Fostering university students’ autonomous motivation through a Societal Impact Project: A qualitative study of students’ and teachers’ perspectives

<B>Summary</B><BR><BR>
This study examined how an extracurricular curriculum—the Societal Impact Project (SIP)—supported first-year students’ basic psychological needs and autonomous motivation. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, SIP was designed around three educational principles: authentic learning, collaborative learning, and scaffolding. Through focus groups with participating students and teachers in Biomedical Sciences and Health Sciences programmes, the study explored how and why these features of SIP influenced students’ autonomous motivation. Thematic analysis revealed that students’ autonomy was supported when provided with appropriate guidance, small-group collaboration had mixed impacts depending on group dynamics, and societal relevant problems enhanced engagement—though its connection to students’ curricula was sometimes unclear. The findings suggest that to foster autonomous motivation, learning environments should thoughtfully balance freedom with support and ensure curricular relevance in real-world projects.<BR><BR>

<B>Dataset</B><BR><BR>
The dataset includes anonymized transcripts of five focus groups with students and one focus group with teachers (referred to as ‘coaches’ in the manuscript), coded by the authors. These files can be opened with text applications such as ‘Notepad’. The special codes ([[uid…]]) in the beginning of each line is the identified automatically generated in the application iRock. These identifiers have no special meaning other than being used to separate texts. The dataset also includes the a code book with all extracted codes. Different color chunks of the codes represent different focus groups. A document explaining coding strategies is also included.<BR><BR>