What if every engineering graduate understood the CONNECTIONS to their work? Engineering is seldom within a vacuum; context matters. In other words, engineering solutions are only successful and sustainable when they meet economic, political, cultural, legal, technical requirements — they live and die within complex contexts and systems. If your graduates' instincts are to habitually assess an engineering solution's CONNECTIONS, the likelihood of success increases. Indeed, that's the aspirational goal of partner institutions in KEEN.This card is about understanding CONNECTIONS in depth and within an entrepreneurial mindset. The KEEN Framework provides a starting point for two student outcomes related to connections. Students should:Integrate information from many sources to gain insight.Assess and manage risk. Turning the CONNECTIONS outcomes into questions is also helpful. Students achieving these outcomes will ask: • "How do my experiences, my knowledge, and new bits of information relate?" • "What else might be relevant, especially within the larger landscape and longer timeline?" • "What are all the implications and consequences of my work?" Because the term "connections" has such broad meaning, this list is not intended to provide a complete description of connections. Rather, within KEEN, the following form a "starter set" for connections-related outcomes. To reach these outcomes, design exercises so that students: • Mentally integrate technical topics, relating one to another, • Contextualize technical solutions, esp. in non-technical domains, • Create diagrams that illustrate relationships among a group of items or concepts, • Investigate the intersection of seemingly disparate ideas, • Use current affairs in discussions of technical solutions, • Think about the potential unintended consequences of their work, • Plan for decisions associated with increasing scale or production, • Evaluate the unanticipated impact due to reuse of designs, • Habitually assess “What if?” with regard to connections to key people, organizations, political environments, regulations, competitors, processes, and design changes. If habitually making connections is going to become part of a mindset, part of a disposition, then the goal of educational interventions is to create mental habits, akin to mental muscle-memory, that has an inclination to investigate and draw connections.To dive deeper into connections and associated research literature, first consider relevant variants of the term as it relates to mindset. Here's a sampling:Integrative LearningIntegrative learning is often described as making connections across curricula. Sometimes the integrative concept is linked to project-based learning, problem based learning, and is undoubtedly related to entrepreneurially minded learning because the pedagogy relies upon finding opportunities and assessing potential impact, a necessarily interdisciplinary endeavor. Assessment tools like those from the Rubric AAC&U on Integrative Learning are valuable for designing and assessing educational interventions.Within the KEEN Framework, CONNECTIONS is related to an ability to assess risk. This takes on particular meaning when solutions are seen within the context of a system. An entrepreneurially minded individual will assess risks associated with a technological solution, risks within a business model, risks that are associated with the human element. Integrative learning connects different disciplines. The Greater ContextEngineering activities that affect lives are always done within some context, whether they impact a large sector of society or a small market. Whether considering the broad context of societal needs, as in UNESCO's Engineering Report, or using a tool like the Business Model Canvas to situate a specific value proposition, engineering educators are developing mental habits for "heads-up" engineering. In a JEE editorial by Charles Vest, the former NAE President concludes by encouraging engineering educators to "design curricula, pedagogy, and student experiences will profitably contemplate the new context, competition, content, and challenges of engineering."The PhysiologyNeurologists say that learning is a biological process. Encouraging neural connections is the most fundamental aspect of teaching and learning. With increased understanding of the brain connectivity from studies using a functional MRI, specifically using a method called diffusion-spectrum-imaging, some researchers suggest that within the brain establishes paths, a "wiring diagram" which has been dubbed the Connectome. It's the central subject of study in the NIH-sponsored Human Connectome Project. What does that mean for an educator? A great deal. An appreciation for the physical processes associated with making mental connections are reminders of the importance of learning environment and culture, repetition, perspective, and the use of multiple modes and multiple senses. Findings reinforce the notion that mindset (the collective of habits of mind, attitudes, dispositions, worldview, and affective traits) are learnable and important within the learning process. For example, there is evidence, both performance and electrophysiological, that supports a causal connection between beliefs and learning. That connection is seldom a surprise to an experienced educator, but reinforces the how fundamental the connection is at a physiological level. See Mangels, et. al. in the research folder.See the folders below for the following:An expanded description of the connections-related outcomesResearch references and perspectives on connectionsA collection of websites and other cards that you can use to promote "connections" within your educational goals (this section will continually be updated, so check back for often)

For engineers to succeed in a world in which data is exponentially increasing, they will need to connect the unconnected. They must be able to see the landscape and map the intersection of ideas. That is the power of connections.

