clients and get their jobs done;

(6) engineers must do their work with limited budgets and with

constraints on how much they can charge for their products;

and

(7) engineers work in a competitive marketplace.

III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHOD

The specific research questions for this study were: (1) did stu-

dents’ perceptions of the engineering profession overall improve as a

result of their educational experience in Engineering 107; (2) what

impact did the market game have on students’ perceptions of engi-

neering entrepreneurship; and (3), what impact did the classic de-

sign-and-build project have on students’ perceptions of engineering

entrepreneurship?

A. Course DescriptionEngineering 107, Engineering Fundamentals, is a two-credit fresh-

man course designed to provide students with a broad introduction to

engineering science and engineering design. Special emphasis is

placed on the application of engineering and design concepts and on

solving a design problem of modest complexity. There are no prereq-

uisites for this course; however, it is assumed that students have a

basic knowledge of math analysis and trigonometry. Enrollment in

this course typically ranges from 90 to120 students. The course grade

is based on homework (10 percent), the design project (35 percent), a

mid term (25 percent), and a final exam (30 percent).

The design project was of particular interest in this study because

students are assigned to functional groups closely representing an

engineering team that the students would be expected to be part of

once they graduate. The intent of the design project is to introduce

students to, and encourage use of, engineering tools and systems

engineering to design a system, component, or process to meet

desired needs. The design project can be described as the classic

design-and-build engineering project offered in most engineering

curricula. Past projects in this course included developing and test-

ing a prototype urban search and rescue personnel locator vehicle

and designing and building a Radio-Controlled (RC) model land

sailer. When this study was conducted, the RC land sailer was the

assigned project in this course. The market game was considered

the pilot project and was introduced by the research team to expose

students specifically to engineering entrepreneurship.

B. ParticipantsThe initial number of students enrolled in Engineering 107 was

114 but 22 students either dropped the course or were missing data

necessary to complete the analysis. Therefore the overall analysis was

based on 92 participants (n � 74 for the land sailer project and

n � 18 for the market game). Of this sample, seventy-seven students

were male and 15 were female. Eighty seven percent (87 percent) of

participants’ age ranged from 16 to 21. Sixty-four participants had

declared engineering as their major (this included civil, electrical,

systems, and computer engineering), 26 participants were undecided,

and two participants had declared non-engineering related fields as

their major. Primary reasons for choosing engineering as a major

included providing good career and money making opportunities

(20 percent), and interest in the engineering discipline including

interest in design, electronics, computers, technology, problem solv-

ing, and building things (60 percent). In terms of learning style,

41 percent of participants preferred the lecture method, 40 percent

preferred working in teams, and 18 percent preferred to learn inde-

pendently. Forty seven percent of participants were not employed,

47 percent worked part time, and 6 percent worked full time. The

type of work included technical jobs (7 percent), non-technical jobs

(20 percent), administrative (3 percent), engineering related (1 per-

cent), and other (22 percent).

C. Materials/Projects1) The market game: The objective of the market game was to

give students a “taste” of market forces while allowing them to be

successful in a design project. The five teams participating in the

market game simulated small IT companies seeking strong market

capitalization. Each team was responsible for the following tasks:

(a) choosing an identity for a company, (b) creating an initial project

plan, with many of the elements of a business plan, and getting it

capitalized, (c) designing and building the prototype of the IT sys-

tem, (d) presenting the prototype and business plan for IPO capi-

talization, and (e) assessing market valuation of the company after

IPO. As described earlier, a second level, the IT design game was

embedded in the market game. The IT system design game was or-

ganized around the paradigm of a young entrepreneur learning to

build an interesting system that solves a problem of value in the real

world. Students design and complete an IT system composed of

readily-accessible parts to satisfy a customer, and in the process, get

a “taste” (an introductory experience) of engineering, marketing,

market forces, teamwork, communication, competition, and cus-

tomer satisfaction—all components of an engineering professional.

More specifically, each team was required to design and imple-

ment a travel agent that uses services from airline, hotel, and car


rental services in order to prepare travel itineraries for customers.

Airline, hotel, and car rental services have ratings that reflect the

quality of the service they provide. These ratings are measured for

each service provider by a reputation index (a number between 0 and

100) and are maintained by a Reputation Server. Each travel agent

has a rank and a quality of service (QoS) indicator (a number be-

tween 0 and 100) associated to it. The QoS varies according to the

quality of the service provided by the travel agent to its customer.

The rank is a function of (a) the amount of money spent in adver-

tisement by the travel agent, relative to other travel agents, and (b)

the relative QoS of the travel agent with respect to other travel

agents. The rank and QoS of all travel agents is maintained by a

Popularity Server.

In addition, each travel agent receives payments from its cus-

tomers and pays for services (e.g., airline tickets, hotel rooms, car

rentals, and advertisement). A Bank Server is used to carry out all fi-

nancial transactions with travel agents. Figure 1 shows the main flow

of information between a travel agent and its environment. Students

were only responsible for implementing the travel agent. The rest of

the system components were pre-designed by the research faculty.

The overall learning goal of the market game was to promote stu-

dents’ meaningful understanding of the applications of IT in engi-

neering in order to increase relevance, retention, and transfer.

