Motivation and Engagement of Students: A Case Study of Automatics and Robotics Projects

Automatics and Robotics students usually engage in some interdisciplinary approaches on their courses at universities, joining the areas of computer science and control theory. During the limited duration of these courses, some knowledge must be acquired by the students. Remote education, temporarily enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years, has posed new challenges related to the limited contact that students have with academic staff, as well as the limited access students have to hardware facilities. This paper discusses the motivations of students after the COVID-19 pandemic based on a case study of student projects completed at the University of Zielona Gora (Poland). The conducted study was student-centered and highlighted some important aspects of motivation from the point of view of the students, focusing mostly on the emerging challenges, how they have been overcome, and what the students have learned from them. The results indicate that the students, minimally supported by an academic teacher, were able to plan everything by themselves and bring the project to completion according to their own intuition. In comparison to before the COVID-19 pandemic, students are now more independent and self-motivated.