I created this card to categorize and link to KEEN'zine articles that highlight specific elements of each of the 3C's. Articles may show up in multiple folders, so keep an eye out for that as you click through and read. Please use the comment section below to ask any questions that come up when reading the articles. Also, if I missed tagging an article, please comment and let me know through the comments. Happy reading!

Not sure where to start with entrepreneurially minded learning (EML)? This set of cards (linked below) provides take & go resources that canvass the 3C's - Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value - as well as Opportunity Recognition. Explore project-based learning (PBL), social and global biases, customer discovery, jigsaw activities, universal design, and more. These techniques can be connected to EML - and you can learn how through the cards below. Included are Exemplar cards that span all 3C's and Opportunity Recognition. There is one Exemplar card for each year to provide further help in using and adapting activities for your students.And there's a bonus card in the last folder: How Analogies Fit in a Framework for Supporting the Entrepreneurial Mindset. If you want to access these resources, please make sure you are logged in or have joined the community.

Showing engineering students the significance and utility of bio-inspired (or biomimicry) design is easy, but teaching them how to do bio-inspired design is much more difficult. When not scaffolded, students tend to create bio-inspired concepts that are pure science fiction or closely resemble biological imitation, meaning the concepts look or act like the biological system observable characteristics. This card shares an instructional technique for teaching bio-inspired design to engineering students based on the concept-knowledge (C-K) theory of design that scaffolds the discovery and knowledge transfer processes involved in using natural designs to inspire engineering solutions. The hallmark of this technique is the BID canvas (formerly called the C-K map template) that visually structures the thought processes or mindset of bio-inspired design. We have found conclusive evidence of learning impact of design theory based bio-inspired design pedagogy. It has been shown with statistical significance to help students create bio-inspired concepts that are of higher quality than other methods as published in the ASEE 2019 manuscript linked below. With scaffolding, students tend to successfully abstract biological system principles to create concepts that more closely resemble biological inspiration, meaning learning from nature to innovate rather than copying, that are also feasible. This technique has been successfully integrated within a second-year engineering design course, but could be adapted to a capstone design course or an engineering science course with a project. Materials: The Instructional Resource folder contains the complete set of documents needed to adopt this technique for teaching bio-inspired design. They are the following: - A 100 min. lecture (could be split into two 50 min. lectures) in 3 file formats that includes two learning activities - A blank BID canvas and instructions for filling it in - A partially filled in BID canvas for the Flectofin example - A rubric for evaluating BID canvases - An example assignment- Four student work examplesThe Papers / Posters folder contains multiple published manuscripts on our C-K based approach. Context: This technique is used in a second-year engineering design course. These students are in the first semester of the engineering design sequence of the curriculum and are learning the engineering design process while applying the tools and methods to a course project. The topic of bio-inspired design is taught during the concept generation phase of the design process. All students receive a lecture on bio-inspired design in a single 100 minute class period. The lecture has three parts: (1) design by analogy, (2) fundamentals of bio-inspired design with many examples, and (3) the C-K instructional approach with individual and group active learning activities. All assignments in the course tie to a year-long course project of developing a human powered vehicle for a client in the community that has cerebral palsy, including the bio-inspired design assignment. To integrate bio-inspired design into the human powered vehicle design project, each member of a team applies bio-inspired design to a different sub-system (e.g., propulsion, steering, braking) of their design to showcase a variety of design problems and analogies that enable bio-inspired design. All students complete the BID canvas three times, twice in class as part of learning activities to understand the process of bio-inspired design and again in their assignment to scaffold application to the human powered vehicle.Connections to the KEEN Framework:Curiosity: The process of bio-inspired design requires identification of biological inspiration sources using a search technique or database, intuitive knowledge, or communicating with experts. Once a set of inspiring biological organisms or phenomena are identified, they are studied further to facilitate knowledge transfer to the problem task. Engaging in bio-inspired design evokes reductive curiosity (wanting to know) and situational curiosity. As the process continues, the type of curiosity changes. Analysis of biological systems leads to a deeper understanding of the inspiration sources which can then result in abstractions for analogy mapping. The final step is to generate concepts and select those that can be moved forward to the embodiment phase of the traditional engineering design process. It is in the feedback loop of transfer and apply–investigating a biological inspiration source and applying the learned knowledge by generating new concepts–that the discovery of innovative bio-inspired solutions occurs. These later process steps evoke the epistemic curiosity (asking why) and diverse curiosity (asking what if). Connections: Making connections is a necessity in bio-inspired design. Specifically, the investigation of the intersection of seemingly disparate ideas from biology and a technical domain such as engineering. Incorporating other STEM disciplines into complex engineering problems will create a new context for undergraduate students to apply knowledge that they already have. Most students that go into engineering have high school level training in biology. Adding bio-inspired design into the engineering curriculum encourages students to utilize and build off their prior knowledge, which fosters making connections and recognizing interrelationships across STEM disciplines. Moreover, requiring knowledge transfer across domains as well as organizing that knowledge into logical constructs helps to develop future flexibility and adaptive expertise that will facilitate innovation and efficiency. Having to retrieve and transfer knowledge from domains outside of engineering forces students to adapt to unfamiliar languages and content formats (which addresses non-technical skills) in order to apply the biological information intelligently to engineering problems (which addresses technical skills). C-K theory is known for integrating multiple domains of information and facilitating innovation through connection building. Innovation is the direct result of moving between the two spaces by using the addition of new and existing concepts to expand knowledge, and using knowledge to expand concepts. Knowledge is therefore not restricted to being a solution space, but rather is leveraged to improve understanding of the innovative designs. C-K theory thus provides a framework for a designer to navigate the unknown, to build and test connections between the K and C spaces, and to converge on a solution grounded in theory combined with new knowledge.Creating Value: Bio-inspired design is a disruptive approach to innovation and can lead to the discovery of of non-conventional solutions to problems that are often more efficient, economic and elegant. Biological systems often have solved similar problems in an opposite way to traditional engineering approaches. This allows the identification of unexpected opportunities to create extraordinary value across the engineering landscape.Bio-inspired design touches on many areas of engineering including electrical, mechanical, materials, biomedical, chemical, manufacturing and systems, which makes it applicable in a wide range of engineering programs and courses, from discipline-specific to general ones.

