Development of a Scalable Self-Regulation Intervention in Support of Lifelong Learning for First-year Engineering Students

Lifelong learning is a Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) graduate attribute and thus a fundamental component of engineering education, and yet, unlike many core engineering concepts such as thermodynamics or heat transfer, there is no agreed upon approach to teach it to students. This work narrows in on the self-regulation component of lifelong learning and draws on research from the learning sciences, motivation theory, and psychology to develop a scalable intervention for first-year engineering students. Several research-based instructional strategies were modified into four workshops and sets of reminders, each with an emphasis on higher purpose, learning strategies, metacognition, or growth mindset. They were offered to first-year engineering students during the winter term and impact on student performance and beliefs were measured. This thesis presents the details of the workshops, results from their first implementations, two frameworks to evaluate the learning intervention, and suggestions for future work. While this thesis cannot provide conclusive results, it does provide evidence and support that self-regulation can and should be explicitly taught to engineering students.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MSc)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Engineering – Mechanical & Manufacturing

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Schulich School of Engineering

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Sullivan, Monique

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Brennan, Robert William
• Sun, Qiao

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Rosehart, William Daniel
• Li, Simon
• Weinhardt, Justin M.

• Lifelong learning, Self-regulated learning, Engineering education

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/37080

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/111015