The competition or “game” is won by the travel agent that accu-

mulates the most money. However, the profit made by a travel

agent is highly correlated to the QoS it provides, which is reflected

in its rank. Customers select with high probability highly ranked

travel agents. Travel agents have to devise strategies that balance

QoS with the amount of money they spend to provide the services

requested. A travel agent may select low quality or high quality

providers to compose a trip, and based on the total price the agent

has to pay to all its service providers, it will determine the price to be

charged to its customers. Customers may turn down high priced

trips. A travel agent has to decide how much money it ought to

spend in advertisement to increase its rank and attract more busi-

ness. So, in summary, a travel agent’s strategy involves selection of

service providers, pricing, and advertisement expenditures. The

game can be stopped once or more than once to allow each team to

review its strategy and possibly change it. The rank of all travel

agents is computed by the Popularity Server every time a travel

agent spends money in advertisement and each time the QoS of a

travel agent is updated.

2) Coaching: The teams were guided through a development

process that included: (a) understanding the problem, (b) choosing

a design approach, (c) building a team, (d) designing and presenting

a project plan, (e) obtaining the parts and expertise needed to build

the planned system, (f) analyzing and managing costs, (g) coping

with breakdowns, and (h) designing a major marketing presenta-

tion of the prototype. Various resources were made available to help

the IT companies that the students formed, including libraries of

Java classes useful as software components of IT systems, guidelines

for business and project plans, a technical consultant, and a bank.

The game was regularly interrupted to hold coaching conversations

with the teams. These coaching events presented opportunities for

students to observe and assess team effectiveness, management,

leadership, team practice, strategy, and communication. Teams

could hire “consultants” (members of the instructional staff or re-

search team) to help them prepare their marketing presentations,

understand associated technologies, and prepare business plans,

among others. Alternatively, teams were given ownership to try to


Figure 1. Main flow of information between the Travel Agent and the other services.

do these things on their own. In so doing, they will learn tradeoffs

among conserving money, drawing on the expertise of others, and

meeting deadlines.

3) The land sailer project: The land sailer project (the instructor-

assigned project in this course) was the classic design-and-build en-

gineering project required in most engineering curricula. The pur-

pose of this project was to design, develop, and build a

radio-controlled (RC) model land sailer. The primary mission of

the RC model land sailer was to serve as a scale model platform to

test advanced hull and rig concepts and technologies for a fictional

client whose intent is to break the land sailing speed record on a

closed racing course. In this course, students (n � 74) were divided

into three main teams with the course instructor acting as the pro-

ject manager for the fictional client. Each of these teams was subdi-

vided into four primary functional groups: Systems Engineering,

Design, Manufacturing, and Test and Evaluation. The Design and

Manufacturing functional groups were further subdivided into

three groups: Chassis, Controls, and Sails and Rigging.

In terms of coaching, the instructor structured each class period

into a fifty-minute lecture on the course topics and the remaining

twenty-five minutes were set aside for groups to work on the semes-

ter project. All materials related to this project (these included ex-

tensive design and performance specifications) were provided on

the course website. At the end of the semester the three teams were

to compete against each other in a land sailing regatta to be held in a

parking lot close to the university. Although the land sailer project

definitely had a “competition” element similar to the market game,

it is clear that the main emphasis of this project was on technical en-

gineering skills. In addition, the instructor was acting as the primary

project manager monitoring individual, group, and team progress.

D. Measures1) Perceptions of engineering survey: A 95-item survey seeking

students’ perceptions of the engineering profession was developed

by the research team in consultation with engineering faculty and

the research that identified contemporary engineering skills includ-

ing the ABET EC2000 recommendations and the American Soci-

ety for Engineering Education (ASEE). The survey items included

three categories or subscales depicting three types of engineering

skills portrayed as tasks (things that an engineer would do). These

included: (1) 25 items related to technical engineering skills (e.g.,

develop a Gantt chart for a project; perform quality control; write

technical documentation), (2) 39 items related to business manage-

ment skills (e.g., write a business plan; prepare a budget for a pro-

ject; propose a new direction or vision for your company), and (3) 31

items related to professional skills (e.g., work in a team environ-

ment; understand how to negotiate to arrive at a decision; make a

commitment only when you are competent). See Appendix for the

complete survey. Subscales 2 and 3, which included items related to

business management skills and items related to professional skills,

measured students’ perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship.

The survey required students to rate each item on a scale of 1–5 (1 is

strongly disagree, SD, and 5 is strongly agree, SA) based on their

understanding of the importance of the task to the practice of engi-

neering. The survey was administered at the beginning and at the

end of the course to determine whether students’ overall attitudes

and perceptions about engineering changed as a result of their edu-

cational experience in the course. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coef-

ficients for the 95-item pre and post surveys were, 0.958 and 0.982,

respectively, and internal reliability coefficients for the three sub-

scales (pre and post) ranged from 0.909 to 0.974.

2) Short answer questionnaire: To determine the extent to which

the land sailer project and the market game differed from a peda-

gogical perspective, students’ perceptions of the pedagogical attrib-

utes of these projects were sought through a short answer question-

naire administered to all students at the end of the course. The

questions included the following:

1. Was the project challenging? Why or why not? Rate the

challenge on a scale of 1–10 where 1 is least challenging and

10 is most challenging.

2. Did the project require knowledge above and beyond what was

taught to you in this course? Answer yes/no. Briefly explain.