The KEEN Framework is an adoptable, adaptable guide to entrepreneurially minded learning. With it, faculty can create educational materials and teaching concepts that equip engineering students with an entrepreneurial mindset. This conceptual framework connects engineering skillset with entrepreneurial mindset, providing the building blocks for entrepreneurially minded learning. Why is this important? We believe this is how to educate the engineering we need. This is the engineer we need: One with an Entrepreneurial Mindset that is coupled with Engineering Thought and Action, Expressed Through Collaboration and Communication, and founded on Character. Engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset transform the world. Educators have a role in developing this mindset in the rising generation of engineers. This card contains the framework and resources connected to its use. Click the Cite button at the top of this card to reference the KEEN Framework in your work.

Although there has been a considerable increase in entrepreneurially-minded learning (EML) within engineering education, assessment of EM may be challenging. Concept maps (cmaps) are a direct assessment method that can provide a snapshot of students’ conceptual understanding of EM. A cmap provides a visual representation of an individual’s understanding of a topic through the use of nodes (concepts) and links (connections between concepts).This research-based toolkit provides an introduction to designing concept map assignments and scoring the cmaps to assess EML in your undergraduate engineering courses. The toolkit includes short videos, instructional guides for instructors and students, case studies, and templates that (1) introduce concept maps as an EML teaching and learning tool, (2) illustrate four types of concept map activities, (3) demonstrate multiple concept map scoring approaches, and (4) share lessons learned from implementing EM concept maps in different types of engineering courses (e.g., statics, first-year design, technical writing elective) across five different institutions. The modules and resources are available on the EM Concept Map Toolkit site.

