FACTORS IMPACTING IDEA GENERATION EFFECTIVENESS: MAKERSPACE INVOLVEMENT, MECHANICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM EFFECTS, AND ENGINEERING DESIGN SELF EFFICACY

In recent years, makerspaces have been growing in popularity. Research into makerspaces is increasing, but there is still limited evidence of their impacts. Students often design and prototyping and see others’ designs in makerspaces. This likely increases idea generation skill and expands students’ knowledge of existing designs. This work presents a longitudinal study of the impacts of makerspaces, specifically the correlation of involvement with idea generation ability and engineering design self-efficacy (EDSE). We collect freshman and senior data on makerspace involvement, idea generation abilities, and students’ self-efficacy of engineering design skills to analyze how these factors change throughout an undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum. Seniors are significantly more likely to be involved in makerspaces, report greater self-efficacy in design, and have greater idea generation effectiveness (quantity, novelty, and variety) than freshmen. Additionally, the seniors voluntarily involved in makerspaces showed higher idea generation quality, and the freshman with prior maker related experience from high school generated a larger quantity of solution concepts.M.S