3. Was the project complex? Why or why not? Rate the com-

plexity of this project on a scale of 1–10 where 1 is least

complex and 10 is most complex.

4. Was the project real world (meaning useful and applicable in

the real world)? Why or why not? Rate the project’s useful-

ness in the real world on a scale of 1–10 where 1 is least use-

ful in the real world and 10 is most useful in the real world.

5. Did the project require creativity on your part (yes/no) and

how much of a creative process was required to complete

this project? Rate the creative process that was used in this

project on a scale of 1–10 where 1 is the least creativity re-

quired and 10 is the most.

6. Did the project require the use of problem-solving strate-

gies? Yes/No. Briefly explain.

7. Did the project require extensive knowledge of design ele-

ments and content? Why or why not? Explain.

8. Did you have adequate resources to complete this project?

Why or why not? Rate the usefulness of the resources provided

on a scale of 1–10 where 1 is least useful and 10 is very useful.

9. Were the resources well organized and easily accessible?

Yes/no. Explain.

10. Did you have adequate assistance from the faculty team and

GRA assigned to this project? Why or why not?

11. Did you think that this project is related to the field of engi-

neering in any way? Why or why not?

E. Design and Procedures of the StudyAt the beginning of the semester, the research team, with the

approval of the course instructor, informed the class that there

would be a pilot project (the market game) worth the same percent-

age (35 percent) of the course grade as the assigned land sailer pro-

ject and asked for 25 volunteers. A sheet with space for 25 names

was passed around and 25 students signed up. These students were

randomly assigned to five teams with five students in each team.

However, as mentioned earlier, several students dropped the course

in the first two weeks (as is typical in the first two weeks of registra-

tion) requiring an adjustment in the pilot sample from 25 to 20 stu-

dents with four students in each team. Two students in this pilot

sample did not complete either the pre or post Perceptions of Engi-neering Survey (resulting in n � 18 for the survey analysis). However,

all 20 students completed the short answer questionnaire resulting in

n � 20 for the questionnaire analysis. A graduate student in IT&E

was assigned to assist the market game teams from a technical as-

pect. Four faculty members, two of which are the authors of this

study, served as team coaches for the pilot group. The remaining stu-

dents (n � 74) participated in the land sailer project and were guided


by the course instructor. All students attended the same lectures

delivered by the course instructor and completed all other course

requirements which included homework, a midterm, and a final.

IV. ANALYSIS

To answer the questions posed in section III, a mixed methods

data analysis approach was performed. First, a paired t-test was per-

formed on data gathered from the 95-item Perceptions of EngineeringSurvey for all students enrolled in this course who completed the pre

and post survey (n � 92). Second, independent paired t-tests were

performed on the three subscales of the Perceptions of Engineering Survey for the market game data sample (n � 18), and, for a randomly

selected data sample (n � 18) of the land sailer project data sample.

Given that (a) by design, the number of students assigned to the

land sailer project was disproportionately larger than the number of

students assigned to the market game, (b) the land sailer project teams

had identical project goals, resources, and support structures, and

(c) the instructor of the course managed these teams, a randomly se-

lected sample (this was done using Statistical Package for the Social

Sciences’ (SPSS) random sample selection tool) is a statistically repre-

sentative sample of the land sailer project participants. Comparing

the survey results of the entire land sailer project data sample (n � 74)

to the market game data sample (n � 18) is not appropriate in this

context because this study was not experimentally designed, otherwise

participants would have been randomly assigned to the land sailer

project and the market game. Rather this study introduced a novel

pedagogical approach as a pilot project to a first course in engineering,

which had an existing classic design-and-build project. Therefore, the

pilot project can be considered as a case study, and in order to estab-

lish contextual rather than empirical validity, a subset of the land sailer

project survey data sample was randomly selected for cross-case

analysis. In addition, a comprehensive description and content analy-

sis of the data collected from the short answer questionnaire for all

students who completed this questionnaire (74 land sailer project

participants and 20 market game participants) was performed to tri-

angulate the results of the independent t-tests.

V. RESULTS

A. Quantitative Results To answer the first research question of this study—“Did students’

perceptions of the engineering profession overall improve or change as a

result of their educational experience in Engineering 107?”—a paired

t-test was performed on the 95-item Perceptions of Engineering Survey for all students who completed this survey pre and post (n �

92). The result was statistically significant, t (91) � –2.36, p � 0.05,

(pre-survey M and SD � 3.90, 0.54; post-survey M and SD � 4.06,

0.61) indicating that students’ overall perceptions of the engineer-

ing profession improved at the end of Engineering 107. The result

of the paired t-test for the technical engineering items was not sta-

tistically significant, t (91) � –0.476, p � 0.05, indicating that stu-

dents’ perceptions of the technical dimension of the engineering

profession did not change. This result was expected given that the

research literature has consistently confirmed that students perceive

engineering as a technical field of study. The results of the paired t-

tests for the business management items and professional skills

items were statistically significant, t (91) � –2.276, p � 0.05, and

t (91) � –3.339, p � 0.05, respectively, indicating that students’

perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship overall improved. A

paired t-test was also performed on the combined entrepreneurship

items (business management and professional skills) revealing a sta-

tistically significant result, t (91) � –3.038, p � 0.05. These results

are summarized in Table 1.

