Examining Motivation in Engineering Writing Students

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

Writing is an important skill for both academic and professional engineering success. While low student motivation to master engineering writing is an impediment to the success of engineering writing classes, it has not been addressed much in engineering educational research. This project will conduct a mixed methods research study on student motivation and attitudes on engineering writing and then use the results of the study to a create tool for instructors to apply these findings. Research-based insight into student motivation, paired with an opportunity to learn about motivational psychology, will provide instructors with both the foundation and tools to understand and positively influence student motivation and develop student-centered learning in engineering writing classes. The first objective of this project is to research the motivation of students of engineering writing classes to provide an evidence-based portrait of engineering writing students' motivation and influential experiences. In the second project objective, personas of engineering writing student motivation will be created as faculty development tools to foster the translation of this research into the enrichment of the teaching practices of engineering educators. Personas are brief narratives that distill research into a set of brief fictional personalities and narratives, which reduce the abstraction of user data by illustrating it with a human character, and have been used in the software development and product design. This research will build on existing motivational theories, including Expectancy Value Theory, and research to gain knowledge on student motivation in engineering writing as well as related work on the development and use of personas to bridge the research-to-practice gap in engineering teaching and learning. In this mixed methods research study, the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) will be used to survey a broad and diverse cross-section of engineering writing students. In addition, the project team will conduct semi-structured interviews to further examine the attitudes, concepts, and experiences that shape student writing motivation, with the aim of identifying pedagogies that will provide positive influence on students' motivation and learning. The development of personas based on the survey and interview data and dissemination through faculty development workshops and support will help translate this research into practice and therefore impact students' motivation favorably. The evaluation plan, which includes formative and summative, will help ensure that this work has broader impact beyond the institution and can be adapted at other institutions.