Improving Academic Performance Amongst First Years Computer Science Students Through Goal-Setting

R. Donovan, Jamie Cotter, Ruairi O'Reilly
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Academic performance across Computer Science (CS) courses in the Republic of Ireland is underwhelming. CS undergraduates are statistically the most likely cohort in the country not to progress past year one of their studies. Insufficient motivation to pursue CS studies has been demonstrated to be a significant cause of poor CS academic performance. Goal-setting programs are an efficient, cost-effective, and student empowering way to boost motivation. Goal-setting is the formulation of a set of activities intended to motivate an individual to the desired goal state. This paper provides an experimental design for assessing the effectiveness of a written goal-setting program on academic performance concerning individual differences. Participants are randomly assigned either to the written goal-setting program or an active control task via an online platform. The goal-setting program requires participants to articulate both a desired future life and a feared future life. The program also requires participants to: identify goals and sub-goals across several domains (e.g. family, health, study); the benefits that achieving their goals would have for themselves for their connected group; the daily habits they could develop to make their ideal future more likely to occur. This study also investigates how personality (via a high-resolution personality model) and cognitive differences influence goal-setting effectiveness. Differences in both Semester 1 performance and the number of students who progress to Semester 2 are assessed between experimental groups. An ANCOVA analysis will assess whether the effectiveness of an experimental task varied based on individual differences in personality and/or cognitive ability.
通过设定目标来提高计算机科学一年级学生的学习成绩
在爱尔兰共和国,计算机科学(CS)课程的学术表现平平。从统计数据来看,计算机科学本科生是美国最有可能在第一学年没有取得进展的群体。学习计算机科学的动机不足已被证明是计算机科学学习成绩不佳的重要原因。目标设定计划是一种有效的、成本效益高的、能激励学生的方法。目标设定是一套旨在激励个人达到预期目标状态的活动的制定。本文提供了一个实验设计,以评估一个书面目标设定计划对个体差异的学业成绩的有效性。参与者被随机分配到书面目标设定计划或通过在线平台进行主动控制任务。目标设定计划要求参与者清楚地表达对未来生活的期望和对未来生活的恐惧。该方案还要求参与者:确定多个领域(如家庭、健康、学习)的目标和子目标;实现他们的目标将给他们自己和他们的关联群体带来的好处;他们可以养成的日常习惯,使他们理想的未来更有可能发生。本研究还探讨了人格(通过高分辨率人格模型)和认知差异如何影响目标设定的有效性。在实验组之间评估第一学期的表现和进入第二学期的学生人数的差异。ANCOVA分析将评估实验任务的有效性是否根据个性和/或认知能力的个体差异而变化。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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