To answer the second research question of this study—“Whatimpact did the market game have on students’ perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship?”—paired t-tests were performed on the three sub-

scales of the Perceptions of Engineering Survey for the market game

participants’ sample (n � 18). The results were not statistically sig-

nificant for the technical engineering items and the business man-

agement items, t (17) � –0.062, p � 0.05, and, t (17) � –0.594, p �0.05, respectively. However, the result was statistically significant

for the professional skills items, t (17) � –3.287, p � 0.005. The re-

sult was not statistically significant for the combined entrepreneur-

ship subscales, t (17) � –1.528, p � 0.05. These results are summa-

rized in Table 2.

To answer the third research question of this study—“What im-pact did the land sailer project have on students’ perceptions of engineer-ing entrepreneurship?”—and for cross-case analysis, paired t-tests

were performed on the three subscales of the Perceptions of Engi-neering Survey for the random sample (n � 18) that was selected

from the land sailer project participants’ sample. The result for the

technical engineering items was not statistically significant,

t (17) � 0.035, p � 0.05. This was consistent with previous results

for all samples for this subscale. The results for the two entrepre-

neurial skills subscales, independently, and combined, were also not

statistically significant: t (17) � –0.008, p � 0.05 for business man-

agement items, t (17) � –0.633, p � 0.05 for professional skills


Table 1. Summary of results for the research question: “Did students’ perceptions of the engineering profession overall improve orchange as a result of their educational experience in Engineering 107?” (ER � Engineering Related Skills; BM � Business ManagementSkills; PS � Professional Skills).

items, and, t (17) � –0.246, p � 0.05 for all (combined) engineering

entrepreneurship items. These results are summarized in Table 3.

Based on the tables above, the quantitative results revealed that

students’ overall perceptions of the engineering profession im-

proved by the end of the course. The results also revealed that stu-

dents’ perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship did not change

for the land sailer project participants (based on the randomly se-

lected sample). However, students’ perceptions did change with re-

spect to professional skills (a component of engineering entrepre-

neurship) for the market game participants. In order to further

interpret these findings, we now turn to the qualitative analysis of

the short answer questionnaire, which was administered at the end

of the course to seek students’ pedagogical perceptions of the land

sailer project and the market game.

B. Qualitative Results 1) Project challenge: The analysis revealed that the market game

was more challenging (M � 9.3, SD � 0.73) than the land sailer

project (M � 6.9, SD � 1.9). One hundred percent (100 percent) of

student ratings (20 out of 20) of the degree of challenge of the mar-

ket game were 6 or higher compared to 70 percent (57 out of 74) for

the land sailer project. Reasons provided by students as to why the

market game was challenging included: (a) lack of domain knowl-

edge, (b) novelty of experience, (c) required a lot of effort, and (d)

lack of time allotted and resources. Reasons provided by students as

to why the land sailer project was challenging included: (a) difficulty

of teamwork, (b) difficulty of communicating amongst the different

sub-teams (inter-team communication), (c) difficulty of coordinat-

ing and managing project tasks within each sub-team (intra-group

communication), (d) novelty of experience, and (e) lack of domain

knowledge.

2) Knowledge above and beyond the course: This was a yes/no

question with explanation. One hundred percent (100 percent) of

student responses (20 out of 20) were “yes” for the market game in-

dicating that this project required knowledge above and beyond

what was taught in the course, compared to 69 percent (51 out of

74) for the land sailer project. The primary reason provided by stu-

dents as to why the market game required knowledge above and be-

yond what was taught in the course was “needed prior Java knowl-

edge.” Reasons provided by students as to why the land sailer

project required knowledge above and beyond what was taught in

the course included: (a) needed previous sailing knowledge, (b)

knowledge of teamwork skills, and (c) Internet research was re-

quired to successfully complete the project.

3) Project complexity: The analysis revealed that the market game

was more complex (M � 8.73, SD � 1.09) than the land sailer

project (M � 6.7, SD � 2.1). Ninety five percent (19 out of 20

responses—one student did not provide a rating) of student ratings

of the degree of complexity of the market game were 6 or higher

compared to 69 percent (51 out of 74) for the land sailer project.

Reasons provided by students as to why the market game was com-

plex included: (a) developing, designing, and implementing a busi-

ness strategy, (b) lack of domain knowledge, and (c) building code

or “coding.” Reasons provided by students as to why the land sailer

project was complex included: (a) difficulty coordinating project

tasks across different teams (inter-group project management), and

(b) multiplicity of the projects’ components, processes, and tasks.

4) Project real world usefulness: Students rated the degree of real

world usefulness of the land sailer project higher (M � 7.7, SD �

2.1) than the market game (M � 6.9, SD � 2.2). Seventy percent

(54 out of 74) of student ratings on this criterion for the land sailer

project were six or higher compared to 60 percent (12 out of 20) for

the market game. However, 25 percent (five out of 20 responses)

did not provide a rating on this criterion for the market game com-

pared to 15 percent (11 out of 74) for the land sailer project. Rea-

sons provided by students as to why the land sailer project had real

world usefulness included: (a) emulates real world teamwork, (b)

emulates real world engineering work, and (c) teaches how to

design and construct a boat (which is a real world task). Reasons

provided by students as to why the market game had real world


Table 2. Summary of results for the research question: “What impact did the market game have on students’ perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship?” (ER � Engineering Related Skills; BM � Business Management Skills; PS � Professional Skills).

