Student self-efficacy, their confidence to successfully perform a task, is positively related to course performance. Students with high self-efficacy for a task are more motivated toward that task. Yet few studies have measured students' self-efficacy and motivation levels after exams are returned in introductory biology classes or studied how…

Background: For over a decade, growth-oriented achievement goal constructs like potential-based goals and personal best goals have remained relatively unnoticed. This empirical study aims to highlight that goal theorists might be limiting themselves by not incorporating potential-based goals into their frameworks. Aims: The primary objective of…

This study aims to examine how external locus of control (eLoC) impacts students' academic procrastination behaviors in asynchronous distance education with regard to compulsive internet habits, cyberloafing, disrespect for copyright, learning goal orientation, and self-efficacy. The sample comprised a total of 916 undergraduate students.…

The current study considered the role of broad life orientations of university students on their academic engagement and burnout within the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to examine whether life purpose orientations predicted student academic engagement and burnout directly and indirectly through…

Background: Student persistence in undergraduate engineering majors often depends on how they perform in foundational engineering courses. Although mastery of prerequisite knowledge affects how students perform in these courses, research suggests that achievement goal orientations and task-value and self-efficacy beliefs play prominent roles in…

Identifying impediments to learning can help both instructors and students. In this study students (N = 222) from across the nation listed concepts from research methods they found the most challenging--"potholes" or impediments to learning, and also rated the difficulty of various concepts from the class. We also measured student…

The distinctive characteristics and learning needs of Generation Z students present unique challenges to faculty in higher education. Factors such as faculty teaching styles and availability of learning resources impact academic success for all students. However, Generations Zers' 8-second attention spans; aversion to lengthy reading assignments;…

Times of adversity often require an intentional focus on fostering people's inherent strengths to help them not give up on their life's most cherished aspirations. The outbreak of the Russian war in Ukraine has created unprecedented struggles and uncertainties among the entire Ukrainian population, including college students (Limone et al., 2022).…

Although the importance of goal setting for students is well established in the literature and the utility of personality as reliable antecedents of different outcomes is similarly well established, there are a limited number of studies that analyze the relationship between these two sets of variables, particularly within learning environments.…

Objectives: This study examined how goal orientation, motivational climate, and exercise could be used to predict college students' eating disorder symptomology. Participants: Recruited in February 2017, the participants included 275 college-aged students from a university in the southeastern United States. Methods: Using achievement goal theory…

Purpose: Achievement emotions have been shown to mediate the association between achievement goals and learning performance, but no research to date has tested whether there is a similar process in predicting germane cognitive load. Based on the control-value theory of academic emotions (Pekrun, 2006), the present study tested a model to determine…

Academic misconduct has been conceptualized as students' engagement in various types of proscribed behaviors, such as plagiarism and cheating on assignments and tests or exams (e.g., Stephens et al., 2021). While most of the current literature on academic misconduct has focused on developed countries, the problem is rampant across the world (Krou…

This study aimed to enhance understanding of team creativity by investigating the type of team mental models that team members develop during their work on a creative problem solving task. We hypothesized that teams that develop dissimilar team mental models, compared to similar and complementary team mental models, will achieve a higher…

This study examines the predictive effects of motivational beliefs and self-efficacy on multiple dimensions of self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. Undergraduate students (n = 389) were recruited voluntarily from four universities in mainland China. They were invited to complete a set of…

Given the prevalence of group project assignments in college coursework, it is surprising that the extensive literature on achievement goal orientations has rarely included students' experiences during an assigned group project, especially when group conflict among group members is reported. Data came from online responses of 660 undergraduates…