Collaborative Research: Research Initiation Grant: Influence of Motivation on Learning Outcomes in an Engineering Service Course

这项工程教育研究启动资助旨在建立工程和教育心理学之间的跨学科合作，以了解学生在大型跨学科服务课程中的动机和成就。 大量学生在工程学位课程的早期就修读此类课程。 研究人员试图了解如何创建更好的课程教学方法，以激励来自一系列工程学科的学生，这些学生可能认为课程材料与他们的学位无关。 研究人员的重点是确定计划的课程干预如何影响学生的价值观念和自我效能的发展。该项目的更广泛意义和重要性是通过开发更好地保留学生参与工程课程的方法而产生的。 由于学生更有可能在经常参加大型服务学习课程的前两年离开工程专业，因此发现如何提高学生对这些课程的相关性的感知可能有助于留住更多的工程专业学生。 该项目与 NSF 的战略目标重叠，即通过培养具有新能力和专业知识的工程队伍来改变前沿。 此外，NSF 的社会创新目标是通过为教育政策和实践提供信息，创造对社会有用的成果和研究来实现的。

This engineering education research initiation grant seeks to establish an interdisciplinary collaboration between engineering and educational psychology to understand student motivation and achievement in large, interdisciplinary service courses. Such courses are taken by large numbers of students early in their engineering degree programs. The investigators seek to understand how to create better means of teaching courses to motivate students from a range of engineering disciplines who may not see the course material as relevant to their degree. The investigators focus on determining how the planned course interventions affects students' perceptions of value and development of self-efficacy.The broader significance and importance of this project arises through developing ways to better retain students in engineering programs. Since students are more likely to leave engineering in the first two years when the large service learning courses are often taken, discovering how to improve how relevant these courses are perceived by students may contribute to retaining higher numbers in engineering. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by creating results and research that are useful for society by informing educational policy and practices.