Initiatives to foster engineering student motivation: a case study

There is little doubt that student motivation is essential in providing a beneficial learning experience. One way to produce such motivation is to stimulate it through suitable assessment methods. This paper shares the experience acquired by the authors, who are university lecturers in Civil Engineering at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, both through their assessment methods and feedback received via the modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (Moodle) platform. During the last eight years the authors have progressively included increasingly dynamic methods in their teaching and assessment, with highly satisfactory results being obtained. The last three academic years have seen a test through co-assessment being added. In addition, during the last two an assessment exercise has been implemented through use of the aforementioned Moodle. Each test has a weight of 5% in the final mark for the module. After sitting the respective Moodle test, the students filled in a questionnaire that sought their views not only on the teaching methods but also on the degree of motivation they felt from such methods. As expected, the results showed that the students considered the internet-based Moodle platform to be useful. However, the most notable finding was that the majority indicated that alternative teaching and assessment methods (such as, among others, cooperative learning) were those that were most beneficial to their learning experience. Over 70% of the students thought that the use of the Moodle platform and other teaching and assessment techniques had motivated them with an average, high or significantly high intensity. In particular, the students highlighted the use of cooperative learning with 86% feeling that it helped them to lear