This card (and associated paper) supports the integration of curiosity, creating connections, and creating value (the 3Cs) of the entrepreneurial mindset in an electric circuits course with a lab component. We describe how a few key modifications that are reinforced continuously throughout the course can transform the course to support the 3Cs. Each of the 3Cs is targeted by a specific approach. Look at the Course Structure section for copies of the syllabus and course schedule to see how the entrepreneurially minded learning (EML) activities fit in the scope of the course.Curiosity is targeted through the formulation of exploratory questions and deeper exploration of those questions. For each lecture topic, a question has been generated by the instructor designed to stimulate student thought and to show students examples of good questions designed for deeper exploration of the topics. The first couple of minutes of class is spent discussing how the question is graded across five dimensions: grammar, clarity, relevance, topic orientation and potential for depth of exploration. Students submit their own sets of exploratory questions three times throughout the course. A single point formative assessment rubric has been created to provide students feedback on their questions. A brief research paper is assigned that requires students to formulate an exploratory question, identify at least one credible and relevant source to use to explore the topic of the question, identify new questions that arise during the research process, and report their findings. It is important for students to demonstrate they are aware of what they do not know by formulating follow-up questions during the research. Doing so demonstrates an ability for students to engage in effective self-study, which supports life-long learning. Students complete the short report with an assessment of their sources found during the research process. Look at the Curiosity-Related Activities section below for copies of the exploratory question rubric and brief research paper assignment. The conference presentation provided in the 2019 ASEE Conference Paper Link and Presentation section provides examples of questions scored on the rubric that are shared with students.Connections is targeted by circuit analogies related to more familiar topics. Connecting new topics to established student knowledge is a well-researched pedagogical approach firmly grounded in the science of learning. A dozen novel circuit analogies are provided in the paper (and even more are in the presentation) that are used in the course. An analogy reflection assignment is given that allows students to select either one of the analogies given throughout the course or to create their own analogy that connects the circuit content to a life experience or other topic. In either case, students are required to describe the underlying deep structure that is shared between the source and target of the analogy. It has been shown that students who partake in the exercise of identifying deep structure between analogs are more capable of transferring knowledge to novel situations. Look at the 2019 ASEE Conference Paper Link and Presentation section below for the presentation that provides the images used with the analogies that are presented to students. Also, look at the Connections-Related Activities sections for a copy of the analogy reflection assignment.Creating value is targeted through a circuit design-build-test project that requires a value proposition. Students are organized into interdisciplinary groups to design and build a temperature sensing circuit that utilizes a thermistor and meets certain design constraints but is open-ended in terms of the application, or need. Students are required to identify an important need or application for their temperature sensing circuit. They must justify the need through relevant market data and submit the idea for the need in a problem framing deliverable. Students also submit an individual design solution along with the problem framing document for formative feedback. The final proposal for the project has a value proposition section in which students summarize the value created by their design. Two suppliers must be identified and a cost comparison must be submitted in the final proposal. For more details on the design-build-test project, look at the Creating Value-Related Activities section for a copy of the project handout and rubric used for grading the final reports.

"Curiosity is a function of overcoming fear. Fear of being wrong. Fear of being right. Fear of being different. If you don’t have the guts to think about bad ideas, you’ll never have the opportunity to execute brilliant ones." UnknownWe know EML is about more than one thing (there are at least three Cs). For teachers striving to help student make progress in more than one aspect of EML, how do we assess these multiple aspects? In other words, how do we decide what to measure, what tools are available, and how do we go about using various tools to generate meaningful assessment results? This card shares the assessment of curiosity using the 5-Dimensional Curiosity Scale (Kashdan, et al., 2018) and practical lessons learned which is part of a larger study of EML integrated curriculum. We learned these lessons through developing and implementing a comprehensive plan to assess EML in a first-year engineering course at The Ohio State University.BACKGROUNDOur 20-month project seeks to integrate EML in ENGR 1182, the second course in a two-semester Fundamentals of Engineering sequence. At Ohio State all incoming freshman engineering students must take a common first-year sequence through the Department of Engineering Education. The course is offered in multiple sections, and each section has a capacity of 72 students. For our assessment, we collected data from 8 sections that implemented the newly developed EML curriculum and 8 sections taught in the traditional fashion. We have the following purposes for the assessment:1. To assess students' entrepreneurial mindset and attainment of EM related learning objectives.2. To assess and compare traditional first-year engineering learning in the EML sections and the traditional sections.3. To evaluate the outcomes of integrating EML into a first year engineering course.This card is part of a sequence of cards developed to share the overall study, outcomes, and lessons learned. The main card with the overall study plan can be found here. We used the Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale (Kashdan, et al., 2018) to measure students’ curiosity in the pre- and post-survey. The Scale comprises 25 items that can be categorized into five dimensions: joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, social tolerance, social curiosity, and thrill seeking. We also report on Connections, Creating Value, and Content Knowledge in the course of this study.CONCLUSIONSThis work models ways that students in large courses can engage in real-world problems at scale without compromising technical proficiency and diversity of student experiences. Based on the results presented in the summary attached below (3Cs-5DC&ContentKnowledge&Connections&CreatingValue_Summary.pdf), we have found evidence to suggest that the integration of EML concepts into a first-year engineering course significantly improved student performance with respect to technical learning objectives, increased willingness to take risks, and increased social curiosity (as measured by Kashdans’ 5 Dimensions of Curiosity instrument)– all while creating aptitude in EML-related competencies of creating connections and creating value. The increase in technical learning for the EML version of the course (ITS), was especially surprising given the short exposure time these students had to working directly with the Arduino microcontroller.

