Students Improving: Identifying Factors That Seem To Matter

In this paper we explore engineering student gains in confidence in professional and interpersonal skills and intrinsic psychological motivation to study engineering. These two factors were selected because they have been shown in other work from the Academic Pathways Study (APS) sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE) to be directly related to post-graduation plans and to several dimensions of the undergraduate experience. We focus on students with positive confidence and/or motivation gains during their first two years of college, and show that these students are distinct from those with negative or no gains in terms of persistence in the engineering profession, confidence in math and science skills and perceived importance of math and science skills to engineering. Interviews of these “positive gain” students and their “negative gain” peers suggest differences in their attitudes toward and experiences with math and science.