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学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。这样的课程被大量的学生在他们的工程学位课程的早期学习。研究人员试图了解如何创造更好的课程教学手段，以激励来自一系列工程学科的学生，他们可能认为课程材料与自己的学位无关。研究人员的重点是确定计划中的课程干预措施如何影响学生的价值观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方法来更好地留住学生在工程项目中。由于学生更有可能在头两年离开工程学，而这两年通常是大型服务学习课程的选修课，因此发现如何改善这些课程在学生中的相关性，可能有助于留住更多的工程学学生。该项目与NSF的战略目标重叠，即通过培养一支具有新能力和专业知识的工程队伍来改造边境。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来实现的，这些成果和研究通过为教育政策和实践提供信息来实现。

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.