The course helps students understand that as individuals, they do not know everything and never will – they need to make connections with others in technology, government and in the global community.

This CardDeck links to a variety of innovation challenges developed by Saint Louis University. The goal of the innovation challenges is to promote the entrepreneurial mindset through multiple exposures to innovation process in a competitive, multidisciplinary, team-based, creative environment. Just as everyone is encouraged to exercise everyday to keep the body fit, innovation challenges are designed to keep the mind fit. It’s a mind workout. The Innovation Challenges help participants to exercise their creative side, work in multidisciplinary teams, and experience the team dynamics. They learn to tackle a novel situation under intense competitive time pressure, while networking with others outside their disciplines, and most importantly, fine-tuning their entrepreneurial skills.In this CardDeck, each of the challenges are linked in folders below. At the bottom of this card you will find a link to the entire pdf and ibook that features all the challenges in one place.Note: The pdf does not contain rich media like videos and scrolling images. All assets have been uploaded to the individual cards and can be downloaded/viewed.

These case studies are intended to be integrated into existing technical baccalaureate engineering programs to enhance student understanding of how technical concepts coupled with curiosity, making connections, and focusing on creating values can lead to new products and businesses.

In an educational setting it is vital that we as educators are able to assess our learning outcomes and effectively measure student progress towards those objectives. With that being said, what can educators do when they trying to instill a characteristic that they don’t know how to asses? The entrepreneurial engineering community is tackling this issue head on, as the increasing popularity of injecting an entrepreneurial mindset into the engineering curriculum has brought some of these “hard-to-assess” traits into the spotlight. While the KEEN framework has provided a valuable communication tool around which to organize discussion and facilitate action incorporating the entrepreneurial mindset into engineering curricula, it has also raised significant questions around assessment of the framework elements. The constructs captured by the framework are beyond the scope of what engineering faculty are accustomed to teaching and assessing. The abstracted and conceptually overlapping nature of the framework elements further worsens this discomfort. Having a fully vetted example of how the framework might be digested into defined, assessable pieces would be of tremendous value to the network. The purpose of this work is, therefore, to address the need for applied assessment of the KEEN Entrepreneurial Mindset and to explore how the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) VALUE Rubrics might fill these gaps. The first goal for this work was to review the applicability of VALUE rubrics. The guiding research question for this phase was: Are the VALUE Rubrics applicable in regards to assessing the Entrepreneurial Mindset that KEEN promotes? Secondly, after this initial review, the rubric components deemed most applicable were extracted and the goal shifted to answering the question: How might the components of the VALUE Rubrics be reorganized around the elements of the KEEN Framework? Finally, after a thorough review of the resulting rubrics, the question again shifted to: How might these reorganized rubrics be modified and/or appended to better evaluate the KEEN Framework?A set of three rubrics has been developed based on a modification of the sixteen VALUE rubrics, reframed to fit the KEEN Framework. As previously stated, there are gaps in each of the three rubrics, some with more than others. Work is still needed to distribute, revise, and polish the text of the rubric rows, as well as to evaluate gaps in the rubric coverage. Additionally, while direct application of these exemplars is not the intended use case, there are some faculty who may opt to do so. Significant work remains in terms of validation of the rubrics. While they have been developed from highly reliable and validated source material, some revalidation is necessary to ensure good reliability and applicability of the rubrics as redesigned. This work was initially presented at ASEE 2019, as part of the ENT division.

