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基金旨在建立工程和教育心理学之间的跨学科合作，以了解学生在大型跨学科服务课程中的动机和成就。很多学生在攻读工程学位的早期就选修了这类课程。研究人员试图了解如何创造更好的教学方法，以激励来自各种工程学科的学生，这些学生可能认为课程材料与他们的学位无关。研究的重点是确定计划课程干预如何影响学生的价值观念和自我效能感的发展。这个项目的更广泛的意义和重要性是通过开发更好地留住工程专业学生的方法而产生的。由于学生更有可能在前两年离开工程专业，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人才来改变前沿。此外，NSF为社会创新的目标是通过创造对社会有用的结果和研究，为教育政策和实践提供信息。

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.