Grade goal effects on the interplay between motivation and performance in undergraduate gateway mathematics courses

Students entering higher education experience significant declines in both performance and motivation. Compulsory foundational gateway courses are an obvious source of difficulty. Low cost at-scale support is much needed during this critical period, but when and how remain open questions. Grade goals and self-efficacy provide short-term motivation, and are among the greatest correlates to achievement in higher education. Furthermore, students’ ongoing development in domain knowledge and interest can also offer insight on the student experience beyond the gateway course. The current study investigated the interplay between performance, short-term, and long-term motivations in a first-year online mathematics course at a research-intensive university in Pacific-Asia. Participants (n = 175) completed a pretest, four formative quizzes, and surveys measuring self-efficacy (beginning, middle, and end) and interest (beginning and end). Participants were randomly assigned to one of control (no explicit instructions), course-grade-goal, or quiz-grade-goal conditions (i.e., explicit instructions to make goal(s) for the overall course or each subsequent quiz respectively, with feedback on each quiz in relation to goals). Analyses included MANOVAs for difference testing, and testing a longitudinal fully-forward (all past variables simultaneously predicting future variables) latent SEM model. In the face of an uncertain context, self-efficacy remained a salient reciprocal predictor of performance, while students’ interest experienced initial dissonance with performance, realigning by the end of the semester. SEM results indicated that participants who set course-level goals had greater middle-of-term self-efficacy, but also lower interest at the end of the course. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.