Work in Progress: Engaging First-year Students in Programming 1 During COVID-19

During the Fall 2020 semester, it became even more important than before to engage students in the "classroom" whether that be in-person, online, or a hybrid model. This paper will introduce various entrepreneurial mindset techniques to engage the students that could be adapted to any engineering course. All the techniques have suggestions for adapting to a 100% online version as well as working for an in-person or hybrid class. The first activity presented will be name signs with badges that will promote (1) setting, evaluating, and achieving goals, (2) self-reflection, (3) considering a problem from multiple viewpoints, and (4) seeing the values of others. Example badges include: Being Brave, Stump the Professor, Discussion Board Guru, Peer Tutor Extraordinary, and Nominator. The second activity presented will be Tik-Tok-ing the student's way into learning concepts. This activity focuses on students' creating course content via videos that will promote (1) being able to teach and learn from peers, (2) modifying a product based on feedback, and (3) connecting life experiences with class content. The third activity is using Play-Doh to make connections with material. In this activity students use the Play-Doh as a medium to present technical information effectively to a wide audience and make connections with life experiences and class content. Each activity will be explained with examples in programming 1 along with methods to adapt to other engineering courses.