Contents I. Introduction
The low-cost intrinsic motivation (IM) course conversion project aims to redesign core engineering courses so that they primarily focus on promoting students' intrinsic motivation to learn. These converted courses would require low investments of time and money for instructors to teach. Because the traditional design of engineering courses focused on teaching the “right things” or perhaps even the “right way,” previous reform efforts focused on getting students to learn the course content better by changing instructors' approaches to teaching. Although a focus on instructors' teaching methods can be beneficial, we believe that it may fail to prepare students to be life-long learners who are passionate and excited to become engineers. In contrast, the IM course conversion project focuses reform on methods to promote students' IM to learn with the belief that motivated, excited learners will ultimately learn more and persist longer in their learning.
