Enhancing Intrinsic Motivation in Core Engineering Courses

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This project is redesigning a sophomore-level electrical and computer engineering course to increase students' intrinsic motivation for learning technical engineering content. Motivation research has found that students learn more when the content is linked to their career goals and when they can make some decisions about their own learning. This project is offering students different options for projects which will help them learn the required course content. The investigators are collecting evaluation data which relates students' motivation to their learning of key engineering concepts in digital logic and computer organization. Student learning and motivation in this new course are also being compared to a control group in a traditional engineering course on the same topic. Graduate teaching assistants and engineering faculty members are being trained to teach motivation-based engineering courses in other topics as well.