An analysis of emotional fluctuation and its causes in the productive practice for engineering undergraduates: Based on the case of an engineering major in China

Productive practice is a significant teaching link for engineering undergraduates in China. Through the analysis of prior literatures and observation, this paper puts forward an assumption that engineering students, as the main body of productive practice, express undulating feelings and emotions with days during the process of practice. In view of this assumption, and considering the previous researchers' results that emotions have influence on students' academic achievements and can predict their achievements, this paper intends to test and study undergraduate students' emotional fluctuations in the productive practice and analyze related causes. Practice record diaries, interview, frequency statistics and changing curves have been used to collect and analyze students' emotional expressions. These emotional expressions could be divided into two types: positive emotional words, such as happy, exciting, confident, inspired, satisfying, and well-informed, and negative emotional words including boring, tired, monotonous, confused, whiny, waste-of-time, among others. This paper is a result of a tracking investigation of undergraduate students from an engineering major in the summer semester. It demonstrates that the students' emotional fluctuations are affected by time change, practice contents, accommodation and transportation arrangements, weather conditions and subjective initiative of the students. The paper also discusses the measures that could be taken to better the students' emotions, so as to optimize productive practice effect.