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

这个工程教育研究启动补助金旨在建立工程和教育心理学之间的跨学科合作，以了解学生的动机和成就，在大型，跨学科的服务课程。 这些课程是采取了大量的学生在他们的工程学位课程的早期。 调查人员试图了解如何创建更好的教学方法，以激励来自一系列工程学科的学生，这些学生可能不认为课程材料与他们的学位相关。 调查人员专注于确定计划的课程干预如何影响学生的价值观和自我效能的发展。通过开发更好地留住工程专业学生的方法，本项目的更广泛的意义和重要性。 由于学生更有可能在前两年离开工程学，而这两年通常会学习大型服务学习课程，因此发现如何提高学生对这些课程的相关性可能有助于保留更多的工程学课程。 该项目与NSF的战略目标重叠，即通过准备一支具有新能力和专业知识的工程队伍来改变前沿。 此外，NSF为社会创新的目标是通过为教育政策和实践提供信息来创造对社会有用的结果和研究。

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.