Unlocking Success in Calculus for Engineering Majors: Impact of Engagement Tactics for Underrepresented Undergraduate Engineering Students

Abstract Performance in Calculus courses is seen as a major barrier to students' progress in STEM majors. The problem is particularly amplified for disadvantaged groups such as underrepresented minoritized students (URMs) and first-generation college students. Extant literature and guidance increasingly point to the need to address the psychosocial factors that can bolster resilience, persistence, and positive self-concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Improving the Calculus experience requires understanding the complex networks of relationships among individual and classroom variables that impact UMS performance in first year calculus courses. Much of the extant research in this area involves universities with small proportions of URMs. Thus, continued study of the impact of these factors on more diverse student populations is also necessary to better capture the calculus experience of URM engineering majors. The purpose of the study was to examine student and classroom-level factors that influence course performance measured by course grade. This study focused on two engineering-related psychosocial factors: (1) engineering self-efficacy and (2) engineering sense of belonging, and three mathematics-specific psychological factors which we refer to as math motivators, (1) math interest, (2) self-concept, and (3) anxiety. Classroom level factors included active engagement practices, proportion of females, proportion of URMs students and proportion of first-generation students in classes. Data were taken from an ongoing study examining the impact of a calculus redesign project on student performance. All survey instruments were previously piloted and refined to improve technical quality based on confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). CFA revealed good model fit indices for all instruments. The data set consisted of 790 first-year undergraduate students taking calculus in 37 sections, from two Hispanic Serving Institutions in the fall semester. Six models were compared. The final model included Level 1 indicators: student background model variables + Engineering identity, math interest and math self-concept: Level 2 indicators: campus, course + engagement. Hierarchical Linear Model analyses showed individual and class-level factors impacting course grades in complex ways. Both student and classroom level factors were found to predict course performance. URMs and first generation college students outperformed non URMs and non first generation students. This trend was consistent across the six models. Math-specific psychological factors predicted course grade, but Engineering identity and math anxiety did not significantly predict course grade in the final model when active engagement opportunities were included in the model at Level 2. These results indicate it is important to explicitly integrate active engagement strategies and target mathematics-related psychological factors in the design of calculus content to improve factors that have been shown to impact engineering persistence and career intentions. The results also suggest active engagement can mitigate the negative impact of math anxiety and increase course performance of URM engineering students. It is important to highlight that interest and self-efficacy are constructs that heavily depend on the context. These results suggest that active engagement strategies can facilitate the success of URM engineering students