Assessing Changes in Innovation Self-Efficacy and Interest among Environmental Engineering Students Engaged through Inquiry-Based Learning

Abstract

This study examined changes in students’ innovation-related self-efficacy, interests, and perceived importance of innovation in future careers over the course of a junior-level environmental engineering class. The course incorporated an inquiry-based, open-ended project supported by external mentors and scaffolded with structured reflections based on Dyer’s innovation model. A previously validated Likert-scale survey based on expectancy-value theory (EVT) was administered at the beginning and end of the project, with five to six items creating composite scores for self-efficacy, interest, and future work importance. Paired presurvey and postsurvey responses were available from 35 students. Results showed statistically significant gains in students’ innovation self-efficacy (presurvey mean 4.0 and postsurvey mean 4.8), including questioning, observing, experimenting, idea networking, and associational thinking skills. However, students’ interest in innovation-related tasks and importance in future work remained largely unchanged. The lack of correlation of innovation self-efficacy with future importance of innovative work in this study contrasted with expectations based on EVT and earlier research. Innovation self-efficacy was not correlated with innovation interests in the presurvey but the correlation was significant on the postsurvey, indicating that the intervention may have better aligned these attitudes. Female students initially reported lower innovation self-efficacy than male students (mean of 3.7 versus 4.3, respectively) but by the end of the semester the difference was not statistically significant (mean of 4.6 versus 4.9). Female and male students did not differ significantly in their innovation interests or importance in future work. These findings illustrate how an inquiry-based project can effectively enhance engineering students’ confidence in the core skills that drive innovation.