Table 3. Summary of results for the research question: “What impact did the land sailer project have on students’ perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship?” (ER � Engineering Related Skills; BM � Business Management Skills; PS � Professional Skills).

usefulness included: (a) marketing aspects—how businesses com-

pete in the real world, (b) e-business aspects (running an online

travel agency), and (c) teamwork and communication skills.

5) Project creativity: The analysis revealed that the market game

required more creativity than the land sailer project (M � 7.3, SD �

1.7 vs. M � 6.1, SD � 2.6). Fifty-five percent (55 percent) of stu-

dent ratings (11 out of 20) were six or higher for the market game

on this criterion, 20 percent (four out of 20) were five or less, and 25

percent (five out of 20) did not include a rating in their responses.

For the land sailer project, 45 percent (33 out of 74) of student rat-

ings were six or higher, 32 percent (24 out of 74) were five or less,

and 23 percent (17 out of 74) did not include a rating in their re-

sponses. Reasons provided by students as to why the market game

required creativity included: (a) creativity was needed to design and

develop a strategy, and (b) writing program code. Reasons provided

by students as to why the land sailer project required creativity in-

cluded: (a) boat design, (b) coming up with ideas for boat parts to

make them work better, and (c) efficiently using and obtaining re-

sources.

6) Use of problem-solving strategies: This was a yes/no question

with explanation. Twenty out of twenty (100 percent) of student re-

sponses were “yes” with respect to whether the market game re-

quired the use of problem-solving strategies compared to 59 out of

74 responses (80 percent) for the land sailer project. Reasons pro-

vided by students as to why the market game required the use of

problem-solving strategies included: (a) resolve issues with business

strategy, (b) resolve issues with transforming strategy into code, and

(c) project management issues such as communication, scheduling

conflicts, and budgetary issues. Reasons provided by students as to

why the land sailer project required the use of problem-solving

strategies included: (a) resolve issues with design, (b) solving prob-

lems with measurements, and (c) project management issues such

as scheduling conflicts and budgetary issues.

7) Extensive knowledge of design elements and content: This ques-

tion did not require students to provide a rating. Nineteen out of

twenty responses (95 percent) revealed that the market game required

extensive knowledge of design elements and content compared to 35

out of 74 responses (47 percent) for the land sailer project. Reasons

provided by students as to why the market game required extensive

knowledge of design elements and content included: (a) needed

knowledge of Java programming, (b) needed to know key design ele-

ments to design business strategy, and (c) needed to know design ele-

ments in transforming design into strategy. Reasons provided by stu-

dents as to why the land sailer project did not require extensive

knowledge of design and elements and content included: (a) only

basic knowledge for design functionality was required, (b) software

was available to design with, and (c) online resources and professor

provided adequate guidance to complete design.

8) Provision of adequate resources: Regarding the degree to

which the students felt that they had adequate resources to com-

plete the final projects in this class, the analysis revealed that the

land sailer project was better supported than the market game. Stu-

dents rated the adequacy of resources for the land sailer project as

highly adequate (M � 8.85, SD � 1.8). Seventy three percent (73

percent) of student ratings were six or higher. For the market game

(M � 6.5, SD � 1.8), 40 percent of student ratings (eight out of 20)

were six or higher, 20 percent (four out of 20) were five or less, and

40 percent (eight out of 20) did not provide a rating. Reasons pro-

vided by students as to why they felt that they had adequate

resources to complete the land sailer project included: (a) professor

provided everything from money, tools, supplies, work areas (garage

of home), and his personal assistance such as answering questions,

and (b) adequate Internet resources. Reasons provided by students

as to why they felt that they did not have adequate resources to com-

plete the market game included: (a) lack of faculty assistance, (b)

lack of resources to help students learn Java, and (c) lack of time to

complete the project.

9) Organization and accessibility of resources: This was a yes/no

question with explanation. The analysis revealed that the land sailer

project’s resources were a lot more organized and easily accessible

than the market game resources. Eighty six percent (86 percent) of

students (64 out of 74 responses) said that the land sailer project’s

resources were well organized and easily accessible citing the follow-

ing reasons: (a) professor provided well organized materials, (b) re-

sources were accessible via Internet, and (c) professor allowed stu-

dents to use his home and tools. For the market game, fifty percent

(50 percent) of students (10 out of 20 responses) said that the re-

sources were well organized and easily accessible while 45 percent

(nine out of 20 responses) said they were not. One student did not

provide a yes/no answer. Students in the market game commented

that although the resources were accessible via the Internet, they

were not well organized, difficult to learn from, and not sufficient to

complete the project. However they did acknowledge that the grad-

uate assistant was very helpful and accessible.

10) Adequate assistance from faculty: This question did not re-

quire a numeric rating. Seventy four percent (74 percent) of student

responses (55 out of 74) indicated that they had adequate assistance

from faculty for the land sailer project compared to 60 percent (12

out of 20 responses) for the market game. The primary reason pro-

vided by students supporting the adequacy of faculty assistance for

the land sailer project was that the professor offered his help, home,

and tools. The primary reason provided by students supporting the

adequacy of assistance for the market game was the availability of

the graduate assistant.

