Analyzing the Relevance of Peer Relationship, Learning Motivation, and Learning Effectiveness—Design Students as an Example

In a design department’s practice course there are often group exercises that include intensive interactions between students in the classroom or in the internship factory. In addition, students will deepen the interaction between peers due to course groupings or borrowing of model tools, etc. This study intended to carry out a differential analysis and discussion of the differences among design students from different backgrounds under the three factors of peer relationships, learning motivation, and learning effectiveness. The research method was based on literature analysis and a questionnaire survey, and the research objects were sophomores and seniors in four classes. Statistical analysis methods included the independent sample T-test, one-way ANOVA, and factor and cluster analysis, which were used to summarize different learning styles. The results showed that the students had significant differences of varying degrees in the three factor dimensions. Regarding gender, “care about classmates’ lives” in peer relationships scored higher for the females than the males, and the rest had no effect. Regarding educational system, “care about the classmates’ life” and “sharing life trivia” was included in peer relationships. “keep the enthusiasm in the course of learning” was included in the learning motivation. “recognition for self-directed learning” and “ability improvement” was included in learning effectiveness. The three factors all had significant differences, and the differences for full-time students were higher than for night school students. Regarding grade, there were significant differences in “friends will value my comments” and “sharing life trivia” in peer relationships, “understand course content” in learning motivation, and “data collection ability” and “understanding team member expertise” in learning effectiveness, and seniors scored higher than sophomores in these areas. In addition, the ANOVA and post-hoc tests revealed significant differences in learning the processes between different groups. In peer relationships, full-time seniors scored higher than the other groups; in learning motivation and learning effectiveness, full-time seniors scored higher than night school sophomores. In addition, the overall factors of the full-time seniors were higher than those of the other groups. In the analysis of different learning factors, under the premise of the variation of 58.975%, three factors were extracted by principal axis for analysis with Promax rotation. The different learning factors can be summarized in “emphasizing ability improvement”, “care about peer friendship”, and “careful and active learning”. Classification of learning styles under the three factor dimensions was based on two-stage cluster analysis to obtain two clustering results, including “enthusiastic and friendly” and “active and autonomous”. The results showed that the mastery of self-learning time and the learning experience performance have a key influence on the learning motivation and learning effectiveness of design students from different backgrounds. In addition, the results also showed a new opportunity for course improvement and teaching innovation at night schools. The final results of this study could be used as an important reference for research on peer relationships, learning motivation, and learning effectiveness in design education.