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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how the integration of making activities into cornerstone engineering design courses affects students' design skills. A quasi-experimental design was used in the study, where 29 engineering students were interviewed and observed during their participation in a fourth-year mechanical engineering capstone design course. Students were interviewed in a team-based environment from weeks 2 to 11 in the fall term of the 2018-2019 academic year. Interviews ranged between 15 and 45 minutes per team every week. The study aimed to understand differences in the engineering design learning experience of two distinct groups of students based on the type of introductory engineering design courses students had taken in their first and second year of study. Students who had already attended design courses that had included making activities were found to have more confidence in their design skills, hold their work to higher standards, experience less stress throughout the course and perform better than their peers in the conceptual design phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Richard L'Abbé Makerspace at the University of Ottawa-Ontario, opened its doors to students in 2014 aiming to offer a creative environment that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. Since then, the Makerspace was incorporated in 10 courses offered at three faculties, held 250 workshops, 3 design challenges, and was used by more than 3000 students. This paper describes how Makerspaces help cultivate students' communities of practice (CoP). We interviewed 19 engineering students with different participation levels in the Makerspace, from different engineering disciplines to understand how they became participants in the makers' community of practice at the Richard L'Abbé Makerspace. We found that the Makerspace provided engineering students with a platform for forming a CoP that shares a common interest in making, by providing them with access to equipment, workshops, competitions, and by connecting engineering students from various disciplines to work on handson engineering projects that allowed them to translate theories learned in classroom to practice. The paper also describes the lessons learned from the interviews and challenges that face the Richard L'Abbé Makerspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2006, uOttawa Engineering has been successful in developing and implementing an entrepreneurial ecosystem with the main objective of broadening - and making more relevant - the education of its undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and computer science. Building upon successful academic programs that have been in place for many years (undergraduate option in engineering management and entrepreneurship, graduate program of studies in engineering management) and also on a long-standing productive relationship with University of Ottawa's business school, uOttawa Engineering now offers a comprehensive 'pracademic' (Wilson et al. 2014) portfolio of activities and programs that includes academic and experiential as well as curricular and co-curricular elements: access to fabrication equipment and facilities, including 3-D printing and rapid prototyping; courses (undergraduate, graduate); external advisors, judges, mentors; guest lectures; student competitions. This endeavor has required - and will continue to require - the active involvement and support of academic leaders, alumni, faculty members, members of the business community, and students. uOttawa Engineering firmly believes in the importance of educating students about intra- and entrepreneurship and of providing them with a variety of relevant hands-on opportunities to apply and use this education and training during their studies. Our ultimate objective is to ensure that future engineering and computer science professionals will be better prepared to lead and manage change in both existing organizations and new ventures. Accelerated change will be the norm of the XXIst century, especially when it comes to engineering and computer science products and services. uOttawa Engineering's entrepreneurial ecosystem aims to be a significant contributor on that front. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic turbulence of the 21st century is changing the engineering career landscape. Large firms face great challenge in boosting the economy and creating more jobs amidst uncertain economical forecast. Engineers today need innovation, leadership and business skills more than ever. Engineering schools are aware of the rising demand of engineers to learn about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship programs for engineers are becoming a trending topic. This paper explores the different ecosystems of entrepreneurship offered at faculties of engineering across Canada. We explore two research questions in this paper: a) What is the growth, in demand and availability, of entrepreneurship courses in engineering schools, and b) What are the different components of an entrepreneurship ecosystem in engineering faculties today. The intent of this research is not to compare which program is better; rather, it is to explores the different ways of how entrepreneurship is taught in engineering schools. By providing a systematic map of the current entrepreneurial landscape in engineering faculties, this research can benefit professors and program directors who are building entrepreneurship courses and programs for engineering students, and to researchers who are studying the impact of academic entrepreneurship on engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]