2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper shares the initial findings of the second of three components of a 3-year research project. The three specific components are (1) Component 1: Development, field-testing, and refinement of qualitative data collection instruments used for qualitative research; (2) Component 2: Mixed-methods research data collection and analysis; and (3) Component 3: Integration of self-regulation within engineering and mathematics (EM) courses and workshops. The major objective of the project is to advance engineering and mathematics (EM) education theory and practice related to students’ self-regulation, which includes how students self-regulate their motivation (SRM) and cognitive processes (SRC) during problem-solving activities. Three significant intellectual contributions are expected from this project. First, findings will broaden the limited knowledge about how students’ metacognitive knowledge about task informs their cognitive and motivation self-regulatory processes in EM problem-solving activities. Second, because this research will develop, test, and implement new protocols to assess students’ metacognitive knowledge about task and the strategies they use, lessons gleaned will contribute positively to future SRL-related studies in EM as well as in other fields such as the arts. Third, by working directly with EM faculty to derive implications of our findings and develop new SRL-promoting practices and tools, this project will simultaneously enable further research and advance problem solving.

A quantitative method was used to develop coarse-grained understandings of undergraduate students’ SRM and SRC during academic problem-solving activities. Two research question were constructed to guide this study: (1) How do self-regulation of motivation (SRM) and cognition (SRC) skills are related to each other while solving EM problems?; (2) How do students perceive their self-regulation of motivation (SRM) and cognition (SRC) skills for problem-solving activities in EM courses?

Two 2nd year EM courses: Engineering Statics, and Ordinary Differential Equations were purposefully selected for the contexts of the study. There were 142 students from both courses were participated in quantitative data collection using two validated surveys during spring 2022. One-hundred-twenty-one students were male and 20 students were females. Quantitative data were collected using two self-report surveys: Brief Regulation of Motivation Scale (BRoMS), and the Physics Metacognitive Inventory (PMI). Although PMI was initially designed for Physics, it can be used to assess students’ metacognition for problem solving in other knowledge domains by simply revising the word “physics” to another domain knowledge. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted to analyze the collected quantitative data.

From the data analysis we found (1) a significant relationship between students’ strategies to self-regulate their cognition and motivation during problem-solving activities; (2) no significant difference between male and female’s self-regulation of cognition (SRC) and self-regulation of motivation (SRM); (3) no significant difference of SRM between students who engaged in Engineering Statics and Ordinary Differential Equation problem-solving activities; and (4) a significant difference of reported strategies in interpreting problem and developing plans between those who engaged in Engineering Statics and Ordinary Differential Equation problem-solving activities.