Proximal Social Interactions in the Social Cognitive Model of Task Performance: An Investigation of Students’ Experiences in an Introductory Chemical Engineering Course

Background: Introductory engineering classes require students to adapt to new disciplinary concepts and learning environments. As a result, many students who struggle at this stage are at risk of losing interest in and dropping out of their engineering majors. Examining students’ self-efficacy beliefs, which are linked to critical academic outcomes, helps us understand how students navigate their experiences in these courses.

Purpose: We examined the relationship between students’ learning experiences, motivation (e.g., self-efficacy judgements), and performance in a chemical engineering materials and energy balances (MEB) course using the following research questions:

1. How do social interactions within the MEB course impact students?
2. How do beliefs (e.g., self-efficacy judgements) influence students’ goals in the MEB course?
3. How do students regulate their academic performance in the MEB course?

Method: We conducted five interviews with students enrolled in the MEB course, using the social cognitive career theory (SCCT) as our conceptual framework and thematic analysis to analyze the data. Four of the five participants took the MEB course during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: First, we found that peer networks and student-faculty interactions, particularly timely feedback and support, bolstered students’ confidence and encouraged persistence. Conversely, negative social experiences, such as unhelpful resources or unfavorable social comparisons, diminished their self-efficacy beliefs and hindered their academic development. Second, we observed that students in the MEB course continually reevaluated their goals and adjusted their academic performance in response to their learning experiences.

Discussion/Conclusion: We propose a social cognitive model of task performance, contextualized to the MEB course context, relating students’ proximal social interactions within the MEB learning environment to their self-efficacy beliefs, academic goals, and behavior. These findings contribute to the vast SCCT literature and support prior studies on students’ educational development in introductory engineering courses. As most participants took the online version of the course during the COVID-19 pandemic, our results also contribute to knowledge of the pandemic’s impact on student learning. These results have implications for designing resilient and equitable engineering courses at a critical stage in students’ academic careers, thereby positively impacting their self-efficacy beliefs and providing timely feedback to help them develop into independent and confident problem solvers.