ADVANCING STUDENT MOTIVATION AND COURSE INTEREST THROUGH A UTILITY VALUE INTERVENTION IN AN ENGINEERING DESIGN CONTEXT

Abstract

Understanding and improving student motivation is critical for educators because motivation is essential for academic success. Student motivation is multifaceted and complex with interest as one of many factors related to motivation and motived behavior. Student interest in course material can be supported by helping them understand the value and relevance of the material to their life. Within an expectancy-value framework, one aspect for understanding students perceived task value is to assess their perception of the utility value, or their view of the usefulness, of the task to their present or future goals. One way to encourage value is to have students write about the relevance of the course material to their life through structed utility value interventions. This study will compare the performance, interest, and motivation between students who participated in structured utility value interventions and those in a control group who did not during a third year multidisciplinary engineering design course. Initial indications are that students’ interest and motivation increase when given the utility value intervention.