Opportunities of student influence as a context for the development of engineering students' study motivation

This longitudinal paper draws on data from a larger ongoing project and examines how students conceive of their opportunities to influence their study environment and how this may be related to their self-efficacy beliefs and their study motivation. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyze semi-structured in-depth interviews of 10 students of a Masters Program in Engineering. The results indicate that most students had confidence in their opportunities to influence their study environment and believed influencing could increase self-efficacy beliefs and study motivation. The high content of problem solving in courses was the principal motivator. Students that either perceived their opportunities to influence the study environment as not highly important or as satisfactory were more motivated and performed better than other students. Findings have implications for students' motivation and performance if educators inform students of their formal and informal opportunities to influence their study environment. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.