What Drives Sophomore Students to Study Electrical Engineering? The Case of Danish and Israeli Students

Aharon Gero, Anna Friesel

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Successful implementation of future industrial revolutions requires, inter alia, well-trained engineers. However, the Western world is suffering from an ongoing shortage in engineers. Fostering academic motivation plays a major role in the efforts to reduce dropouts among engineering students. Therefore, the study described here was aimed to map and analyse the motivational factors driving sophomore students at two technical universities, Danish and Israeli, to study electrical engineering. Eighty-nine Danish and Israeli sophomore students participated in the study. The students filled out an anonymous Likert-like questionnaire used to characterise their academic motivation. It was found that there were no significant differences between the two groups of students with regards to the motivational factors. The students at both universities were mostly driven by intrinsic motivation (i.e., interest in studying engineering) and identified regulation (i.e., recognition of the value inherent to these studies).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEducating Engineers for Future Industrial Revolutions - Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning ICL2020
EditorsMichael E. Auer, Tiia Rüütmann
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages353-360
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9783030682002
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021
Event23rd International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning, ICL 2020 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 23 Sep 202025 Sep 2020

Publication series

NameAdvances in Intelligent Systems and Computing
Volume1329

Conference

Conference23rd International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning, ICL 2020
CityVirtual, Online
Period23/09/2025/09/20

Keywords

  • Academic motivation
  • Electrical engineering
  • Sophomore students

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Computer Science
  • Control and Systems Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'What Drives Sophomore Students to Study Electrical Engineering? The Case of Danish and Israeli Students'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this