This module explores the concept of thrust and the relevant equations for jet engines in an introductory course about “flight”. When implemented at the University of Dayton, the “Introduction to Flight” course had 28 students in their sophomore and junior level studying Mechanical Engineering. Each assignment in this class includes EML objectives. The module took 2.5 weeks (5 classes each 1 hour and 15 minutes) to be complete where the students explored the question, “Why do jets fly so high?” and big picture view of “thrust” and jet engine design. This module involved the 3C’s by guiding students through a process of inquiry, exploration and discovery. In classroom, students were exposed to the fundamental equation of thrust derived from conservation of mass and momentum. Then, the students were asked to find opportunities to increase thrust from an engine by influencing parameters in the thrust equation. The open ended question encourages students to make connections between theory and practice. After understanding the equation, students discuss opportunities for improvement and societal impact. This module would work well for anyone teaching flight, jet engines, or propulsion.

"The idea that you can have unexpected emergent behaviors from local interactions fascinates me. It's like the Connection piece in the entrepreneurial mindset that can lead to insights that wouldn't have happened without the interacting components. This leads to greater value creation."

This card contains resources to help get you up to speed on all things KEEN and the entrepreneurial mindset (EM). Browse the folders below for content such as: Videos & webinars. Be inspired by thought leaders in the entrepreneurial mindset movement for engineering education.KEEN'zine. This online magazine for entrepreneurial mindset is packed full of projects, classroom examples, and advice from leaders around the nation.The KEEN Framework. Download this guide to create educational materials and teaching concepts that equip students with an entrepreneurial mindset.

Dr. Kim Bigelow and Dr. Ken Bloemer of the University of Dayton developed this series of short videos and accompanying course material to introduce opportunity recognition and ideation techniques that can supercharge the early stages of the design process. The videos and supplemental materials detail how you can use painstorming for opportunity recognition and bisociation and biomimicry to augment traditional brainstorming to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of potential design solutions for project teams.

This module introduces students to customer discovery principles and gathering requirements of an engineering project. Here, the entrepreneurial mindset is developed by learning about the importance of having curiosity about the problem you're trying to solve as well as discovering the needs and making connections to the greater context of your customers situation. In this module these skills are developed through introductory online lecture content, a follow-up quiz, and in-class value identification and customer active learning activities.The customer discovery skills are then practiced through completion of a requirements document assignment focused on developing customer archetypes, customer needs, and initial tasks for a project. This module is typically used during the first quarter of a course, at the very beginning of a senior capstone project with an outside project sponsor. There is 1 week of pre-work online lecture, 1 in-class period, and one homework assignment. All of these are spread over about 3 weeks. This module could be adapted for larger scale project based courses at any level. It is primarily designed for on-ground but could easily be adapted for online delivery.

What are the biggest pains that cause problems, unmet needs, or wants? How do you find out if your proposal is more likely to fly, or to crash and burn? Want to "go wide" with your concepts and outcomes, but still keep your ideas viable and well-organized?The Ideation Toolkit contains links to cards and other resources exploring painstorming, biomimicry, bisociation, screening, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), and more. Use this variety of systematic innovation tools and techniques to help your students more routinely recognize opportunities, generate a wide array of possible concepts, and select the most promising concept for further development!

