Shaping The Self Efficacy Beliefs Of First Year Engineering Students: What Is The Role We Play?

Abstract

Numerous studies have linked undergraduate students’ interests, performance, and retention in science and engineering fields to self-efficacy. The research also suggests that female science and engineering students have poorer self-efficacy beliefs, those beliefs about their capabilities to perform the tasks necessary to achieve a desired outcome, than do their male counterparts. This study is aimed at identifying factors related to students’ self-efficacy beliefs during their first engineering course. Results are presented from a mid-semester survey administered to freshman engineering students (n = 1387) enrolled in ENGR 106, Engineering Problem-Solving and Computer Tools, at Purdue University. The survey incorporated qualitative measures of student self-efficacy beliefs. Open-ended survey questions prompted students to list those factors affecting their confidence in their ability to succeed in the course. Gender trends emerged in student responses to factors that affect confidence in success. These trends are discussed in light of the four categories Bandura 1 has identified as sources of selfefficacy beliefs: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasions, and physiological states. The results presented here provide a useful look into how the classroom and curricular practices being employed during students’ first year in engineering affect confidence, and ultimately, retention and success.