Background The first semester in undergraduate engineering is often challenging for students, making this a potentially fruitful time period for exploring motivational changes and relations between motivational beliefs and achievement. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of the current study was to examine changes in implicit beliefs about intelligence and effort beliefs across the first semester of undergraduate engineering education, to investigate how these beliefs may contribute to first‐semester achievement, and to explore changes in students’ perceptions of the relative contributions of effort and ability/intelligence to grades. Design/Method Data from first‐time, full‐time engineering undergraduates at a large Midwestern university were collected at Weeks 1 and 13 of the first semester. Analyses were replicated across two cohorts (2013 and 2014). Results On average, students entered and ended the semester with relatively incremental and positive effort beliefs. Surprisingly, incremental beliefs did not predict grade point average (GPA). Positive effort beliefs were associated with GPA in both cohorts. Findings regarding the role that perceived effort plays in achievement were replicated across cohorts. The average trajectory was as follows: at Week 1, students perceived that ability/intelligence was the primary contributor to high school achievement but anticipated that effort would play a greater role in undergraduate coursework; at Week 13, students on average reflected that the role of effort was less than originally anticipated. Conclusion Although implicit beliefs about intelligence and effort beliefs remained fairly stable across the first semester, students in both cohorts exhibited similar shifts in perceptions of the importance of effort (relative to ability/intelligence) for academic success.

Self-control has been related to positive student outcomes including academic performance of college students.  Because of the critical nature of the first semester academic performance for engineering students in terms of retention and persistence in pursuing an engineering degree, this study investigated the relationship between freshmen engineering students’ scores on the Brief Self-Control Scale and first semester GPA. To identify the unique explanatory contribution of self-control beyond incoming academic performance differences, the effect of ACT Composite scores was statistically removed from the sample of three cohorts of freshmen engineering students (n=1295 total).  The results showed the measure of self-control explained on average 4.2% of the residual variability in first semester GPA, after accounting for the variability explained by ACT scores.  Based on results of this study, self-control predicted between 27%-42% as much of the variance in first semester GPA as did ACT scores, a much-used high stakes measure frequently used for decisions such as program admittance or mathematics course placement.  Thus self-control is a nontrivial predictor of academic performance.  Based on post hoc analysis, relevant self-control behaviors might manifest themselves in time and study management since there was a significant correlation between self-control scores and scores on the MSLQ time and study management measure.  These results have implications for both how much of an impact positive self-control may have on freshmen engineering academic performance, while also offering potential avenues to support students in bolstering aspects of this personality trait through a focus on strengthening time and study management skills.

This research paper, grounded in Expectancy-Value Theory, investigates the relationship between interest, first semester GPA and first year retention in engineering. The research resulted in a purposefully parsimonious framework that can be readily implemented to provide useful discrimination for predicting retention, and can be used when investigating other factors related the retention. Quadrants based on interest were created based on results from logistic regression analysis which showed a difference in the probability of retention between students with equal, less, or no interest in engineering compared to other fields, and those with only or more interest in engineering. GPA quadrants were created based on average GPA. The usefulness of the framework is demonstrated by investigating gender as a variable. The analysis showed a difference of retention rate between males and females only in the quadrant with high grades and low interest.

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Peer learning principles have been successfully applied to novice programmers. Pedagogies such as Pair Programming, Peer Testing, Peer review of code or tests, or, more generally Peer Instruction, have repeatedly demonstrated their effectiveness in improving both individual performance and retention rates. This paper proposes to supplement the existing literature by investigating how students interact with one another during collaborative programming tasks. More specifically, we are interested in comparing the learning principles used during student-student interactions with those used during studentinstructor or student-teaching assistant dialogs. Students in online and face to face courses, who worked collaboratively on programming assignments, were surveyed to gain an understanding of the frequency with which they engaged in specific activities. These that are representative of the learning principles that have been supported by research to promote learning. Results suggest that some learning principles, may be absent from student-student interactions. We discuss how the success of collaborative programming pedagogies put into question the role of these principles and whether they may contribute to further improve peer-based approaches.