Enhancing motivation of electrical and mechanical engineering technology education students with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

The essence of studying electrical and mechanical engineering technology is to acquire relevant skills for production of goods and services. Students of electrical and mechanical engineering technology in various universities in Nigeria are not well motivated and this can be seen in their poor learning outcomes and quality of skills acquired while in schools. Various studies have been conducted on how various teaching methods can be used to enhance the motivation of students studying electrical and mechanical engineering technology education, however no research on how acceptance and commitment therapy can be used to enhance motivation of electrical and mechanical engineering technology education students and this study therefore becomes necessary. This is because students need to be motivated to acquire relevant skills for producing goods and services while in school and after graduation. The study was carried out in all three universities that offer Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Technology education in south-western Nigeria. The Academic Motivation Scale was used to select participants who scored low into the study. The intervention consisted of 6 weeks acceptance and commitment therapy and placebo treatment. Self-report questionnaire was used as data collection for the study. Mixed Model Repeated Measures (MMRM), independent-samples two-tailed t-tests, chisquare and process macro were used for data analysis in the study. The result of the study indicated that participants in the treatment group recorded gains in motivation across different time points when compared to the participants in the control group. Also, self-efficacy moderated the effect of acceptance and commitment therapy on motivation. The current study suggests that acceptance and commitment therapy can be used to enhance the motivation of electrical and mechanical engineering technology education students.