Activating first-year engineering students' conation to learn

Abstract

This study investigates whether first-year engineering students' conation has the potential to be activated after learning in an introductory engineering course which was designed to support students' learning through the implementation of Cooperative Problem-Based Learning, an inductive student-centered approach that utilized authentic problems. A pre-and post-test instrument using Goal Orientation Index (GOI) was administered to thirty first-year engineering students taking an introduction to engineering course. The GOI has 96-items of 5-ordered-categories questionnaire consisting of three primary constructs of striving behavior in conation: Plan, Act, and Reflect. The GOI was analysed using Rasch measurement model to evaluate instruments' measurement functioning through investigating items' reliability coefficient, separation, fit statistics, unidimensionality, and person-item distribution map (PIDM). The pre- and post-data were analysed using SPSS which includes descriptive statistics to obtain the mean and standard deviation, and inferential statistics to investigate the significant difference in students' conation. The Rasch analysis shows that all items in the GOI instrument were reliable and valid to be used for statistical analysis. The reliability of the items and person has exceeded 0.70 and 1.5 respectively which is considered acceptable to be used and no modification to the item should be made. The separation indices for items and persons also have met the acceptable level of separation indices. The inferential statistics using a paired-sample t-test showed that there is no significant statistical difference in students' conation at pre-and post-test as the p-value exceeds 0.05. However, the results of the descriptive statistics, all sub-constructs show activation in conation as the mean values of the post-test is higher than the pre-test. This is also supported by the PIDM which clarifies that students agreed to various items at post-test. The results show that providing support at the tertiary level, specifically in a supportive learning environment, has the potential to activate students' conation.