Abstract:

The proliferation of students who at a given time show a low interest in the subjects they are taking is a reality that most teachers and professors must deal with. Some of them show a lack of interest only in certain subjects, which is a natural consequence of their preferences. However, in other cases the apathy extents to most or even all the subjects they are attending. In these cases, the student falls in a destructive routine, which is likely to lead to failure and, in not very rare cases, to the abandonment of the university studies.

There are already certain measures in some university centers that intend to monitor students through tutoring, reinforcement and identification of special situations. However, these measures are optional in high education, if present, which mean that most of the undermotivated students do not take advantage of them. Moreover, they quite often do not deal with the problem with sufficient accuracy, so that some teachers feel that they lack the tools to understand the reasons for some maladaptive behaviors and to address them.

In this study we try to define the identifying factors of low-motivated university students through a study of the motivation profile involving a total of 298 students. The participants of the experiment belong to the early courses of all the Degrees in the Universitary Center U-Tad: Digital Design Degree, Animation Degree, Interactive Product Design Degree, Software Engineering Degree, Computational Mathematic and Software Engineering Double Degree and Computational Physics and Software Engineering Double Degree.

This study has been carried out through the “Academic Motivation Scale”, a broadly used survey to detect the types of motivation within the students at different education levels. Additionally, this study was complemented by consulting the students about their impressions on the motivation of their companions, with the aim to get a 360º perspective.

In parallel, we have also conducted a survey on 55 professors, with the objective of collecting the most important factors that help them detect the lack of motivation in their classes and the resources they use to face this problem.

We have extracted information about the students that are representative of the different kind of motivations considered in the Scale. The results have been analyzed both as a whole and divided according to grade and course.

From the analysis of the results of the students experiment we extract a motivation profile associated with the students that present high Amotivation in the Scale, which is identified with the low-motivation students.

From the professors’ survey we obtain the most relevant factors that identify a low-motivated student in the classroom.

With the present investigation we have developed a most consistent perspective on the low-motivation profiles in high education students. This will make much more effective the identification of the students which are in danger of dropping out a subject or even their studies with enough anticipation to prevent it.

Keywords:

High education, Motivation Profile, STEM, Technology, Arts, College Dropout, Active Education.