WIP: Relatable Rebound Story Project: Transforming How Students View and Overcome Setbacks

This innovative practice WIP paper presents a pilot study of an educational intervention designed to transform the way students view and overcome struggles that are a normal-and essential-part of the learning process. The intervention involves sharing “relatable rebound stories” from previous students, each describing a setback or challenge encountered and the specific agentic strategies used to resolve it. Preliminary results are presented from a pilot study conducted in an entry-level computer engineering course of 168 students that requires time management and project-based learning. This study shows the positive impact of this intervention on quantitative sense of belonging and selfefficacy scales and confidence in skills related to computing, systems prototyping, and problem-solving.