Motivational Assessment of Engineering Students at two centres of the University of Extremadura

Abstract

The student's motivational orientation is an indispensable factor for adequate learning during their formative years. The knowledge of motivational orientations allows teachers to enhance the performance of their students. The objective of this work is to compare the motivation of students from two Industrial Engineering centres of the University of Extremadura (Spain). To evaluate these factors, the MAPE-II tool was implemented. The methodology assesses student motivation by focusing on three motivational orientations: learn, results and fear of failure motivation. In addition, the tool allows to know and quantify the motivational orientations of the students through a questionnaire. The Cronbach's Alpha test was used to analyse the internal consistency of the student's responses. Centre 1 presents a higher value in the learning motivation dimension, comparing the results of the dimensions obtained in the two centres analysed. Centre 2 obtained a large increase in the mean value of the second dimension related to motivation for results. Finally, it should be noted that the fear of failure dimension shows much higher values in Centre 2. The analysis of the student's motivational orientation makes it possible to determine negative aspects of learning and to be able to establish the necessary intervention measures to maximize their performance.

Keywords

• motivation
• industrial engineering
• teaching
• mape-ii