This quantitative study seeks to explore intrinsic motivation amongst students in post-secondary education. The sample includes 55 undergraduate students currently enrolled in a college of education teaching methods course. The researchers sought to explore the correlation between intrinsic motivation and key variables such as academic…

Undergraduates' first-year experience in engineering education impacts their retention and persistence. Strategic learning strategies (i.e. skill, will, and self-regulation) are important for students' academic achievement and retention. We examined to what extent (1) students' skill mediated the relationship between self-regulation and will and…

Use of modeling as a learning strategy in introductory science courses could serve to support the persistence of all students, including those who identify with a traditionally underrepresented ethnic minority (URM). If students find inherent value in working on modeling-type problems then this authentic practice would aid in transforming personal…

To reduce their attrition rates, institutions need to ensure that their students can manage the stressors they confront in their academic work and persist to complete their study programs. Given the significance of non-cognitive attributes in education, this study aimed to identify the non-cognitive profiles exhibited by students which related…

Metacognition, or the monitoring of one's own learning, is an underutilized tool in STEM education. Previous research suggests instructional strategies that attempt to improve student metacognitive skills could increase student resilience and retention in STEM classes. This pilot initiative aimed to improve student metacognitive skills and…

Student motivation is widely recognized as a positive influence on engagement and learning in higher education. This study tested the structural relationships between motivational regulation strategies (MRSs) and engagement moderated by academic level (undergraduate and graduate) and learning environment (classroom and online). A total of 252…

Approaches to learning a second/foreign language can be affected by such individual differences as personality traits, motivational variables, and task difficulty. Personality traits have been proven to influence academic achievement, but their effects on motivation and language learning approaches remain unanswered. The first purpose of the study…

This article presents the design and results of a workshop for first-year college students based on a conceptual framework that teaching self-regulated learning practices would lead to greater academic self-efficacy and success for students. Twenty-eight undergraduate students attended this voluntary workshop. Pre- and post-workshop surveys were…

Math anxiety refers to feelings people get when facing computational challenges. The fear of failure often causes people to avoid activities, like taking challenging mathematics courses or choosing majors that require mathematics. Grit describes how people persist or persevere in the wake of failure. This article looks at factors that contribute…

College students' performance in introductory-level biology course work is an important predictor of ongoing persistence in the major. This study reports on a researcher-educator partnership that designed and compared two cocurricular workshops. Seventeen laboratory sections of an undergraduate biology course were randomly assigned to one of two…

Within the context of Pintrich's self-regulated learning model, recent reviews of the literature show that motivational factors are the strongest predictors of academic performance. Even so, gaps remain in terms of which goal orientation constructs area most strongly related to performance, and whether academic self-efficacy is involved in such…

Adaptive Learning, as a new online learning environment, intends to individualize the learning experience for each individual learner. Adaptive Learning suffers many shortcomings, as the date of the publication of this dissertation, however, it is considered the next generation of the learning environment for at least the next twenty years;…

Few college students wanting to major in an engineering discipline who begin in precalculus actually complete an undergraduate engineering degree program. One reason for this is students struggle through calculus I and II, known barrier courses for engineering majors. This research utilizes frameworks of future time perspective (FTP) and…

Students must master content for success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but "how to" is rarely taught in college. Faculty are reluctant to sacrifice class time, believe such instruction is remedial, or assume students possess or will attain these skills independently. To determine whether explicit…

Undergraduate Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) courses are gateway courses nursing and allied health students must pass before progressing through their academic programs. Many students need to retake the course to receive grades acceptable to progress in their programs, but identifying students at risk of failure may help instructors extend…