Engagement of undergraduate STEM students: the influence of non-routine problems

ABSTRACT

This study describes an intervention that introduced a period of solving non-routine problems into tertiary STEM lectures. The aim was twofold: to attempt to increase student engagement and to introduce them to the kind of domain-free abstract reasoning that involves critical, creative and innovative thinking. The study involved over 600 STEM participants in five lecture classes from three tertiary institutions. The results show that a style of lecture delivery that utilises the inherent engagement effect of non-routine problems can have a positive influence on student engagement – the effect that extends to a group of students who are conformed to type on many measures, including low-achievement. This is supported by evidence from different sources, including data from naturalistic observations conducted in lectures before, during, and after the intervention delivery; cross-sectional survey data at the start and the end of the semester; and interview data from the participant lecturers. The intervention is amenable to scaling up with a relatively small development investment and easily transferable to other tertiary STEM courses.

KEYWORDS:

• Student engagement
• non-routine problems
• STEM education
• Mathematics
• Undergraduate students

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative scheme of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research for their support of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) New Zealand government grant: [Grant Number Project ID: 9177].