One size doesn’t fit all: how different types of learning motivations influence engineering undergraduate students’ success outcomes

Motivation is the inherent belief to guide students learning goals and behaviors to make continuous efforts and strengthen learning outcomes. Previous research reported the positive impacts of learning motivation on student success, but there have been limited efforts in systematically and structurally studying different types of motivations and their impacts on students’ success in engineering education. The current study contributes to the literature by systematically examining two important types of motivations and their influences on undergraduate engineering students in a theoretically grounded manner while using an advanced analytical approach. The current study conducted a cross-sectional survey with undergraduate engineering students (n = 514) from 18 different schools across nine U.S. states. The survey assessed students’ self-report scores on six types of motivations to study developed based on formative research and the current literature and then collected students’ self-reported learning outcomes, current GPA, university satisfaction, engineering program satisfaction, and individual demographic factors. The data were then analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that motivations related to family, personality, and academic expectations were consistently positively associated with all measured students’ success outcomes; motivations related to educators were associated with all four outcomes but student GPA; motivations related to course contents were associated with learning outcomes and student GPA; and motivations related to peers did not predict any of the four measured students’ success outcomes. We explain some of the unexpected results with further literature that examines engineering culture and ecology. We also make recommendations related to cognitive training, tailored engineering education, peer culture interventions, and family orientation programs.