Pre- and post- evaluation of students interest on multinational projects based on class standing and gender

Multinational engineering design projects have been implemented at various academic institutions in order to offer their students exposure to the issues present when work needs to be carried out globally. Such implementations try to emulate the working environment that exists in many engineering projects being done in practice. These experiences are something that academic institutions need to include and emphasize in their programs, and are gaining acceptance at a variety of colleges and universities worldwide. The importance of such activities is something that students need to be aware because of its benefit, and students should be motivated to participate. The main goal of this study is to determine the level of interest by engineering students participating in a multinational collaborative design project, making a comparison of that indicator at the start and at the end of their participation. Such comparison is done for the entire group of students, and is reported as well based on class standing and gender. For this purpose, a survey based on the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) was administered to the students, and data collected provide information on the level of interest or enjoyment that they report. This interest construct provides an indication of the students' interests, beliefs, and feelings about the international project that reflect their level of motivation to undertake such task. The results of the comparison indicate the need to define intervention that result in more uniform level of interest by students.