11) Project relatedness to engineering: This question did not re-

quire a numeric rating. Ninety five percent (95 percent) of students

thought that the land sailer project was related to engineering (70

out of 74 responses) and 80 percent of students thought that the

market game was related to engineering (16 out of 20 responses).

Reasons provided by students as to why the land sailer project was

related to engineering included: (a) representation of the engineer-

ing production process, such as building a product like a boat, in-

cluding design, manufacturing, testing, etc., (b) project manage-

ment, including time and resource management, and (c) the project

provided an example of engineering field/teams. Reasons provided

by students as to why the market game was related to engineering

included: (a) teamwork, (b) problem-solving, (c) relatedness to

computer engineering, and (d) use of strategy.

The above analyses indicated that students perceived the market

game as (a) more challenging and more complex than the land sailer

project; (b) that it required more creativity than the land sailer pro-

ject; and (c) that it strongly required the use of problem solving

strategies, knowledge above and beyond what was taught in the

course, and extensive knowledge of design elements and content. In

terms of real world usefulness, students perceived both projects as

having real world usefulness. Although the overall mean rating on

this question was slightly higher for the land sailer project (7.7 vs.

6.9), 25 percent of student responses for the market game did not


provide a rating (compared to 15 percent for the land sailer project).

However, these students did indicate in their written explanations

that the market game had real world usefulness. In terms of related-

ness to engineering, students perceived the land sailer project as

more related to engineering practice than the market game. This re-

sult was expected given the classic design-and-build nature of the

land sailer project and students perceptions that engineering is pri-

marily a technical field of study. Lastly, the qualitative analysis also

indicated that the resources for the market game were not as ade-

quate and effectively organized as they were for the land sailer pro-

ject, and that faculty assistance was not as adequate as it was for the

land sailer project.

VI. DISCUSSION

The results of this exploratory study revealed that students’ over-

all perceptions of the engineering profession improved as a result of

their educational experience in Engineering 107 as measured by the

Perceptions of Engineering Survey. This finding is consistent with

prior research that has shown that attitudes of engineering students

towards the engineering profession improve in programs or courses

that have implemented hands-on design-and-build projects or cap-

stone courses as well as innovative teaching approaches such as peer

mentoring programs and other integrated learning experiences [4,

13, 17].

Interestingly, the results of this study revealed that students’ per-

ceptions of technical engineering skills did not change. Although

both the land sailer project and the market game can be described as

innovative or hands-on approaches compared to a traditional engi-

neering curriculum in which the first year of study consists only of

fundamental or prerequisite math and science courses, both of these

projects exposed students to the technical dimension of engineer-

ing. In fact, in a freshman engineering survey administered to fresh-

man engineering classes at two campuses where a peer mentoring

program was initiated in place of a large freshman engineering sem-

inar at one campus, and an integrated freshman engineering

program in which traditional courses were taught in a just-in-time

educational approach at the other campus, the results revealed that

students’ perceptions of engineering as being a “precise” science

(i.e., a purely technical field) did not significantly change after the

first year [4]. The results of this study align with these findings. In

addition, when students were asked in this study why they chose

engineering as a major, 60 percent indicated that they were attracted

to the technical dimension of engineering, specifically, interest in

design, electronics, computers, technology, problem solving, and

building things. These expectations were met because both projects,

the market game and the land sailer, exposed students to many if

not all of these technical elements. Therefore, students’ expecta-

tions of the technical dimension of engineering aligned with their

experiences, especially for those participating in the land sailer pro-

ject, resulted in no significant change.

The results of this study also revealed that students’ perceptions

of entrepreneurship skills improved overall. Entrepreneurship skills

were defined in this study as the combination of business manage-

ment and professional skills. Business management skills included

tasks such as managing a project, preparing budgets, allocating re-

sources, and meeting client expectations, among others. Professional

skills included tasks such as working in a team environment,

resolving conflicts, communicating effectively, keeping promises, or-

ganizing and maintaining information, understanding how to nego-

tiate, and understanding professional and ethical responsibilities,

among others. Arguably, the teamwork nature of both the land sailer

project and the market game partially explains the finding that stu-

dents’ perceptions of entrepreneurship skills improved overall. One

of ABET’s EC2000 criteria for the contemporary engineer includes

fostering students ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams and

to communicate effectively. The land sailer project emphasized these

criteria by dividing the three main teams into discipline specific

teams (Systems Engineering, Design, Manufacturing, and Test and

Evaluation) requiring interdisciplinary activities and communica-

tion. The market game also required students to work in teams, al-

though not multi-disciplinary, but certainly requiring students’ ap-

plication of both professional and business management skills.

More importantly however, students’ perceptions of professional

skills significantly improved for those who participated in the mar-

ket game. Students found the market game more challenging and

more complex than the land sailer project and that it required more

creativity, extensive use of problem solving strategies, knowledge

above and beyond what was taught in the course, and extensive

knowledge of design elements and content. Based on the final pro-

ject evaluations of the market game, all the teams completed a suc-

cessful design review before starting implementations; however,

only two of the five teams were able to post a working entry into the

games. The qualitative data suggested that students had difficulty

with three problems: (1) computer programming was new to most

of them; (2) Java programming was known by few, and those who

knew Java had not encountered programs of this complexity; and

(3) the partial program skeleton distributed early was too sketchy

for most to comprehend, and the full skeleton was distributed too

late to be helpful. Although we provided extensive web materials,

program templates, and high-availability teaching assistance, this

was not enough to overcome these difficulties. Students complained

that the resources for the project were not adequate and that faculty

assistance was not adequate.

