Work in progress - success in first-year engineering

A longitudinal study is underway with the goal of identifying sources of and cognitive processing associated with undergraduate engineering student self-efficacy beliefs, the beliefs held by individuals concerning their capabilities to perform the tasks necessary to achieve a desired outcome. Central to this study is the question: What aspects of students´ engineering experiences play a role in shaping their efficacy beliefs? Investigated are differences between genders and across various engineering disciplines. Further, the study is designed to examine how self-efficacy beliefs change in the first and second years of an engineering program. For most undergraduate students, the desired outcome of their efforts is success in their courses and field of study. Therefore, this portion of the phenomenographical study, supported by an ERM division mini-grant, uses qualitative surveys and interviews as a means of determining the different ways first-year engineering students define success