MOTIVATING TOMORROWS ENGINEERS
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This document discusses motivating engineering students to study through improved teaching methods based on research by Dr. Peter Willmot. It describes international projects investigating what motivates engineering students and how motivation can be nurtured. Students are motivated by challenging, engaging, real-world problems and seeing quick results. They are demotivated by poor lectures, uninteresting topics, and other unmotivated students. The document considers how to address students arriving unprepared and suggests building creativity and autonomy into the curriculum while creating a sense of belonging to motivate students.
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MOTIVATING TOMORROWS ENGINEERS
- 1. Peter Willmot and Billy Done School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering (Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellow) Motivating tomorrows Engineers
- 2. What Motivates Engineering Students…. …. to Study? Dr Peter Willmot To investigate Teaching and Learning innovations that motivate engineering and technology students: How do we get from here …………….. to here? You may be the best teacher ever, but if students are not engaged in class, they will learn nothing. Poor attendance? If so, what causes it? If not, discuss!. Some students arrive improperly prepared for study? What do we do to address the shortfalls? Are we designing our course to help students pass or to help them learn? How much do our actions influence motivation?
- 3. International project HEA sponsored visits to 14 universities in 5 countries • What motivates engineering students to study? • To what extent can improved motivation can be nurtured using appropriate learning and teaching methods? Focus Groups Survey Networking
- 4. Follow-on project ‘Perceptions of Loughborough students’ • What motivates engineering students to study? • To what extent can improved motivation can be nurtured using appropriate learning and teaching methods? Mobile-friendly online survey
- 7. • the work is challenging. • I can see how it was relevant and important. • I have more time. • I can see results quickly. • There is more hands-on practical work. • Work is closer to industry work. • I really understand what I’m doing. • There is group study. I feel more motivated to work hard when ………
- 9. Quotes on preparation for university • I Really didn't learn a lot in high school (UQ, Australia) • Very badly prepared - didn't study at all till the final exams (RMIT, Australia) • I wasn't prepared for anything. I had to start over when I got here. We learned from each other when we got here. (DTU, Denmark ) • Everyone was only doing exams to pass not to learn - essentially all the questions were the same as past papers. (LU, UK) • In my high school in Pakistan, there was very little practical content. (DTU, Denmark) • I went to school in Egypt - I used to learn by heart-It was useless. We depended on private lessons (LU, UK).
- 10. So what can we do?
- 11. • lecture delivery and content is poor – The lecturer just reads his slides / is monotone. – I get a handout and don’t have to do anything in class. – The lecturer has an accent I cannot understand. • My marks don’t reflect the effort I’ve put in /my opinion of my ability and there is no explanation. • I don’t see the relevance of what I’m asked to do. • No one will assist me to understand a difficult concept. • having everything on VLE probably stops people going to class (BS, USA) I feel de-motivated when …..
- 12. On motivational staff • I like a lecturer who has discipline (UQ, Australia) • I feel disconnected when I don’t get feedback (BS, USA) • Engaging things that are fun that require us to apply what we've learnt. (UQ, Australia) • Good personality and getting to know the students (CQU, Australia) • I like when we get a creative assignment that we don’t understand and have to work it out. (DTU, Denmark) • Hate it when lecturer just reads slides (ALL)
- 16. 1. Some students arrive at university with misconceptions and unhelpful baggage: what can we do to combat it? 2. Students desire creativity and learner autonomy, how can we build this into the curriculum? 3. How can we create a sense of belonging for students in university departments? Towards a better future
Editor's Notes
- This survey was constructed in 2012 and was distributed by hand to students from the USA, Australia and three European countries resulting in almost100 participants The foundation of the focus groups, was semi-structured around the questions distributed in the survey and was focused around motivational constructs with aim to identify the extrinsic or intrinsic goal orientations of students and how these orientations are influenced. The focus groups consisted mainly of first year students;
- A mobile-friendly online survey consisting of a combination of open and closed questions totalling 42 in all and including 26 matrix questions that used a 5-point Likert scale. This was circulated to 1100 engineering students (84% male and 16% female) and a reminder email was sent two weeks later in order to attract a second wave of participants. A similar number of respondents:
- Intrinsic motivation is the interest or enjoyment rather than outside stress or expectation for reward that leads performance, so it is a spontaneous behavior or action.
- The international survey quizzed students about their specific motivators and, unsurprisingly, good grades scored highly again but the results shown in figure confirm the importance of coursework being practical, interesting and relevant. Elton (1988) refers to a foreword made by lord Ashby in Ilma Brewer’s book: learning more and teaching less – a decade of innovation in self-instruction and small group learning (1985). Elton regards Lord Ashby as “one of the wisest of [the 20th] century’s academics (Elton, 1988, pp220): “For many years I taught in universities. Like most academics I assumed that the only qualification I needed was expertise in the discipline I taught (which was biology). It did cross my mind that how to teach might be a discipline in its own right, but I never gave it much thought. I marked thousands of examination scripts without examining what the scripts could teach me about my capacity as a teacher and examiner.”
