Student lifelong learning outcomes for different learning environments

Abstract

Calls for educational reform emphasize the need for students to develop a capacity for lifelong learning. Lifelong learners may be characterized as curious, motivated, reflective, analytical, persistent, flexible, and independent - traits that are critical for success in today's globalized economy. Engineering educators and ABET recognize that students' development of such aptitudes is vital for their success and that instructors play a critical role in influencing such outcomes. However, there is a critical lack of research in this area. We are conducting a study investigating how instructor choices affect student outcomes related to their development as lifelong learners. This research examines a variety of undergraduate engineering courses at four different institutions with four different instructors employing a range of active-learning pedagogies. Our theoretical framework comes from the literature on self-regulated learning recognizing the critical need for lifelong learners to be self-regulated. In this paper, we consider the research questions "In what ways do pedagogical choices made by engineering instructors assist students to develop attitudes and behaviors associated with self-regulated learners?" and "What are students' perceptions of the degree to which the different pedagogies support their development as independent learners?" Student outcomes are measured using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a widely used self-report instrument intended to measure motivation and use of different learning strategies. Dependent groups t-tests were used to compare within-group differences from pre- to post-course. Significant differences were found for student outcomes on several subscales of the MSLQ. The learning environment, specifically the students' perceptions of faculty support for their growth as independent learners, was measured using the Learning Climate Questionnaire (LCQ), and we interpret the MSLQ results in light of these results. The different ways that students change in different courses suggest that different pedagogies influence development of certain behaviors related to lifelong learning. Our preliminary results suggest that students' development as self-regulated learners involves a complex interplay between all these factors. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.