Brief Research Report: The Impact of a Utility-Value Intervention on Students' Engagement

The present study investigated the impact of a utility-value intervention on students' behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Students assigned to the intervention condition were required to write an essay to connect the course contents with their personal hobbies, interests, or goals three times during the course. The results showed that the students who completed all the intervention assignments behaviorally engaged more in the course (evaluated by continuous assignment submission), while those in the control condition became less engaged later in the course. Moreover, the students who completed the intervention assignments remained cognitively engaged even at the end of the course. We discussed how a utility-value intervention works on students' engagement and practical implications for amplifying the effectiveness of a utility-value intervention.