Assessing Engineering Students as Lifelong Learners

Higher education aims to instill in students the need for and the practice of lifelong learning. Given its importance, there are surprisingly few instruments to assess this outcome. Two recently developed instruments purport to measure various facets of this outcome in college students. We used the Lifelong Learning Scale (LLS) and the Autonomous Learner Scale (ALS) with engineering students (n = 356) at a large, public university in the western U.S. Analysis of variance was used to assess for differences between subgroups of students. The results from the LLS revealed that Asians self-reported as weaker lifelong learners in comparison to Whites. The results from the ALS showed Asian students self-reporting significantly weaker scores on "independence of learning'' and "study habits'' in comparison to Whites and Hispanics. Finally, male students held a higher self-belief in "independence of learning'' compared with female students. Perhaps most important was the lack of any significant changes in either the LLS or the ALS with the year of study in the engineering curriculum. Inter-instrument comparisons showed good correlations between the factors of each instrument, indicating that the two are largely measuring similar facets of lifelong learning. Given the brevity of these two instruments, we recommend using both together to provide a deeper examination of students' lifelong learning habits.