Changes in Affective Capacities of CAD Students Engaged in an Engineering Design Project

Abstract

Success in open-ended design activities requires a desire to succeed and a belief in one's ability to succeed when faced with ambiguously defined problems. Engineering design courses ideally develop these affective capacities as well as technical skills. Multiple approaches to enhancing them in a design course exist, and this study evaluates the use of entrepreneurial design projects in a first computer aided design (CAD) course. The study quantifies changes in affective capacities in terms of Need for Achievement (nAch), Generalized Self-Efficacy (GSE), and Tolerance for Ambiguity (ToA). Surveys deployed at the start and conclusion of the CAD course provide the data needed to evaluate these changes. A paired sample t-test for those who responded to both entry and exit surveys (N=14) shows an absence of significant change for any of the measured affective capacities. However, a small number of individual students exhibited noteworthy, though not statistically significant, changes for one or more of the three measures. This outcome points to the value of conducting larger studies or of augmenting quantitative methods with qualitative ones in the future. Examination of individual questions in the survey instrument hint at improvements in the ability to view problems holistically, consider others' thinking and manage anxiety. Changes in specific GSE and nAch questions may reflect a realization of the challenges presented by the entrepreneurship clients' more realistic design problems and by understanding the thinking of others. Factors such as age, presence of a close family member with engineering experience, and prior work in engineering significantly affect one or more regressions of nAch, GSE, and ToA values. Lower Initial (p = 0.026) and Final nAch (p = 0.032) appear for students with prior work in engineering. Those with a close family member working in engineering exhibit higher Initial (p = 0.004) and Final (p = 0.002) GSE, and a quite modest increase in ToA (p = 0.036) correlates with age. Though the small sample size and focus on a single collegiate population limit one's ability to draw conclusions, these interesting data point to hypotheses that future studies can further interrogate.