This week, our team of researchers packed our bags and headed to Charlotte, North Carolina for the ASEE 2026 Annual Conference. Between the Southern hospitality, and three packed days of sessions, I came home with a notebook full of ideas and a renewed sense of why this community matters.
Sharing Our Work
The centerpiece of our trip was presenting our team’s poster on a work-in-progress paper: Engineering Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) Through Informal Learning — A Case Study of EM Integration in Hackathons and Makeathons. The core question driving this research is deceptively simple: can a hackathon do more than produce a cool prototype in 24 hours? I belive the answer is yes, and our research provides evidence to back that up.
Through OHI/O, our team developed a series of EM-based interventions: a competition rubric aligned to entrepreneurial mindset frameworks, supporting materials, judge training, and a capstone track designed to bridge informal and formal learning environments. Our interim qualitative analysis of student video presentations is surfacing rich thematic patterns tied to EM constructs. The full study wraps up this summer, and I’m excited about where it’s heading.
The poster session generated great conversation. It’s always validating when people stop, engage, and start connecting your work to their own and that is the magic of conferences like ASEE.
Learning from the Field
Beyond our own presentation, I made it a point to attend sessions that aligned with our teams work and explored new ideas in the field of experiential learning. The CEED Division’s sessions on Experiential Learning, Co-ops & Career Readiness and Workforce Development & Industry Partnerships were very engaging. A few highlights that stuck with me:
- The discussion around AI’s influence on curriculum and experiential learning design was timely and thought provoking.
- Research on how impostor phenomenon intersects with internship experiences and generative AI use among CS students (a paper from Purdue and Georgia Tech). Directly relevant to how we think about student confidence in competitive, high-stakes settings like hackathons.
- A model from Youngstown State on using competition teams as an engagement and retention lever across the full undergraduate journey was exciting and worth connecting to the work of OHI/O further.
The ENT Division’s session on Entrepreneurial Mindset and Innovation in Engineering Education really resontated wth me. Hearing work from institutions ranging from Old Dominion to Loyola to OSU’s own Cheryl Bodnar on makerspace recruitment reminded me that this community is actively building and refining a shared language around EM and OHI/O is part of that conversation.
What I’m Bringing Back
Every ASEE trip leaves me with a list of things I want to try for the first time, or dig deeper on. This year, I’m returning with sharper thinking about how informal learning environments can carry real pedagogical weight and new connections with folks who are asking similar questions in the age of AI in higher ed.
If your work touches hackathons, informal learning, entrepreneurial mindset, or experiential learning in any form, I’d love to connect. Our full study results are coming to ASEE 2027.
— Cal King
