Open: NCIIA 14th Annual Conference

This workshop introduces the pedagogy for the Babson College course Social Entrepreneurship by Design (SED). The course integrates stakeholder collaborative design and entrepreneurship for the purpose of developing new products or services that contribute to the solution of a social problem. Attendees of this workshop will participate in small teams to experience facets of designing new social entrepreneurship ventures driven by stakeholder insights. Stakeholder collaborative design is a five-phase process designed to help students create and co-create opportunities. Different from a traditional new product development course, SED emphasizes idea generation and opportunity creation using a structured creativity toolkit grounded in design thinking and principles found in such disciplines as architecture, product design, and engineering. SED is designed to develop the entrepreneurial thinking skills of students where empathy and creation take precedence over analysis and planning.

Build-It modules are designed to give students experience with a variety of tools and manufacturing techniques while at the same time exposing them to simple, elegant appropriate technologies. These modules show both rapid prototyping equipment as well as techniques that are used in workshops in the developing world. Basic shop safety training is incorporated into all modules and, in the spirit of sustainability, the final product from all modules is a useful item that can be disseminated to community partners in future trips. Successful Build-It modules include a hacksaw made from bicycle parts, a corn sheller for removing kernels from dried corn cobs, a press for making charcoal briquettes from agricultural waste, a simple PVC water pump, and a solar light. The Build-It module format can accommodate a variety of products and can easily be adapted to demonstrate use of different tools, equipment, and techniques.

This workshop is a result of an on-going NCIIA-sponsored project for the design and development of an innovation-focused event (Ideation to Innovation, I2I). In this hands-on, interactive workshop participants will learn about: (a) the traits of innovative individuals, and (b) enhancing individuals' innovative skills. Innovators share some common traits, many of which can be learned and enhanced. Quick literature survey shows some commonalities between Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, and many others, some of which will be discussed. In particular, the workshop will present traits such as observing, thinking, experimenting, teaming, dreaming, persisting, having fun, and being passionate about the work. Hands-on exercises and teasers will allow participants to experience most of the discussed innovators' skills, and to use them in a classroom setting.

Both practitioners and researchers are discovering that service-learning is not only a powerful pedagogy for increased learning of course content but also an effective means to engage students and faculty in serving communities for the common good. Come learn the what, why, and how of integrating service-learning into existing courses and assessing the benefits to students, faculty, community, and institution. Participants will actively: explore the benefits and applicability of service-learning, based on research and examples, to their course(s); identify opportunities for service-learning engagement in an existing course and with potential community partners; choose appropriate methods of classroom research/assessment for that project; identify available resources for more information and ideas on service-learning in engineering; learn the pitfalls to avoid; and create a media piece/poster targeted to prospective students.

The teams that apply for, and are funded by, NCIIA grants are parallel in structure and function to real-world startup teams. Many have an initial imbalance of skill sets that require recruiting partners from complimentary areas of expertise. When formed, it's inevitable that E-Teams encounter some type of conflict. As the world of entrepreneurship is littered with teams gone wrong, this workshop is focused on surfacing the typical team challenges and conflicts that the participants have experienced, while brainstorming solutions to strengthen E-Teams throughout NCIIA schools. The presenters will highlight, through entrepreneurial video clips and their own personal experiences, challenges and solutions they have encountered throughout their careers with student entrepreneurs. Participants will leave the session with practical ideas and a tool kit of resources (including video clips, books and mentoring approaches) to create and support higher-functioning teams with their student entrepreneurs.

This workshop is designed to provide attendees with an overview of tools to assess student learning outcomes related to entrepreneurship education. By the end of the workshop, attendees should have a set of assessment resources that they can adopt in their engineering-based and campus-wide entrepreneurship programs. The presenters will introduce a new assessment tool that was developed for an in-depth, multi-institution study (Entrepreneurship Education and its Impact on Engineering Student Outcomes: The Role of Program Characteristics and Faculty Beliefs) funded by NSF. The new tool draws on items currently or previously used at the institutions involved in the study (Purdue, Penn State University, North Carolina State University, and NCIIA), as well as others identified in the literature. Purdue University is examining the effect of entrepreneurship education on engineering student learning outcomes. To measure the outcomes, the presenters developed a new assessment instrument targeted at senior-level engineering students enrolled in capstone design courses. Items fall into the following categories: 1) demographic data (sex, ethnicity, engineering discipline, majors/minors); 2) entrepreneurial background/experience (parents/family careers, work experience, entrepreneurial education and experiences); 3) career goals; 4) knowledge/familiarity with entrepreneurial terms and concepts; and 5) entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The workshop will provide an overview of the assessment instruments that were considered by the research team and the methodology used to create the final instrument. It will also address several challenges encountered during development and administration including choices of response scales, length, and student and faculty participation.

Some people call it Need Finding, others call it Point of View, and others call it Problem Definition. Whatever you call it, crafting a thoughtful question is key to finding a valuable solution. Without a well-thought-out problem, the resulting solutions are apt to be mundane or meaningless. This workshop will focus on framing problems in ways that lead to the most creative solutions. Participants will be introduced to powerful techniques that facilitate the process of finding innovative solutions to challenging problems in all areas, including design, research, business, teaching, and in their personal lives.

Project-based service learning (PBSL) has become an emergent opportunity for engineering education. There are now a number of national and university-grown programs that provide opportunities to incorporate PBSL into engineering and other fields. Despite their rapid adoption, one problem persists with PBSL programs: the scant findings on their impacts. Yet preliminary observations are encouraging, and suggest that PBSL: 1) retains students; 2) increases female representation; and 3) offers an opportunity to fulfill a variety of critical learning outcomes. A PBSL Summit, supported by the National Science Foundation, was held in early 2009 to gather, summarize, and leverage the expertise of participants to identify desired outcome metrics, quality assessment methods, and key next steps needed in understanding the impacts of PBSL. The goals of this session are to engage attendees in a review of both curricular and extracurricular community service activities and their features, share outcomes observed from such programs, identify existing gaps, and create tangible next steps for beneficial change. The session leaders hope to build off the discussion initiated in the 2009 Summit, adding the views and experiences of session participants to reports and e-books prior to international dissemination.