Motivational insights about first year engineering students experimenting active learning in mathematics courses

Abstract

In Latin America, it is common to observe a lack of motivation in the students enrolled in mathematics engineering courses. We have been implementing different methodologies to teach such courses and studying their academic impact; however, we have not analyzed their effect on motivation. There are several studies centered in motivation and active learning, but only a few deals with mathematics courses in Latin America. In this paper, we present the results of a validated translation of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire conducted to two groups of engineering students enrolled in a pre-calculus course, taught using active learning and Lecture-Based methodologies. Our findings include a significant difference in the intrinsic motivation between those groups. The results of the remaining sub-scales of the test in both groups are also discussed in this paper. To complete our analysis, we also compare the students' motivation between several subgroups: Traditional and Non-Traditional, men and women, among others.