2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This study examines students' motivations and learning strategies at an undergraduate-level engineering education. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) compares the value engineering students obtain from their education and learning strategies with their expectancy of success, which is the main instructional method in this research. The students rate themselves on a seven-point Likert scale, with one being ‘very unlike them’ and seven being ‘very much like them.’ The survey questions split motivational factors into (a) intrinsic goal orientation, (b) extrinsic goal orientation, and (c) task value. Learning strategies can be categorized into more specific groups, including cognitive methods such as rehearsal, organization, and critical thinking. Students may expect success in different forms based on their motivations, which can be associated with their self-efficacy and self-regulation. The overarching research question is, what are the associations between undergraduate engineering students' motivation and learning strategies? This study collected data from a single engineering discipline from thirty-five undergraduate engineering students in Singapore. A statistical analysis method based explicitly on Cronbach’s alpha coefficient will identify the reliability of the scales, and the following analysis using the Pearson correlation coefficient and the Mann-Whitney U test provides comparative details. The results convey high correlations among certain motivational factors and learning strategies and specific differences between the results based on the sample in Singapore and general work that is also based on MSLQ. This could enable an understanding of the effectiveness of undergraduate engineering education in Singapore and whether the undergraduate programs may be overly demanding for students. Singapore university students come from diverse secondary school academic backgrounds. Thus, identifying engineering undergraduates' motivational strategies for learning could help cater to the wide variety of students in the region. Considering this, a teaching system based on increasing the value of engineering education for the students could be designed in the future, helping students to further their interest in engineering fields and obtain sustained success. Future studies will be performed to include a larger representative sample and analysis of learning styles not mentioned in the questionnaire.