Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.18260/1-2--56261

Publication Title

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Pages

16 pp.

Conference Name

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, June 22-25, 2025, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

Entrepreneurial Minded Learning (EML), a framework supported by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), promotes critical thinking and innovation by encouraging students to explore real-world problems through the 3Cs: Curiosity, Creating Value, and Connections. In construction management education, the focus often remains on technical skills and project execution, neglecting the development of entrepreneurial skills like adaptability, value creation, and stakeholder engagement, leaving a gap in preparing students for the challenges of the industry. To bridge this gap, micro-moment activities were introduced prior to the main project to prime students for EML-based thinking. These short, focused exercises encouraged students to solve small-scale problems through critical decision-making and innovation aligned with the 3Cs. Following these activities, students were introduced to a hands-on Design-Build project within a Construction Project Management course, where they assumed the role of a contractor responsible for both designing and constructing a residential building. The project engages students with the 3Cs by challenging them to explore location selection and environmental factors (Curiosity), create functional and aesthetically valuable designs for clients (Creating Value), and assess how their design decisions might impact stakeholders (Connections). To evaluate the project's effectiveness, students completed an open-ended survey designed to reflect on their learning outcomes and their experiences with EML principles. The survey responses were analyzed using thematic coding to identify patterns and insights related to entrepreneurial learning. Preliminary results indicate that students developed increased adaptability, innovative problem-solving abilities, and a deeper understanding of value creation in construction, validating the integration of EML as an approach to enhance practical skills for real-world industry challenges.

Rights

© 2025 American Society of Engineering Education.

"ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2025 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015"

Original Publication Citation

Ismael, D. (2025). Developing entrepreneurial mindsets in construction management through experiential projects [Conference Paper]. 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--56261

ORCID

0009-0003-7410-3045 (Ismael)

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