A Chemistry Departmental Seminar by Lou Wojcinski (OSU)

Students' sense of belonging and their motivational tendencies play a key role in increasing student persistence in STEM courses.  When students feel that they belong and are intrinsically motivated, they are more likely to continue in STEM fields.  Equally important, belonging uncertainty and an overreliance on extrinsic motivation have equally strong negative effects on retention.  This talk will focus on those factors that contribute to belonging and intrinsic motivation, and the effect of short writing assignments on belonging and motivation.  A series of short writing assignments have been developed to personalize the learning environment in a first-year chemistry course.  Students’ perceptions of the learning environment and their motivational tendencies have been measured using items from the Motivational Student Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). This talk will discuss the preliminary results of this study and how those results can be used to inform our instructional practices to create learning spaces that foster student belong intrinsic motivation to better support the academic success of all students.