Actively Building the Drive to Achieve through Everyday Engineering Learning

拥有对长期目标的激情和毅力或实现目标的动力对于试图实现获得工程学位这一具有挑战性的长期目标的个人来说是潜在的重要因素，这不仅需要天赋，还需要长期专注和持续的应用。本项目通过纵向观察研究设计，探讨主动学习在培养激情和毅力中的作用。由于他们在课程中的自然进展，学生们在主动学习连续体上有广泛不同的经历，从低数量和低质量到高质量。这种高度多样化的工程学习生态为研究主动学习与激情和毅力的增长之间的关系提供了一个独特的机会。该项目正在开发一个智能手机应用程序（app），供参与者衡量他们所经历的主动学习的数量和质量。这些数据，以及对其他心理特征和学生成绩的广泛测量，是一个模型的组成部分，它将阐明主动学习、激情和毅力的成长与学生成绩之间的关系。这项研究的结果可能会提高所有STEM学生的保留率和毕业率。

Having passion and perseverance for long-term goals or the drive to achieve is potentially important to individuals trying to achieve the challenging, long-term goal of attaining an engineering degree, which requires not only talent but also focused and sustained application over a long period. This project is investigating the role of active learning in building passion and perseverance through a longitudinal observational research design. As a result of their natural progression through the curricula, students have widely varying experiences along the active-learning continuum, from low quantity and quality, to high. This highly diverse engineering-learning ecology presents a unique opportunity to study the association between active learning and the growth of passion and perseverance. This project is developing a smartphone application (app) for participants to measure the quantity and quality of active learning they experience. These data, along with extensive measures of other psychological traits and student achievement, are elements of a model that will clarify the relationship between active learning, passion and perseverance growth, and student achievement. Results from this study potentially will improve the retention and graduation rates of all STEM students.