Identifying the basic psychological needs and learning motivation of engineering undergraduates in a Malaysian university

Abstract

Motivation is a crucial factor in the learning process. It encourages students to invest more effort into their studies and actively engage in their learning, thus improving the level of academic achievement. Due to the challenging nature of engineering courses, undergraduate students in engineering require consistent learning motivation to help them excel. The satisfaction of students’ basic psychological needs is one of the important factors in ensuring the consistency of their learning motivation. However, little research has been done to explore the basic psychological needs and learning motivation among engineering students in Malaysia. A systematic review revealed that the pattern of studies conducted on engineering students in Malaysia mostly related to the relationship between the students’ motivation and their learning, achievement, and specific learning strategies. While no study on basic psychological needs involving engineering students was found, there are studies on the relationship between students’ basic psychological needs and their learning engagement, psychological well-being, and learning strategy among university students in Malaysia. Thus, this study aims to study the learning motivation and its relationship with basic psychological needs and level of study among engineering students in Malaysia based on the framework of self-determination theory. This study is a simple survey study that employed a set of questionnaires to collect the data from samples in a private university in Selangor, Malaysia. The 321 samples were drawn from a population of 1941 undergraduate students enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering and Science through stratified random sampling. The samples were stratified according to the student's level of study before the questionnaire was distributed to collect the data. A set of questionnaires which consists of the Academic Motivation Scale College Version and the Basic Need Satisfaction General Scale was used to collect the data related to the level of the student's motivation and their basic psychological needs satisfaction. The obtained data was analysed descriptively using means and standard deviations, and inferentially through independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance, and multiple regression analysis using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. The results indicated that the students mostly motivated by extrinsic motivation (mean=4.77, standard deviation=1.028), and no significant difference on basic psychological needs satisfaction between level of study (F(3,317) = 2.466, p = .062) and gender (t(319) = -0.576, p = 0.565). It was also found that the basic psychological need was statistically significant in predicting the participants’ learning motivation (F(5, 315)=11.471, p < .001). Based on the findings, several recommendations were made for the engineering education stakeholders and future studies.