BASIC NEED FRUSTRATION IN MOTIVATIONAL REDESIGN OF ENGINEERING COURSES

BASIC NEED FRUSTRATION IN MOTIVATIONAL REDESIGN OF ENGINEERING COURSES

G. Bombaerts (2021).  BASIC NEED FRUSTRATION IN MOTIVATIONAL REDESIGN OF ENGINEERING COURSES. 10.

Engineering Education aims at realizing students’ satisfaction and intrinsic motivation. However, students’ frustration is never fully banned. In this article, I argue that one of the reasons for the limited focus on frustration in Engineering Education is the limited focus on frustration in classical motivational theory itself. I focus on Self-Determination Theory and distinguish between the early work focussing on satisfaction and the recent work considering frustration as a distinct active threat. I will complement this theoretical approach with an empirical analysis of data from a large ethics of technology course in 2016 and 2020 at Eindhoven University of Technology. Two research questions are asked: “(RQ1) Do basic needs satisfactions and frustrations in the USE basic course confirm the asymmetrical pattern described in recent literature?”; and “(RQ2) Do basic needs frustrations add to the variance of motivation types?” I performed principal axis factoring with an oblique rotation to answer RQ1 and stepwise regression analyses to answer RQ2. I conclude that basic need frustration can be measured as a clearly different concept compared to satisfaction and that splitting these two concepts is helpful for Engineering Education when studying motivation. I discuss two main avenues for Engineering Education: motivational theories should take need profiles and need trajectories into account in course design; and motivational research should inquire how individuals can learn to cope adaptively with need-frustrating experiences.

Authors (New): 
Gunter Bombaerts
Pages: 
10
Affiliations: 
Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Keywords: 
Self-determination theory
frustration
basic need
Motivation
Engineering ethics
CDIO Standard 3
CDIO standard 4
CDIO Standard 7
Year: 
2021
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