Author(s):
Innovation Competitions and Programs (ICPs), such as design challenges, hackathons, startup incubator competitions, boot camps, customer discovery labs, and accelerator programs, are informal learning experiences that supplement the formal education of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students. Informal learning is increasingly important for achieving STEM education objectives as learning dynamics become more personalized, location-unbounded, and spontaneous. Gateway to innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems, ICPs educate future innovators in many colleges. The current literature provides limited evidence on student learning outcomes resulting from participation in ICPs, both quantitatively and qualitatively. This lightning talk will summarize our study on the learning and experiences of students who participated in ICPs. The results indicated that students valued technical and problem-solving skills more highly than innovation mindset skills, such as empathy and identifying user needs. Furthermore, the study’s findings showed that there are connections between students’ backgrounds, their learning experiences, and the types of ICPs they participated. Findings suggest that incorporating more entrepreneurial elements in ICPs may improve learning outcomes for innovation mindsets.
Coauthors
Abdullah Konak and auk3@psu.edu
