2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In engineering as a profession and in engineering education, failure is commonplace--attempted designs fail, experiments fail about 90% of the time, and students do not achieve the scores they desire on homework, quizzes, and exams. Thus, the ability to navigate and respond to failure as an opportunity for growth and learning is a key component of the scientific enterprise. However, engineering education research is sparse on how students respond to failure.

Research on response to failure has been extensive in workplace settings, in which there is a very wide range of negative and positive responses to failure, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, working harder, working smarter, shock, fear, renewed dedication, increased susceptibility to stereotypes, blame, shame, despair, changes in interest, reassessing career, reassessing self-perceived ability, and learning from failure. Thus, these responses may include combinations of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses. Research on responses to success likewise suggests positive emotions in response to success on work projects, such as pride, satisfaction, and happiness. Educational research on response to failure across different domains and ages--not just in engineering education--has been quite narrow because research has used theories that make very narrow predictions about response to failure, like self-belief theory[1], achievement goal orientation[2], expectancy-value theory[3], interest theory[4], etc. Educational research on response to success has been sparse, but also suggests positive emotions in response to success.

In this Work In Progress, we have created a questionnaire about student responses to exam success and failure in engineering courses. The questionnaire was developed based on 55 interviews conducted in 2023-24 and then edited based on cognitive interviews with the draft questionnaire in summer 2024. Questionnaire administration begins October 1, 2024. Results of the 55 interviews conducted in 2023-2024 interviews were reported at ASEE 2024. A 19-question scale on emotional responses to receiving one’s own exam results and a 22-question scale on planned study strategy changes for the next course exam was drafted based on themes found during the interview process. Five engineering undergraduates were interviewed and asked to say aloud what they were thinking while answering these draft questions. Questions were edited for clarity and completeness, and we embedded reminders to think about one’s reaction to the most recent exam in one engineering course. For our post-exam emotion questionnaire, students will first be asked to self-report whether they thought they did better, worse, or about as expected on the exam once they got their score back. They will then be asked to rate their agreement regarding whether they felt various emotions after they learned about their last exam grade from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Some of the emotions students will be asked to report on include whether they felt angry, confused, confident, or reassured. For our post-exam strategy change questionnaire, we first ask students to indicate how they plan to change their exam study strategies, choosing from among several strategies listed, to prepare for the next exam in the same course. Items are on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (Never used it and don’t plan to use it) to 5 (Use it more [including didn’t use it before but plan to use it on the next exam]). Some of the study strategies students will be asked to report on include practice from/re-do homework, review more than one day before the exam, study alone, or take practice exams and time themself. With IRB approval, students in one large Circuits course with about 460 students will complete the questions for homework credit, and will have the option to release their answers for research purposes and complete a very brief demographics form. In the full version of the paper, we will present descriptive results and evidence of reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) and validity (correlational and/or exploratory factor analysis, depending on sample sizes).

References

[1] Dweck, C. S. (2000). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology Press.

[2] Elliot, A. J., & McGregor, H. A. (2001). A 2× 2 achievement goal framework. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(3), 501-519.

[3] Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 68-81.

[4] Hidi, S., & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111-127.