Initial Exploration of Thematic Emergence in Students' Reflections Post an Entrepreneurially Minded Learning Activity

This work is a preliminary exploration of thematic emergence in student reflections following a learning activity in Mechanics of Materials. Two independent groups of students enrolled in successive semesters were compared. One group of students experienced a traditional analytical learning activity, while the second group experienced an “entrepreneurially minded” learning activity. Both groups submitted written reflections (“data”) after their respective learning activities. According to the Kern Engineering Entrepreneurial Network (KEEN), entrepreneurial-minded learning (EML) is a curious, connected, and value-creating way of problem-solving. Elements of Charmaz's Grounded theory were applied to the data to extract contextual themes. First, the authors independently opencoded the data. Next, the codes were compared and discussed until a qualitative agreement was reached. Then, codes were collapsed into categories, from which notable thematic differences inductively emerged. Finally, Bloom's taxonomy cognitive scores were applied to the categories and to the themes from the EML framework. The results show that student reflections on the EML-infused activity possess qualities aligned with higher-order Bloom's levels. Future work will involve analyzing the rhetoric associated with EML in spoken discourse to deductively extract themes.