Learning goals and perceived irrelevance to major within life science majors in introductory physics

Previously, students' self-expressed learning goals, defined in the context of a problem solving selfdiagnosis exercise that served as a pre-lab activity, were studied as a potential variable that might be related to various course measurements (overall grade, FCI and CLASS pre-post scores) of an introductory algebra-based physics course population primarily consisting of life science majors. In this study, the same student population (218 total students) was polled for students' opinion about what aspects of the course pertained to their majors. Approximately 23% of the course population (50 students) explicitly stated a belief that the course had little or nothing to do with their majors; the other students named a specific physics topic, overall usefulness, or an aspect of the course closely related to well-known PER topics (e.g., problem solving or conceptual understanding), etc. We investigate the belief that the course is irrelevant to one's major as another potential mindset variable, alongside task-specific learning orientations, that influences pre-post course measurements. 2019 PERC Proceedings edited by Cao, Wolf, and Bennett; Peer-reviewed, doi.org/10.1119/perc.2019.pr.Mason Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Further distribution must maintain attribution to the article's authors, cover page, and DOI.