These findings suggest that students had to rely heavily on their

professional skills to get the job done including leadership skills, ef-

fective communication, creative thinking, patience, asking for help,

assessing their own competency, and defining learning goals to in-

crease competency. In contrast, students who participated in the

land sailer project reported that they had adequate resources and

faculty assistance, and that the project was of modest complexity

and challenge. In addition, the teams for the land sailer project were

larger and more structured in terms of the specific activities and

goals that had to be accomplished. Lastly, the land sailer project was

a classic design-and-build project that had been implemented suc-

cessfully in this class several times.

In conclusion, future versions of the market game will need to

provide more structure, coaching, and scaffolding to assist the teams

in achieving the business management component of the project.

For the first several weeks about 25 percent of class time should be

devoted to interpreting the specifications and teaching Java. The

travel agent skeleton needs to be better documented and more de-

tailed instructions are needed for each milestone. This way students

can feel confident about the technical aspect of the IT design layer of

the market game and turn their attention to the higher level of the

market game which required students to engage in business manage-

ment skills, including: (a) creating an initial project plan with many


of the elements of a business plan and getting it capitalized, (b) pre-

senting the prototype and business plan for IPO capitalization, (c)

marketing the business plan to potential customers, and (d) assessing

market valuation of the company after IPO.

A few words about student demographics are in order. In our

School, 19 percent of the students are female and the mean age of our

students is 23.7 years old. We are aware that the results of our study

could have been influenced somewhat by the fact that the group who

opted for the market game project was self-selected as opposed to

randomly picked. The main reason for self selection was to try to have

as many students as possible in the market game project with the

proper background in programming to reduce breakdowns.

VII. CONCLUSION

Engineering curricula have often exclusively emphasized the

technical dimension of the engineering profession. However,

industry is demanding “well educated engineers with skills that are

beyond those technical” from universities [22, p. 738]. In addition,

engineering programs are experiencing a high rate of attrition, par-

ticularly at the freshman level. Among the primary reasons cited for

this attrition are “students’ perceived lack of relevance of much of

their coursework” and “students lack of understanding of an engi-

neering career” [1, 20, 23]. The purpose of this study was to exam-

ine the extent to which these reasons are characteristic of students in

Engineering 107, and to provide a more holistic and contemporary

view of the engineering profession by exposing students to the en-

trepreneurial dimension of engineering. Many engineering pro-

grams have recently added entrepreneurial experiences to their cur-

ricula, particularly technology-based entrepreneurship experiences

that include starting and running a technology business [16]. The

market game introduced in this study is an example of a technolo-

gy-based entrepreneurship designed to address engineering prob-

lems in a societal context. Although the market game was successful

in exposing students to professional skills, a component of engi-

neering entrepreneurship, both students and faculty faced many

challenges.

Gonzalez-Rubio, Thibault, and Beaulieu [11] suggest that pro-

jects based on an integrated approach whose purpose is to simultane-

ously develop design and technological entrepreneurship skills in en-

gineering students should foster “a high level of interaction between

the faculty responsible for the technical aspects of the projects and

those responsible for the business aspects—and the same for the stu-

dent members of each team,” and that the success of such projects

depends on “the existence of students’ prior knowledge of basic prin-

ciples of engineering economics” (p. 15). Given these suggestions

and the novelty of engineering entrepreneurship, more research is

needed to effectively implement projects that integrate technical and

entrepreneurship tasks in freshman courses and to examine whether

such projects can assist freshmen in better understanding and choos-

ing their majors in order to reduce attrition and attract more students

to the engineering major, especially women and minorities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foun-

dation under grant number EEC-0080379. The authors would also

like to thank their co-PIs on the project, Peter J. Denning and

Bernd-Peter Paris.

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AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Nada Dabbagh is associate professor of Instructional Design and

Technology (IDT) at the College of Education and Human Devel-

opment at George Mason University (GMU). She received a Ph.D.

in Instructional Systems from the Pennsylvania State University in

1996. Dr. Dabbagh’s research explores the cognitive consequences

of authentic learning tasks with the goal of understanding the cog-

nitive and design characteristics of task structuring as the basis for

effective pedagogical designs. Recent achievements include a book

titled Online Learning: Concepts, Strategies, and Application, and the

development of protocols and rubrics for structuring, facilitating,

and assessing asynchronous online discussions that have been

adopted nationally and internationally in higher education, K-12,

and corporate training contexts. In 2003, Dr. Dabbagh received the

Teaching Excellence Award from GMU.

Address: 4085 University Drive, Mail Stop 5D6, Fairfax, Virginia

22030; telephone: (�1) 703.993.4430; e-mail: [email protected].

Daniel A. Menascé is the associate dean for Research and Grad-

uate Studies and a professor of Computer Science at The Volgenau

School of Information Technology and Engineering at George

Mason University. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from

UCLA in 1978. Menascé is a Fellow of the Association for Com-

puting Machinery (ACM) and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He

is an associate editor of the Electronic Commerce Research and

Applications journal from Elsevier Science, a member of the Edito-

rial Board of IEEE Internet Computing, and an Associate Editor

of ACM’s Transactions on the Web (TWEB). Menascé has pub-

lished over 175 technical papers and was the chief author of five

books. He received he Teaching Excellence Award from GMU in

2000 and the Outstanding Teaching Award from The Volgenau

School of IT and Engineering in 1999.

