Assessing situational curiosity and motivation in open-ended design electives

Our institution has recently committed to develop five new entrepreneurially-minded elective courses called “IDEAS studios”. The entrepreneurially-minded aspects of IDEAS studios include close interaction with industrial partners and an emphasis on topics such as value proposition, opportunity recognition, intellectual property, and customer engagement. We hypothesize that in addition to specific topics and competencies these courses facilitate develop attitudinal skills needed for an entrepreneurial mindset. Such skills - which include persistence, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control - typically cannot be measured using standard assessment methods. In this work-in-progress, we have identified seven structural attributes of IDEAS studios which we hypothesize support the courses' ability to foster the attitudinal aspects of an entrepreneurial mindset. We have designed and are in the process of conducting a study of students enrolled in these courses to assess the impact of both the courses as a whole and the individual attributes on students' situational motivation and curiosity. We hypothesize that the open and student-centered nature of IDEAS studios will foster greater curiosity and intrinsic motivation than will courses that lack these seven attributes. This paper reports on a pilot study of students enrolled in IDEAS studios to assess the impact of these seven structural attributes on students' situational motivation and curiosity.