Factors Impacting Engagement and Achievement in a First-Year Design Thinking Course

Student engagement, as measured by cognitive, affective, attentional participation in an educational setting, is prominent in recent engineering education [1], [2]. It is inextricably intertwined with students' motivation, and those two constructs have a strong impact on student's meaningful learning experience, academic achievement, and knowledge development [3]. Project-based learning with authentic hands-on experiences in a collaborative setting is believed to promote students' motivation and engagement in an engineering education setting [4]–[7]. For the first-year engineering students, experience project-based learning from the early age of the engineering curriculum help students improve teamwork, leadership, communication, and relevant knowledge [10]. Further, the learning through a collaborative project can be integrated into later years of the engineering curriculum [11]. Project-based learning is widely implemented in teaching design thinking in the engineering curriculum [12]. However, just forming a project-based learning environment does not automatically guarantee enhanced engagement due to the nature of teamwork [13], [14]. The individual, contextual difference in engagement may result in ineffective collaborative experience, dampen students' motivation, and deter in-depth learning [15]. This paper examines how varying degrees of engagement mediates students' motivation, learning environment, and achievement in the hyflex design thinking course. By considering engagement in relation to other factors, situational motivation (intrinsic motivation, internal regulation, external regulation, amotivation), learning environments (collaborative experiences and learning supports), this study aims to figure out how engagement mediates students' academic achievement.