The impact of integrating making activities to cornerstone design courses on students' implicit theories of making ability

Abstract

A person's implicit theories in a certain domain are known to have a direct influence on that person's performance, behaviour, self-esteem, enjoyment and sense of belonging to the domain. This paper explores the role of implicit theory in engineering students' beliefs about the nature of their making abilities and their self-identification as makers. This is done by assessing if a collaborative project-based engineering design course built on making activities can contribute to influencing students to have a growth mindset about their making abilities. Data from full-time engineering undergraduates were collected during the second week of the fall term. As predicted, the majority of engineering students had a growth mindset about their making abilities mindset, with male students more likely to have a fixed mindset than female students. Moreover, engineering design courses that successfully integrate making activities into the curriculum are shown to induce students to develop a growth mindset in relation to their beliefs about the nature of their making abilities.