Same course, different goals: Examining the personal goals of men and women in a project-based engineering environment

The learning goals of students are not only essential for personal guidance, but they also provide educators insight into individual approaches to learning and student self-perceptions. In this study, the learning goals of students in an introductory project-based materials science course were analyzed to determine differences by gender. Student goals were coded according to their inference of different learning domains-cognitive, social, affective, and psychomotor - as well as their level of complexity within these domains. Cognitive goals were similar for women and men, while differences by gender appeared in the social, affective, and psychomotor domains. In the social domain, women were more concerned with teamwork and peer learning, while men were focused on confidence in presentations. In the affective and psychomotor domains, the issue of low self-efficacy for some women arose, while men were more eager to express their enthusiasm for the course projects.