2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

It is critical to consider students’ self-reported learning experiences when educating future engineers, especially for students who are historically underrepresented and/or underserved. This empirical full paper seeks to understand how students view themselves as learners within the learning process, what their motivations are to learn, and how they interpret test anxiety in context of their fundamental courses, is beneficial for educators to adeptly adapt pedagogical practices to support students’ learning and improve learning outcomes. As a part of an NSF-funded grant to better support Hispanic/Latine/a/o/x and transfer students, we seek to interpret students’ self-reported self-regulated learning (SRL), motivation (via achievement goal orientation and general self-efficacy), and test anxiety in their engineering courses over time. To foster SRL and motivation, while creating an environment to mitigate test anxiety, we implemented key pedagogical practices in their fundamental engineering courses. These practices include readily available lecture videos for mixed mode modality, mini projects, and multiple-attempt testing. To investigate students’ perceptions of these activities and their self-reported SRL, motivation, and test anxiety, we were guided by the following questions: (1) What are students’ perceptions of the pedagogical practices, and is there a mean difference between entry and exit responses? (2) How do self-reported levels of self-efficacy, achievement goal orientation, self-regulated learning, and test anxiety differ over the semester between Hispanic/Latine/a/o/x and non-Hispanic/Latine/a/o/x students, and between transfer and non-transfer students?

152 students (n=152) at a large southeastern Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the United States in Spring 2024, in Dynamics, a fundamental engineering course, completed entry and exit surveys on a Likert scale about their perceptions of each pedagogical practice, self-reported SRL, achievement goal orientation, self-efficacy, and test anxiety. Responses indicated students reported multiple attempt testing was helpful throughout the semester. A paired t-test indicated a statistically significant increase in perceptions of mini projects at the end of the semester compared to the beginning. To answer the second research question, we conducted a Repeated Measures Multivariate Analysis of Variance (RM-MANOVA). Results indicate over the course of the semester, non-Hispanic/Latine/a/o/x Transfer students reported higher SRL than Hispanic/Latine/a/o/x Transfer students. In general, students reported higher mastery approach, performance approach, and performance avoidance goal orientations at the beginning of the semester compared to the end. However, students’ reported general self-efficacy was lower at the beginning of the semester compared to the end, indicating students’ beliefs about their ability to do well increased over the course of the semester. Test anxiety remained the same for most students but was statistically significantly higher for Hispanic/Latine/a/o/x Transfer students than non-Hispanic/Latine/a/o/x Transfer students. These results suggest students’ self-reported motivation and SRL change over time. In particular, it is important to identify the motivation constructs that decreased over the course of the semester and understand how we can foster mastery goal orientations, which are often associated with deeper learning. Further, it is important to investigate test anxiety for all students, but in particular, with historically underserved undergraduate engineering students in mind.