Future Time Perspective and Self-Regulated Learning: Multiple Case Studies in Industrial Engineering

This research paper is a pilot of a larger, mixed methods study that aims to capture the experience of sophomore engineering students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) strategy use and the connections with the student’s motivation with respect to the future. The overarching goal of the project is to understand the motivations and attitudes of undergraduate students in engineering, which is vital to answering the call for increasing the number of engineering graduates. Our project aim is to study engineering students’ future time perspective (FTP) and how their FTP affects their use of SRL strategies. The quantitative portion of this study describes a cluster analysis of data from a motivation survey that characterizes students’ FTP (n=118). The qualitative portion consists of case studies (n=4) which assess connections between students’ FTP and SRL use. The cluster analysis showed three clusters of student FTP’s. Interviews showed that clustering matched the FTP interview results, a variety of SRL strategy use among FTP’s, and connections between FTP and SRL including perceived instrumentality and a timeline of short and/or long term goals. Future work will focus on the connection between FTP and SRL with the intent that practitioners may use this work to create programming related to these themes to increase SRL use among undergraduate engineering students.