2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 33: Enhancing Self-Efficacy Among Transportation Engineering Undergraduates Using Hands-On Pedagogy.

Presented at Civil Engineering Division (CIVIL) Poster Session

Self-efficacy, a belief in one's potential to achieve a desired outcome, stands as a significant factor towards learners’ achievement in learning. Engineering education, which is often distinguished by its rigorous theoretical emphasis and empirical analysis, demands an innovative and comprehensive approach toward student development that includes not only technical knowledge but also instills confidence and problem-solving ability. This study investigates the factors moderating transportation engineering undergraduates’ self-efficacy and the impact of an evidence-based, experiment-focused, hands-on pedagogy. The study adopts a descriptive and quantitative method using the Motivated Strategy for Learning Questionnaires (MSLQ) in a pre-post-test design. The responses of the survey were obtained from 68 learners who fully participated in the transportation engineering modules where experiment-centric pedagogy was implemented. The data were cleaned and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Inferential analysis was conducted at a confidence level of 95%. The mean self-efficacy score at the baseline was 9.21±5.98 which was found to significantly increase at post-test to 17.06±3.39. The Cohen d effect size was found to be greater than 0.8 which revealed that the changes were not due to chance. At baseline, the most strongly significantly correlated factor to mean self-efficacy score was the current academic level of the undergraduates (p<0.001) which was later found to be insignificantly and uncorrelated at the post-test. In conclusion, hands-on activities helped learners to learn engineering skills and gain real-life experience during learning which led to more confidence in their engineering skills. This study showed that hands-on pedagogy can boost engineering learners' self-efficacy which is noted to influence performance and retention.

Authors

Mr. Adebayo Iyanuoluwa Olude http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4973-9589 Morgan State University [biography]

Adebayo Olude is a doctoral student and research assistant at Morgan State University’s Department of Civil Engineering in Baltimore, Maryland. Adebayo formerly worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at Eastern Mediterranean University in North Cyprus, where he earned his master’s degree in civil engineering. He also worked as a project Analyst with AgileP3 after graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng) in civil engineering from Covenant University, Nigeria. Adebayo has taught courses in Transportation and Chemistry at Morgan State University as part of his commitment to the STEM profession. He has attended conferences across the Transportation engineering field.
Mr. Pelumi Olaitan Abiodun http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4969-9591 Morgan State University [biography]

Pelumi Abiodun is a current doctoral student and research assistant at the department of Civil Engineering, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland. Pelumi got his BSc and MSc degree in Physics from Obafemi Awolowo University, where he also served as a research assistant at the Environmental Pollution Research unit, in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. As part of his contribution to science and engineering, Pelumi has taught as a teaching assistant both at Morgan State University and Obafemi Awolowo University. With passion to communicate research findings and gleaned from experts in the field as he advances his career, Olaitan has attended several in-persons and virtual conferences and workshop, and at some of them, made presentation on findings on air pollution, waste water reuse, and heavy metal contamination.
Dr. Oludare Adegbola Owolabi P.E. Morgan State University [biography]

Dr. Oludare Owolabi, a professional engineer in Maryland, joined the Morgan State University faculty in 2010. He is the assistant director of the Center for Advanced Transportation and Infrastructure Engineering Research (CATIER) at Morgan State Universit

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