This study was designed to determine the effect of contextualized advisement and competition on transfer of mathematics skills in a computer-based simulation game in which participants helped their "aunt and uncle" fix up a house. Contextualized advisement referred to whether the participant had access to video-based advisement delivered by the aunt and uncle about how to solve the problem, and competition referred to whether or not the participant was playing against a computer character. A total of 123 seventhand eighth-grade students were randomly assigned to one of five conditions formed by crossing the two independent variables and adding a control group. Results indicated an interaction between competition and contextualized advisement. Participants in the noncompetitive condition had higher transfer scores when they had access to contextualized advisement, while participants in the competitive condition had higher transfer scores when they had no access to contextualized advisement.

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Background: Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs are expected to make up a significant portion of the U.S. workforce. Unfortunately, the trend in retaining students in STEM majors has been going down. If higher education institutions are going to retain more students in STEM majors, it will be important to understand who leaves STEM fields and why. More than 32% of women college students who declare a STEM major are likely to switch to non-STEM majors before they graduate, whereas only 25% of their male counterparts do so, and women may be as much as 1.5 times more likely than men to leave STEM fields. Thus, women represent a significant potential source for increasing STEM majors. Research suggests that values and expectations are powerful predictors of motivation and persistence in a wide variety of activities, tasks, and careers. This paper describes the development and validation of an instrument to measure student motivation, particularly that of women, leading to decisions to persist in or switch out of collegiate STEM programs. Results: The Value-Expectancy STEM Assessment Scale (VESAS), adapted from the Values, Interest, and Expectations Scale, or VIES, was validated with 356 women students from a Midwestern research university as part of a larger study on the reasons that women persist or leave STEM majors. A confirmatory factor analysis suggested a two-factor model, which reflected the components of Eccles et al.'s expectancy-value model. Cronbach's alphas suggested that the VESAS subscales had high internal consistency. Statistically significant differences were found between STEM switchers and persisters on all of the VESAS subscales, thus lending additional support for the validity of the instrument.

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