Motivational Factors in Design-Build Projects – Case: Participation in Student Competitions

Often, some engineering students appear not to be as active and motivated as they should be to put enough effort into their studies, that is, to do their homework and attend different teacherfacilitated learning opportunities. Accordingly, course examinations can get delayed from the very beginning. Creating a learning ecosystem in which all students could achieve high intrinsic motivation is a difficult task. Yet, these aspects are of major importance when striving towards a flow-type experience in any learning environment. For example, the following factors are mentioned in literature as motivational drivers in learning settings: reinforcement, relevance, interest, self-efficacy and affect. In this paper, these factors facilitating students’ intrinsic motivation are discussed in general, and in the context of design-build projects in particular. The paper presents how the presence of project stakeholders and customers affects the learning environment and further facilitates motivational drivers. Participation in an international student competition (Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals) is used as an example to illustrate the elements discussed.

Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 9 – 13, 2013.