Exploring Student Academic Motivation and Perceptions of Teamwork and Communication

Hamidreza Taimoory; David B. Knight; Kazuki Hori

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Conference: 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual Conference
Publication Date: July 26, 2021
Start Date: July 26, 2021
End Date: July 19, 2022
Conference Session: Student Division Technical Session 6
Tagged Division: Student
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 16
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--37146
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/37146
Download Count: 449

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Paper Authors

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Hamidreza Taimoory Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University orcid.org/0000-0002-3996-4750

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Hamid is currently a Ph.D. student in the Engineering Education program and a Master's student in Management Systems Engineering. He likes to utilize his quantitative and engineering knowledge to conduct research to encourage young people to pursue the engineering field.

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David B. Knight Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490

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David B. Knight is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and Special Assistant to the Dean for Strategic Plan Implementation at Virginia Tech. He is also Director of Research of the Academy for Global Engineering at Virginia Tech and is affiliate faculty with the Higher Education Program. His research tends to be at the macro-scale, focused on a systems-level perspective of how engineering education can become more effective, efficient, and inclusive, tends to leverage large-scale institutional, state, or national data sets, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. He has B.S., M.S., and M.U.E.P. degrees from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Pennsylvania State University.

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Kazuki Hori Virginia Tech

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Kazuki Hori is a doctoral student at Educational Research and Evaluation, School of Education, Virginia Tech. His research interests include longitudinal data analysis and panel data analysis; educational measurement and test development; and causal inference in educational and psychological research.

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Abstract

STEM outreach programs in the summer provide a good platform for students to continue expanding their interests in STEM fields. A three-week out-of-school program offered by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)--Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK)—has provided given more than 20,000 students such an experience since 2007. This research is based on data collected from 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade students participating in SEEK during 2018 and focuses on students’ teamwork skills during the experience. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students’ motivation in the program and the reports of their team processes, teamwork, and communication skills. The SEEK curriculum is designed for students to learn an engineering-based activity, such as building a wind turbine or working with a drone each week and implement their knowledge during a weekly competitive event. For each weekly activity, students work as a team to communicate and collaborate. Students' teamwork skills and collaboration engagement could improve by implementing Project-Based Learning (PBL) strategies (Jun 2010). Collaboration and intentional communication between students may improve when they work as a team with a joint project goal (Kolmos and de Graaff, n.d.). In such environments, similar to any learning environment, maintaining students’ motivation is theoretically essential for learning to occur. Although a pre- and post-test research design has been used in the overall research project, this paper analysis focuses only on post-test results. Self-report data were collected from 1090 students. Fifteen items with a four-point Likert scale that group into five primary constructs were used to measure academic motivation (see Brett Jones’ MUSIC model). An instrument was designed based on Robinson and Zajicek's (2005) Youth Life Skills (YLS) to measure group work skills (five items with a three-point Likert scale) and communication skills (four items with a three-point Likert scale). We used six items with a three-point Likert scale from the Townsend and Carter (2003) Leadership Skills Inventory to measure team processes. Our analysis used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the interrelationships between students' academic motivation, communication skills, group work skills, and their team processes. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) used for the analysis using SAS statistical software to run the hypothesized path model using the maximum likelihood estimation technique. The residual variance was set to zero, and the latent variable loading was fixed to one. To test the hypothesis, we ran the model and found that this model exhibited an overall moderate fit with the data. RMSEA shows a poor fit while CFI indicates a better fit and SRMR indicates a moderate poor fit. By demonstrating that the analyzed data fit, our hypothesis is moderately confirmed the model. This research provides evidence that using PBL approaches in the summer STEM outreach program helped students' MUSIC perception be motivated in these criteria. Finding suggests that PBL strategies make students more motivated by implementing their STEM knowledge, including better teamwork collaboration with communication and teamwork skills.

Citation
Format

Taimoory, H., & Knight, D. B., & Hori, K. (2021, July), Exploring Student Academic Motivation and Perceptions of Teamwork and Communication Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37146

TY - CPAPER
AB - STEM outreach programs in the summer provide a good platform for students to continue expanding their interests in STEM fields. A three-week out-of-school program offered by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)--Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK)—has provided given more than 20,000 students such an experience since 2007. This research is based on data collected from 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade students participating in SEEK during 2018 and focuses on students’ teamwork skills during the experience. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students’ motivation in the program and the reports of their team processes, teamwork, and communication skills.
The SEEK curriculum is designed for students to learn an engineering-based activity, such as building a wind turbine or working with a drone each week and implement their knowledge during a weekly competitive event. For each weekly activity, students work as a team to communicate and collaborate. Students&#39; teamwork skills and collaboration engagement could improve by implementing Project-Based Learning (PBL) strategies (Jun 2010). Collaboration and intentional communication between students may improve when they work as a team with a joint project goal (Kolmos and de Graaff, n.d.). In such environments, similar to any learning environment, maintaining students’ motivation is theoretically essential for learning to occur.
Although a pre- and post-test research design has been used in the overall research project, this paper analysis focuses only on post-test results. Self-report data were collected from 1090 students. Fifteen items with a four-point Likert scale that group into five primary constructs were used to measure academic motivation (see Brett Jones’ MUSIC model). An instrument was designed based on Robinson and Zajicek&#39;s (2005) Youth Life Skills (YLS) to measure group work skills (five items with a three-point Likert scale) and communication skills (four items with a three-point Likert scale). We used six items with a three-point Likert scale from the Townsend and Carter (2003) Leadership Skills Inventory to measure team processes. Our analysis used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the interrelationships between students&#39; academic motivation, communication skills, group work skills, and their team processes.
The Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) used for the analysis using SAS statistical software to run the hypothesized path model using the maximum likelihood estimation technique. The residual variance was set to zero, and the latent variable loading was fixed to one. To test the hypothesis, we ran the model and found that this model exhibited an overall moderate fit with the data. RMSEA shows a poor fit while CFI indicates a better fit and SRMR indicates a moderate poor fit. By demonstrating that the analyzed data fit, our hypothesis is moderately confirmed the model. This research provides evidence that using PBL approaches in the summer STEM outreach program helped students&#39; MUSIC perception be motivated in these criteria. Finding suggests that PBL strategies make students more motivated by implementing their STEM knowledge, including better teamwork collaboration with communication and teamwork skills.

AU - Hamidreza Taimoory
AU - David B. Knight
AU - Kazuki Hori
CY - Virtual Conference
DA - 2021/07/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Exploring Student Academic Motivation and Perceptions of Teamwork and Communication
UR - https://peer.asee.org/37146
DO - 10.18260/1-2--37146
ER -