Exploring the Role of Students’ Achievement Goals and Learning Approaches in Academic Performance

Abstract

is an assistant professor of Engineering Education. He is affiliated with the Engineering Education Transformational Institute and the school of electrical and computer engineering at the university. His interest is at the nexus of the research of epistemologies, learning mechanics and assessment of learning in engineering education. His research focuses on learning for conceptual understanding, and the roles of learning strategies, epistemic cognition and student engagements in fostering conceptual understanding. His research also focuses on understanding how students interact with learning tasks and their learning environment. His expertise also includes systematic reviews and meta-analysis, quantitative research designs, measurement inventories development and validation.

Motivating Students to Learn Computer Programming in Higher Education: The SimProgramming Approach

“…Much research has been conducted in Engineering Education on students' motivations to learn. Some of the most popular theories, adopted by different researchers are: achievement goal [8,9], interest [10,11], expectancy-value [12,13], causal attributions [14,15], self-efficacy [16,17], and self-determination [18,19]. However, it is argued that many of these studies are exploratory and do not clearly define what motivation is, or even that they do not consistently follow any specific theoretical framework [20].…”