A strong engineering workforce is critical to maintaining a dynamic and innovative United States economy. Engineering programs present considerable challenges, including the need to motivate students and the need for students to have positive attitudes toward learning. Prior research demonstrates that high motivation and positive attitudes towards learning occur when students feel in control of their own learning, place a high value on what they are studying, can regulate their anxiety, and recover from setbacks. While asking students questions about these issues is useful, there is a more direct way to study them - by measuring students' physical responses in real time. A unique element of this study is that in addition to surveys, the investigators will monitor students' body stress responses through sweat and saliva to capture students' anxiety during an exam. The intellectual merit of this ECR project is to broaden understanding of factors related to success using physical signs that a student cannot consciously control and of which they may not even be aware. The broader impacts of this research will come from integrating students' reported perceptions with their unconscious responses to better understand students' emotional and motivational responses to learning, especially those of underrepresented students, who face even greater challenges. This ECR project will support innovative learning environments that promote student success and entrance into the workforce.
More specifically, the intellectual merit of this project is to extend theories of motivation and emotion by integrating physiological responses of students with more traditional measures to better predict student beliefs and behaviors, as well as performance on accepted metrics of success in engineering programs. In addition to surveys, we will use physiological markers based on sweat on the skin (electrodermal activity) and saliva (particularly hormonal markers) to capture students' emotion and anxiety during an authentic exam setting associated with a foundational engineering course. The project will also be integrative in drawing upon theoretical and practical knowledge from engineering education, psychology, physiology, and the learning sciences. It will also broaden understanding of factors related to student emotion, motivation and self-regulation using physical signals that a student cannot self-report as they cannot consciously control and may not even be aware of. The broader impact will come from applying these findings to improving student outcomes, especially those of underrepresented students, who are trying to succeed in an especially challenging environment.
