Gordon B. Schmidt (11/22/2013 SAEM) 3 motivational challenges to student academic success

3 Motivational Challenges to Student Academic Success

Dr. Gordon B. Schmidt, PhDOrganizational Leadership & Supervision

11/22/2013

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Why is he texting in class?

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Multiple goals

• People often have many different things going on in their lives

• Work-family-school balance- needs from all 3 domains

• And potentially a whole host of others• All need effort and attention• They all have time deadlines and goals that

overlap in time

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#1: People always have multiple goalsAnd they are working on them at the same time

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Goal setting over time

• My dissertation looked at how people set and change personal goals over time

• Lab study- each condition given different assigned goals

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Goal setting over time

• Donovan & Williams (2003)• Looked at changing goals of track athletes over

course of a season• Found runners reduced goals over time toward

actual performance, especially in 2nd half• Initial season goals often below previous best

• Campion & Lord (1982)• Students in a college course setting course grade

goals• Test scores below goal led to downward goal

revision of course goal

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2. People use performance information to modify goals

So the goal they had yesterday might not be the goal today

• Goals motivate people to put in effort and direct attention

• But personal goals can be and are often changed

• Tie our goals to what seems reasonable and likely

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Procrastination

How have you seen students procrastinate?

Piers Steel Research

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Procrastination

• People make decisions about what to do (or delay doing) based on perceived current utility

• They look to their time to deadline, preferences, and anxieties

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3. People do what seems to have most present marginal value

And these preferences differ significantly from person to person

• Can make it hard for people to work toward far off goals, especial if their value seems ambiguous or hard to fathom

• Utility difference means each person’s reactions can be pretty unique

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So we got some issues

• We want them to focus on school• But they have goals across domains (#1)

• We want to help them create goals that motivate them• But then its easy for them to modify those

goals over time (#2)• We want to help them set goals that help them

to graduate and be successful in school• But graduation is often long term and

relatively far away (#3)

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So what can we do?

• 3 major means of help:• Implementation Intentions• Proximal and Distal Goals• Tasks that overlap goal domains

• These help us to take the problems we know are there and have interventions that help those specific issues

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1. Implementation Intentions

• Work by Gollwitzer (1999; & Brandstatter, 1997)

• We often have good intentions but don’t follow through

• when, where, and how of responses leading to goal attainment

• Link anticipated critical situations to goal-directed responses

• Ex. "Whenever situation x arises, I will initiate the goal-directed response y!".

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Implementation Intentions

• So these help by having clear behaviors to implement in goal related situations

• Goal Ex. Reduce litter in my neighbor• Implementation Intention Ex. When I see litter I

will pick it up immediately• Implementation Intention Ex. When I see

someone litter I will scold them

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Implementation Intentions

• Goal: To get an A on the first exam in a class

• What are some potential implementation intentions for this?

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2. Proximal & Distal Goals

• We can have goals that vary on their time horizons

• Distal goals: ultimate goal for the future• Ex. Get my college degree

• Proximal goals: goals that are more near in time• Ex. Get an A on my next exam

• We can use proximal goals as more short term goals that lead up to completion of that long term distal goal

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Proximal & Distal Goal Examples

• (Distal) Goal: Get a B for a course

• What are some proximal goals we could set?

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3. Tasks that overlap domains

• If students have multiple goals then tasks that help fulfill multiple goals at once are especially appealing

• Highlighting or framing aspects of education that help other goals

• Education and family goals• Ex. Communication class helps

you to understand and talk to loved ones better

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Tasks that overlap domains

• Education and work goals• Focus on application of course content to

work domains• Ex. focus on how knowledge of topic will

help you to understand better organizational events and other workers’ motivations

• Education and recreational goals• Use “fun” activities in course of learning

Others?

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Overall Summary

• How people naturally set, revise, and use goals over time offers challenges to how goals have an impact

• In understanding these factors we can do particular intervention and find ways to structure goals that help them to remain effective

• We need to always be on the lookout for applying these methods and coming up with new ones that fit with reality!