Collaborative Research: Investigating the Innovation Capabilities of Undergraduate Engineering Students

合作研究：工科本科生创新能力调查

• 批准号: 1140628
• 负责人: Carolyn Seepersad
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-05-01 至 2014-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1140628&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Investigating; Innovation; Capabilities

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.

德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校（授予博士学位的大学）和马萨诸塞大学达特茅斯分校（授予硕士学位的大学）之间的这个合作项目正在研究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都在研究学生的创新能力，寻找他们的课程与创新能力变化之间的相关性。该研究的目标是确定本科工程课程在多大程度上提高了研究生的创新能力。该项目正在建立衡量学生创新能力的工具，包括学生解决开放式设计问题的概念生成练习和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，并用于确定完整的本科课程和个别课程（例如，面向设计的课程）对学生创新能力的影响。这是通过在课程的入口和出口点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。该研究还将创新能力与学生的技术表现（使用学生的绩点比率衡量）联系起来。由于这项工作是针对非常不同的学生群体进行的，因此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创新工程师发展之间的关系。