Examining Change in First-Semester, Non-Calculus-Ready Students’ Engineering Efficacy: Associations With Help-Seeking and Academic Achievement (Poster 33)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Wednesday 4:20 p.m.
  In Poster Session: Enhancing Engineering Education: Engaging Students Through Personal Experience, Active Learning, and Innovative Instructional Tools

Abstract

Engineering imposes early challenges to students’ efficacy beliefs, particularly for those underprepared for the mathematics demands of engineering majors. We examined change in non-calculus-ready students’ (N=107) engineering efficacy across a first-semester introduction to engineering reasoning course using Bayesian latent growth curve modeling. We tested the long-term associations between students’ pre-course help-seeking motives, change in efficacy, and indicators of students’ social-academic success. Students’ engineering efficacy increased significantly across the course, and significant individual differences in change in efficacy were observed. Students’ pre-course help-seeking motives predicted initial levels of engineering efficacy. Growth in engineering efficacy was positively associated with end-of-course belonging and mathematics efficacy and end-of-year mathematics grades and GPAs. We consider implications for early, efficacy-promoting curricular supports in engineering.

Authors

• D. Jake Follmer, West Virginia University

• Megan Hut, West Virginia University

• Lizzie Y. Santiago, West Virginia University