Address: 4400 University Drive, Mail Stop 4A5, Fairfax, Virginia

22030; telephone: (�1) 703.993.1499; e-mail: [email protected].


APPENDIX

Perceptions of Engineering Survey

The three subscales in this survey were as follows:

1. Engineering related (technical skills) (ER).

2. Professional skills (PS).

3. Business management skills (BM).

Students were asked to rate each of these tasks (items) on a scale

of 1–5 (where 1 is strongly disagree SD and 5 is strongly agree SA)

based on their understanding of the importance of the task to the

practice of engineering.

An engineer should be able to:

1. Develop a Gantt chart for a project. -ER

2. Write a business plan. -BM

3. Prepare a budget for a project. -BM

4. Prepare requirements for a project. -ER

5. Develop a quality control plan. -ER

6. Perform quality control. -ER

7. Develop hardware or software. -ER

8. Test hardware or software. -ER

9. Build a hardware prototype. -ER

10. Present business plans to customers, managers or share-

holders of a company. -BM

11. Present business plans to venture capitalists. -BM

12. Write technical documentation. -ER

13. Write sales brochures of technical products. -BM

14. Prepare a budget for the production costs of a product. -BM

15. Analyze the capacity of an IT infrastructure. -ER

16. Manage a team of technical people. -BM

17. Prepare a marketing campaign. -BM

18. Work in a team environment. -PS

19. Analyze satellite images. -ER

20. Write software that analyzes satellite images. -ER

21. Manage the schedule of a project. -BM

22. Meet with customers of a company to evaluate their needs.

-BM

23. Design and conduct experiments to validate prototypes and

ideas. -ER

24. Design an IT infrastructure to support a Web site. -ER

25. Use Web search engines. -PS

26. Resolve conflicts among people on the team. -PS

27. Track the schedule of a software development project. -BM

28. Incorporate cultural aspects into the design of a technical

product. -ER

29. Compare competing designs. -ER

30. Allocate resources for a project. -BM

31. Manage time. -BM

32. Manage personnel. -BM

33. Acquire and evaluate information. -PS

34. Comply with legal requirements. -ER

35. Organize and maintain information. -PS

36. Interpret and communicate information. -PS

37. Understand how to function as a member of a team. -PS

38. Understand how to serve clients and customers. -BM

39. Propose a new direction (vision) for your company. -BM

40. Propose a new company. -BM

41. Propose a new product. -ER

42. Exercise leadership. -PS

43. Understand how to negotiate to arrive at a decision. -PS

44. Work with a diverse audience. -PS

45. Understand environmental, social, political, economic, and

business systems. -PS

46. Monitor and correct system performance. -ER

47. Improve and design systems. -ER

48. Understand engineering as a field and as a career. -PS

49. Understand global and society issues. -PS

50. Design and conduct experiments. -ER

51. Analyze and interpret data. -ER

52. Design a system, component, or process to meet desired

needs. -ER

53. Function on multi-disciplinary teams. -PS

54. Identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems. -ER

55. Understand professional and ethical responsibility. -PS

56. Communicate effectively. -PS

57. Understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global

and societal context. -PS

58. Use techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools neces-

sary for engineering practice. -ER

59. Ask a teammate for help. -PS

60. Make a commitment only when you are competent. -PS

61. Formulate a proposal for a potential customer. -BM

62. Build trust by keeping promises. -BM

63. Track your promises with a database or spreadsheet. -BM

64. Learn a customer’s history. -BM

65. Discover a customer’s concerns and interests. -BM

66. Observe a customer’s practices. -BM

67. Formulate a value proposition and offer. -BM

68. Involve customers in the design and implementation

process. -BM

69. Organize a market survey. -BM

70. Organize a focus group. -BM

71. Maintain records of your personal commitments. -PS

72. Maintain records of team commitments. -BM

73. Allocate time and resources to each commitment. -BM

74. Estimate your capacity honestly and adjusting load to

match. -BM

75. Make and manage delegations. -BM

76. Cancel requests when needed. -BM

77. Revoke promises when needed. -BM

78. Help the other party overcome consequences from

cancellations/revocations. -PS

79. Raise “red flags” with the team. -PS

80. Declare the team’s mission. -BM

81. Put together the best team for the mission. -BM

82. Define regular and frequent measurable milestones. -BM

83. Use project management tools to construct a time line. -BM

84. Understand levels of professional competency in your area. -PS

85. Assess your own competency fairly. -PS

86. Define learning goals to increase competency. -PS

87. Find and recruit teachers and mentors. -BM

88. Study for and maintain professional certifications. -PS

89. Read the marketplace for widely held concerns. -PS

90. Follow and interpret trends in the world. -PS

91. Identify innovative practices that would solve known

problems. -ER

92. Build a market offer. -BM

93. Build a business plan. -BM

94. Build a business team. -BM

95. Practice from a clear code of ethics. -PS

164 Journal of Engineering Education April 2006164 Journal of Engineering Education April 2006

student perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship: an exploratory study

Documents