Building Strong Academic Mindsets Focusing on Grit, Mastery Orientation, Belonging, and Self-Efficacy via an Effort Contingent Learning Environment in a Senior Engineering Capstone Design Course

With the expectation that engineering students ought to be prepared to adapt to a continuously evolving workplace environment to solve the complex problems of the future, engineering educators ought to also adapt and provide innovative learning environments that support not only technical agility, but also psychological agility to support the development of our students. Capstone design serves as an ideal context to support engineering students with this preparation. This paper describes how a senior capstone design course was transformed not in content, but in the classroom values/culture, reward structures, and the learning environment to encourage mastery learning though effort contingencies, grit and perseverance, collaboration, and empowerment. Designed as a pre-test post-test control group design, a set of psychological constructs (grit, sense of belonging, achievement goal orientation, self-efficacy, impulsivity) were administered to a treatment group and a control group to investigate effects of the educational innovations. Effect sizes reveal moderate to high practical significance comparing the treatment and control groups.