- Engaging things that are fun that require us to apply what we've learnt. (IHK) Being creative. (UQ) having everything on VLE probably stops people going to class (BS) I like when we get a creative assignment that we don’t understand and have to work it out. Where theory is related to practice When I can see the relevance of the theory
- Biggest motivators were JOB PROSPECTS and DESIRE TO LEARN NEW THINGS - although GROUP PROJECTS rated highly some were against – in this slide.
- first year engineering students were somewhat shocked to discover the steep increase in volume of work required from them when starting at university. This, they felt, “forced” them to adopt a surface approach to learning. 53% of respondents to the questionnaire distributed to university students in the USA, Portugal, UK, Denmark and Australia agree that their previous education prepared them well for university. However, when pressed in focus group questioning, students drew a distinction between academic preparation which was, on the whole good, and societal preparation which fared less well. 40% of respondents to the Loughborough University (LU) survey chose ‘neutral’ when asked to what degree they agree with the statement: “I underestimated how difficult my engineering programme would be,” implying it is just as difficult as they imagined but 44% feel that their programme is harder than they first imagined. It is likely that the absence of adequate preparation by schools and colleges, with regards to preparing students for the demands of studying at university, led to 31% of LU survey participants, at some point, considering withdrawing from their course. One student at CQU compares the drastic increase in workload from high school to engineering; going from having little work to do, “cruising through high school”, to all of a sudden having a very demanding workload and how it felt like “getting hit by a big brick wall”. A similar theme is shown at LU where 61% of the sample population of the LU survey agree that they felt the volume of work given to them for their assignments is much greater than they anticipated. Two students at CQU who attended private schools prior to university whole-heartedly disagree with the idea of high school being “cruisy” and that in fact they find university a lot easier in comparison
- lectures– why do we predominantly use them? Hard to pay attention in big group lectures (UQ) As soon as the material gets on top of students, the fear of falling behind is something which both surveys show to have a negative impact on motivation. Inadequate academic preparation for high workloads can lead to undesirable approaches to learning being adopted: with work scheduled perceived so high and students being taught so fast, it is very difficult to sustain a deep approach to learning We learn how to get from A to B as quickly as possible but we grads cant apply what they learn to real situations.
- Encouragingly, many responses to the LU engineering survey (69%) include comments on how an engaging lecture can draw a student in and inspire them to work. It is of no surprise that “engaging” lectures are the types of lectures that students believe will increase their motivation to study. This is reinforced by comments made in the BSU focus group: knowing that more work is involved with one BSU module (unit) in particular; students still choose it, because it involves much more “hands-on” learning with frequent opportunities to put the engineering principles in to practice. They commented they actually look forward to this module and chose it for positive reasons rather than as a module they dislike the least from a list of options. responses freely described motivating lecturer traits; “passionate”; “interactive”; “enthusiastic”; “knowledgeable”; “organised”; “tells a story”; “not patronising”; “clear communication”; “varied delivery methods”; “information explained in depth”; are all recurring phrases and themes mentioned not just in the LU survey, but in the international survey and commented on throughout the focus group interviews. In short, students expect a ‘performance’.
- Engineering is a subject in which the theories being taught all have a practical application. Visualising and being part of this practical application of theory not only involves and engages students, it aids their learning. There are a wealth of examples available and lecturers need to make full use of them. As soon as this learning yields results, students claim their motivation improves as a result. Students have been universally critical of the absence of hands-on learning and hands-on engineering. The majority of students want more of this type of learning as a way to further engage them and thus motivating them to learn. First year Engineering Learning Centre - UQ Inter campus communication / integrated projects – CQU Product Design Engineering – Swinburne EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) – Purdue Flipping the Lecture – Purdue Professional Learning Institute – Col-State Integrated Masters / EER centre – U-Minho Problem Based learning – Aalborg International co-operation - DTU
- The second most frequently mentioned theme, revolves around when the work is related to the real world. If the same students could make one change to their engineering programme, among the top answers was having visits from experts in industry. Students show a burning desire to put into practice what they are learning in class and to be able to make connections with what they are studying to potential careers in engineering.
- , students become de-motivated when being taught a subject in abstract. The most common theme expressed by the same students in the international survey in order to become more motivated, was if they understood a topic’s relevance In a separate survey from a single event competitive team coursework challenge involving first year mechanical engineers at Loughborough University showed that 90% had enjoyed the task and only 2% had not (Willmot, 2015) and the overwhelming majority agreed it had also been an effective learning tool. While this demonstrates that, with a little ingenuity, learning can be both fun and efficient but is hard to imagine many conventional coursework assignments promote the same reaction.
- continual pressure to expand of higher education causes education managers to continue to build larger lecture theatres, claiming efficiency savings in class sizes of several hundred and the blossoming research imperative encourages academics to shift their energies away from time-intensive, normally small-scale pedagogies GOOD GRADES; PASS WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING; FUN Students have shown to be quick to assess the ‘relevance’ of their modules and become disengaged and subsequently become de-motivated when there is an absence of any real-world relevance of the work to be carried out or lacking in the opportunity to be creative. People are more likely to be intrinsically motivated when they believe that doing something enjoyable or something is important for them to learn. Intrinsic motivation in education takes place in the following situations: When students’ learning outcomes are under their own control. Students are confident to use their ability, knowledge and skills to achieve the desired goals. When students value the knowledge or skill they are learning instead of just getting good grades.