Effects of Test Anxiety on Engineering Students’ STEM Success

Major, Justin Charles; Scheidt, Matthew; Godwin, Allison; Berger, Edward J.; Chen, John

doi:10.18260/1-2--34511

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In addition, this test anxiety scale has been used frequently on a wide range of student populations, and its validity and reliability evidence is acceptable (Pintrich et al, 1993). Test anxiety has not only been shown to negatively affect first-year engineering student GPA in technical lecture-based courses (Senkpeil & Berger, 2016) but has also been shown to be higher for women and nonbinary engineering students and to contribute positively to STEM GPA (Major et al, 2020).…”

Section: Test Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering students' noncognitive and affective factors: Group differences from cluster analysis

Scheidt

Godwin

Berger

et al. 2021

J of Engineering Edu

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Background: Noncognitive and affective (NCA) factors (e.g., belonging, engineering identity, motivation, mindset, personality, etc.) are important to undergraduate student success. However, few studies have considered how these factors coexist and act in concert.Purpose/Hypothesis: We hypothesize that students cluster into several distinct collections of NCA factors and that identifying and considering the factors together may inform student support programs and engineering education. Design/Method: We measured 28 NCA factors using a survey instrument with strong validity evidence. We gathered responses from 2339 engineering undergraduates at 17 U.S. institutions and used Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) to group respondents into clusters.Results: We found four distinct profiles of students in our data and a set of unclustered students with the NCA factor patterns varying substantially by cluster. Correlations of cluster membership to self-reported incoming academic performance measures were not strong, suggesting that students' NCA factors rather than traditionally used cognitive measures may better distinguish among students in engineering programs. Conclusions: GMM is a powerful technique for person-centered clustering of high-dimensional datasets. The four distinct clusters of students discovered in this research illustrate the diversity of engineering students' NCA profiles. The NCA factor patterns within the clusters provide new insights on how these factors may function together and provide opportunities to intervene on multiple factors simultaneously, potentially resulting in more comprehensive and effective interventions. This research leads to future work on both student success modeling and student affairs-academic partnerships to understand and promote holistic student success.

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Section: Test Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering students' noncognitive and affective factors: Group differences from cluster analysis

Scheidt

Godwin

Berger

et al. 2021

J of Engineering Edu

Self Cite

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“…34 Test anxiety can have a significant negative impact on student well-being, 33 academic performance, 25,45 and persistence of marginalized or underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degree programs. 8,27 Test anxiety is defined as a set of phenomenological, psychological, and behavioral responses that accompany concern about possible negative consequences or failure of an exam or similar evaluation situations. 13 Different factors influence test anxiety among college students such as student perception regarding the knowledge they have, as well as instructor's teaching and evaluation methods.…”

Section: Challenge Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing Test Anxiety Using Game-Based Assessment

Bonefont

Carbino

Zakerzadeh

2022

Biomed Eng Education

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This paper identifies an opportunity to integrate gamification in undergraduate biomedical engineering (BME) classrooms to alleviate student test anxiety and promote student perception of their academic performance. Gamification is a popular educational strategy that does not appear to be widely explored or adopted in higher education, particularly in a BME setting. This study proposes methods for the development, implementation, and evaluation of academic games and provides concrete practices and detailed instruction in which games can be used as an alternative to a traditional exam to support student mental health. The reflection provides the feedback received from students which demonstrates a balanced view of using game-based activities for tests and evaluations, cautiously optimistic based on the initial positive attitude seen from students.

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“…Often, engineering education defaults to only high-stakes summative testing, but solely using this approach has documented negative impacts on students' wellbeing (e.g. test anxiety [131,132] ) as well as priming identity threat for groups with excluded identities. The testing context can play a critical role in temporarily suppressing the intellectual performance, creating an illusion of group differences in ability.…”

Section: Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%