Enhancing Engineering Student Motivation, Academic Success, and Career Development: The Role of a Long-Term Multi-Construct Task Value Intervention

Cultivating a more academically successful engineering student body will not only produce more and better engineers but it will also broaden the talent pool in support of our nation’s STEM innovation ecosystem. Two significant challenges that engineering programs face though are student retention and career readiness. Expectancy-value theory offers a relevant motivational grounding to understand these challenges faced by engineering students. The project will assess the effectiveness of a long-term, multi-construct task value intervention (MTVI) intended to promote academic and career success by connecting student motivation to academic tasks. Research has shown that interventions to enhance task values strongly influence STEM outcomes and could address retention and career readiness challenges. This research will enable the exploration of understanding the effect of combining multiple task value interventions simultaneously, the consequence of repeated exposure over time, and the influence of the interventions on work-integrated learning and career-related outcomes. This project aligns with NSF’s mission to enhance STEM learning and learning environments and promote STEM workforce development, while providing fresh scientific insights into the impact of motivational interventions on STEM education and workforce development. Student success and student performance are influenced by academic outcomes and academic experiences (e.g., task values, participation, engagement). The proposed research will employ a longitudinal, active-control experimental design to evaluate the efficacy of the multi-construct task value intervention (MTVI) that is grounded in situated expectancy-value theory. Targeting four task values (i.e., utility, intrinsic, attainment, and cost) through writing exercises, students enrolled in an introductory engineering course will be randomly assigned to the MTVI group or a control group. MTVI students will complete writing assignments in target courses for the remaining four academic years. This approach will provide longitudinal motivation data to understand engineering students’ journey during undergraduate education. The knowledge to be generated from this research has the potential to inform changes and transform educational practices in engineering education and STEM education more broadly. The findings, which will be disseminated widely across engineering and STEM education communities, will benefit universities by informing educational structures, practices, and curricular experiences. This project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.