Work In Progress: Incorporation of the Entrepreneurial Mindset into the Introduction to Engineering Course

This Work In Progress paper will describe changes made to the first year Introduction to Engineering course at Arizona State University in order to promote the entrepreneurial mindset. The changes were made to the team-based hands-on design projects to involve customers using three different approaches including fictional customers, real world customers but no direct student-customer interactions, and real world customers with direct student-customer interactions. Preliminary assessment shows that all three approaches are effective at raising students’ customer awareness, though the third approach which involves real world customer and provides opportunities for students to engage with customers throughout the design process has been found to be the most effective approach for instilling the entrepreneurial mindset.