Are you teaching a first year engineering course, or the engineering design process? Are you looking for an assessment tool for the design process? Do you want to implement 'connections' out of the 3C's in your course? This card describes the use of concept maps as a tool to assess first year students' understanding of the engineering design process in a design-based introduction to engineering course at Arizona State University. It requires students to identify and make connections of various design process related topics and demonstrate their comprehensive understanding of the design process. Even though this card describes the use of the tool in a specific context, i.e., the assessment of engineering design process knowledge, its use can be extended to help students make connections of any other topics within a course, or across curricula, either as an instructional tool or assessment tool. Background Information The engineering design process has become one of the essential topics for first year engineering courses. Many such courses now incorporate design activities for students to practice applying the design process in either simulated or real world situations. The assessment of design process knowledge is usually done through the evaluation of design deliverables, or close or open-ended questions. Traditional assessment methods exhibit many flaws, for example, some of them may not be individual or process based, and others are only connected to lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Concept maps, i.e., graphical node-arc representations that depict relationships among concepts, on the other hand, used as an assessment tool, is open-ended and it requires students to internalize the knowledge, identify key concepts that are relevant, and document relationships between the concepts, demonstrating knowledge of the engineering design process at multiple levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Context This tool was utilized in the freshman-level 2-credit 15-week introduction to engineering course taught during the Fall 2019 semester at Arizona State University, three times throughout the semester to study changes in students' understanding of the design process. Each time, students were instructed to create a concept map that demonstrates their understanding of the design process. More specifically, students must identify key phases (steps) of the design process, as well as any relevant information and details related to each phase, including goals, key tasks, strategies and tools involved, and possible outcomes. And they must use a concept map to show connections of different (specific) concepts identified. The first assessment was done at the beginning of the first class period and it was not graded. The goal of the first assessment was to learn about their understanding of the design process before engaging in any course activities. The other two were each done during a 50-min lecture as in-class assessments and both were included in their final course grades. The second one was done during the middle of the semester after the introduction of the design process and completion of a two-week team-based design challenge where students applied the first few phases of the design process to create a conceptual design. While the last assessment was done at the end of the semester after a 10-week large hands-on team-based multidisciplinary systems-design project. In the first folder included below, a description of the course, including its format, outcomes, and a list of weekly topics can be found. In that folder, a link to another card describing the two-week design challenge, and a link to another ASEE paper describing the 10-week design project can also be found. In the second folder below. detailed instructions provided to students for the assessment, along with the grading rubrics can also be found. Outcome Through the analyses of the concept maps generated by students, it was learned that there is no difference in students’ understanding at the start of this course regardless of whether they had prior knowledge and experiences about engineering design or not; and through this course, the two-week design challenge in particular, students’ understanding of the design process in all aspects has greatly improved; and students’ understanding was further improved after the ten-week design challenge in areas of ‘customer involvement throughout the design process’, ‘research/information gathering’, ‘model/analysis’, and the ‘iterative characteristic’ of the design process.The concept maps generated by students were also categorized based on their complexity and the inter-connectedness of concepts included. It was learned that at the end of the course, 83% students were able to successfully make connections of various engineering design process concepts introduced during the semester. In the third folder included below, four examples of concept maps generated by students can be found. Link to EMConnections Throughout the semester, many specific concepts and tools are introduced that are related to the engineering design process. Students should not leave the course with many small pieces of information, without having a complete picture of how they relate to each other. This tool provides an excellent opportunity for students to think deeply about how the specific concepts are related to each other, through the construction of a complete picture around a central topic. For example, 'design criteria' is one of the concepts introduced in the course about the design process. Instead of just knowing that 'design criteria need to be identified' in the design process, this tool requires students to think about what specific goals, tasks, and outcomes in the design process are related to 'design criteria', and when does the 'design criteria' matter. For example, it can be connected to the 'define the problem', 'brainstorm', 'evaluate design options', 'test design' phases in the design process as well as other specific topics including 'customer wants', 'AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process)', 'decision matrix', 'test procedure', etc. There is also an important connection between 'design criteria' and 'customer'. Through this example, it can been seen that this tool helps facilitate the development of connected thinking. ASEE Paper The paper that is the focus of this card was presented in the Best of First Year Programs: Best Paper Session at the 2019 ASEE Annual Conference. The paper can be viewed at: https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/140/papers/27035/view. It is also included as a link under the folders section of this card.Materials Included In the folder, the following documents are included:- course information including weekly topics - slide that shows the engineering design process introduced in the course - link to the card describing the team-based design challenge - link to the 2018 ASEE paper that describes the team-based multidisciplinary systems design project - assessment instructions- assessment rubrics - example student work