Cause and aim of the project
The cause of this project was the fact that students who have a justified, true and believed (Thalberg, 1969) sense of what they aspire to become are motivated learners and drop out less often (Jensen & Jetten, 2016). These students may be more likely to make informed choices about what profession to enter and what profession not to enter after graduation. In other words, students with a clear professional identity aspiration (PIA) can make better career and study choices. Yet, PIA are often not clear to students.
The goal of this innovation was to support students to develop their PIA. The project team focuses on entrepreneurship as a facet of PIA. Furthermore, the project team focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) students. These choices were made because the project team believed that entrepreneurial STEM students can create an above-average impact on value creation.
Plan and method
The project team used a design-based approach based on McKenney and Reeves (2014). McKenney and Reeves (2014) promote this approach to the development of innovations in education. Evidence from stakeholders on the nature of the problem, the fit of the solution to the problem, and the analysis of the effectiveness of the solution form the backbone of their iterative approach.
The initial idea was to develop a mobile application which allows students to collect material that illustrates their entrepreneurial journey. This material would then be the basis for a biweekly and after-course reflection on how the entrepreneurial journey informs students about their future career aspirations.
However, in the time between project application and project implementation, free tools that were supported by university administration became available. Thus, there was no need to develop a new application anymore. To encourage the use of graphics and transport the idea of the timeline, the existing application Padlet seemed effective.
For the initial implementation, the project team planned to use existing Learning Management Systems to administer the reflections. In their case the Learning Management System was Canvas.
To avoid friction when implementing the innovation in class, detailed instructions and feedback sheets were made. There were no challenges during this project.
Evaluation and results
To evaluate, the project team carried out a pre/post survey on professional identity constructs with students. Also, they interviewed students to analyze whether the reflection exercise led to the change in identity aspiration constructs.
Most respondents reported an increase in clarity of professional identity aspirations. Most respondents indicated that it was the intervention that contributed to this increase. Due to Covid, students had less opportunities to engage in real-life entrepreneurial action (e.g., customer interviews, site visits etc.), so they had a lower number of experiences to reflect upon.
Those who would like to replicate this innovation, should keep in mind to ask students to provide more reflection than description. Furthermore, multimedia should be emphasized as students tend to use text-only, peer-reviews are an option and a summary reflection helps students to revisit their entire journey. Finally, weekly reflection points seem to be too much, biweekly points seem to work better. The project team also proposes to ask for reflection on certain trigger points such as site visits, customer interviews etc., rather than at regular intervals.
Prospects for future use and expansion
The project leader uses the results of the project in his own course. To facilitate its wider usage, the project leader plans to vary the frequency of reflection reports to see if a similar result can be obtained with lower complexity.
The results will also become available as a tool in a train-the-trainer trajectory for entrepreneurship education for engineers. This is a project by the four technical universities of the Netherlands, the 4TU.
Products and presentations
- A presentation of the project (A Diary-Based Reflection to Assist STEM Students gain clarity on the Technology Entrepreneurship Professional Identity Aspirations - slides for a UTwente research seminar presentation and the Comenius festival)
- The design process of the mobile app ("Implementation plan”)
- Design specification of the mobile app ("Design process")
Supporting Literature
- Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity theory. Oxford University Press.
- Duening, T. N., & Metzger, M. L. (Eds.). (2017). Entrepreneurial identity: The process of becoming an entrepreneur. Edward Elgar Publishing.
- Ibarra, H. (1999). Provisional selves: Experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation. Administrative science quarterly, 44(4), 764-791.
- McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2014). Educational design research. In Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 131-140). Springer, New York, NY.
- Murnieks, C. Y., Cardon, M. S., & Haynie, J. M. (2020). Fueling the fire: Examining identity centrality, affective interpersonal commitment and gender as drivers of entrepreneurial passion. Journal of Business Venturing, 35(1), 105909.
- Veine, S., Anderson, M. K., Andersen, N. H., Espenes, T. C., Søyland, T. B., Wallin, P., & Reams, J. (2020). Reflection as a core student learning activity in higher education-Insights from nearly two decades of academic development. International Journal for Academic Development, 25(2), 147-161.
Comenius Teaching Fellowship 2020
