Cognitive ability,exam-related emotions and exam performance: A field study in a college setting

Using lab and field data, this paper investigates (a) the degree to which pre- and post-exam positive and negative achievement emotions and cognitive ability are uniquely and jointly associated with exam performance and (b) the degree to which exam performance influences subsequent post-exam emotions. Based on a sample of 102 students, results show that ability influences exam performance both directly and indirectly via pre-exam emotions. Also, ability and distraction interact to influence performance such that ability has a buffering effect. Distraction has a significant deleterious effect on performance for low ability students, but does not disrupt performance for high ability students. Moreover, positive emotions facilitate performance by decreasing distraction whereas negative emotions hinder performance by increasing it. Finally, results show that the exam itself has a significant impact on post-exam positive and negative emotions, even when controlling for pre-exam emotions. Results are discussed in terms of the emerging research on achievement emotions beyond test anxiety.     

天津市初等信息技术考试标准设定方法的研究与实践

天津市初等信息技术考试是面向社会测试应试者计算机应用能力的评测系统,作为一种标准参照考试,从2004年开始实施以来,一直以60分作为合格标准,但实践证明,60分并不能作为判断考生是否合格的永恒标准。该考试系统是上机考试,社会考生自愿报名参加,考试对象年龄差异较大,覆盖小学2-6年级,且每个级别会有不同年龄学生参加,60分的划界分数忽略了每次参加测试的被试者的平均能力不同这一事实,也忽略了同一次考试不同考生抽到的题目不完全一致的事实。这样可能会产生一个问题,即我们只能了解考生的相对能力和相对位置。如果不能正确地将考生归入恰当的等级类别中,这种等级考试的价值就会受很大影响。因此,本文对该考试系统的"合格"标准分数的设定进行研究,利用Angoff法设定划界分数,客观地应用到被试群体中,在提高考试信度、效度的研究与应用方面进行了有益的探索。     

Objective Score Versus Subjective Satisfaction: Impact on Emotions Following Immediate Score Reporting

Abstract

There are positive feedback loops between students’ grades and emotions. However, subjective appraisals, not grades, are theorized to trigger emotions. We extended previous research by comparing the effects of objective score and subjective appraisals of the score (i.e., satisfaction) on emotions. We used an ecologically-valid quasi-experimental design and found differences in how objective score compared to satisfaction impacted emotions. Main effects for score showed positive associations with hope, pride, relief, and negative associations with anxiety, anger, and shame. An interaction for satisfaction occurred such that students who were satisfied with their score had the same effect as objective score, but students who were unsatisfied with their score felt less hope, pride, relief, and more anger and shame. Implications for the control-value theory of emotions as well as for instructors are discussed.     

The impact of an online tool for monitoring and regulating learning at university: overconfidence,learning strategy,and personality

Being overconfident when estimating scores for an upcoming exam is a widespread phenomenon in higher education and presents threats to self-regulated learning and academic performance. The present study sought to investigate how overconfidence and poor monitoring accuracy vary over the length of a college course, and how an intervention consisting of (1) a monitoring exercise and (2) a monitoring and regulation strategy, improves students’ monitoring accuracy and academic performance. Moreover, we investigated how personality factors (i.e., grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, optimism) influence monitoring accuracy. We found that the Monitoring and Regulation Strategy positively influenced monitoring accuracy and exam scores, whereas the Monitoring Exercise that confronted students with their overconfidence protected students against overconfidence in the second exam score prediction but did not affect exam score. The results further revealed that exam score predictions lowered from the start to the end of the course for both poor and high performing students, but still leaving poor performers overconfident and high performers underconfident. Topic knowledge gained in the course did not wash out the Dunning Kruger effect, and results indicate that poor and high performers use different cues when predicting exam scores. Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism contributed to overconfidence on exam score predictions but not on the Monitoring Exercise. These findings underline the potential of the Monitoring and Regulation Strategy intervention and ask for upscaling it to include measurements of self-regulated learning activities.     

Effects of full-time and part-time high-ability programs on developments in students’ achievement emotions

This study focused on effects of high-ability programs on students’ achievement emotions, i.e. emotions that students experience that are associated with achievement activities. Participants were students in grade 4–6 of primary education: 218 students attended full-time high-ability programs, 245 attended part-time high-ability programs (i.e. external pull-out class). Using propensity score matching, they were matched to a control group of 189 students from regular education with similar cognitive abilities. The respondents filled out questionnaires on their achievement emotions three times during a school year. Results of multilevel analyses showed that students who attended full-time high-ability programs did not report more beneficial achievement emotions compared to similar students in regular education. In contrast, students in part-time programs experienced more positive and less negative emotions during the part-time program compared to the control group in regular education. No differences in longitudinal developments throughout the school year were found between the groups.     

Academic goals,goal process cognition,and exam performance among college students

We investigated the nature of and linkages between student-generated academic goals, individual differences in self-regulatory thinking (goal process cognition), and exam performance among college students. In Study 1 (N = 365) and in Study 2 (N = 325), we elicited students' self-ascribed most important academic goals for introductory psychology and their goal process cognition toward their most important goal. In addition, in Study 2, we collected data on students' exam scores in introductory psychology and their most important academic goal and goal process cognition for another course. Three types of academic goals were identified: performance (39–55%), mastery (22–39%), and study strategies (20–23%). Students with mastery academic goals had the highest positive arousal whereas students with performance academic goals had the highest negative arousal. Compared to students with performance academic goals, students with mastery academic goals had lower exam scores in introductory psychology and this difference was mediated, in part, by goal process cognition.     

How are students’ emotions related to the accuracy of cognitive and metacognitive processes during learning with an intelligent tutoring system?

The goal of this study was to investigate 65 students' evidence scores of emotions while they engaged in cognitive and metacognitive self-regulated learning processes as they learned about the circulatory system with MetaTutor, a hypermedia-based intelligent tutoring system. We coded for the accuracy of detecting students’ cognitive and metacognitive processes, and examined how the computed scores related to mean evidence scores of emotions and overall learning. Results indicated that mean evidence score of surprise negatively predicted the accuracy of making a metacognitive judgment, and mean evidence score of frustration positively predicted the accuracy of taking notes, a cognitive learning strategy. These results have implications for understanding the beneficial role of negative emotions during learning with advanced learning technologies. Future directions include providing students with feedback about the benefits of both positive and negative emotions during learning and how to regulate specific emotions to ensure the most effective learning experience with advanced learning technologies.     

Even after thirteen class exams,students are still overconfident: the role of memory for past exam performance in student predictions

Students often are overconfident when they predict their performance on classroom examinations, and their accuracy often does not improve across exams. One contributor to overconfidence may be that students did not have enough experience, and another is that students may under-use their knowledge of prior exam performance to predict performance on their upcoming exams. To evaluate the former, we examined student prediction accuracy across 13 exams in an introductory course on educational psychology. For the latter, we computed measures that estimate the extent to which students use the prior exam score when predicting performance and whether students should use the prior exam scores. Several outcomes are noteworthy. First, students were overconfident, and contrary to expectations, this overconfidence did not decline across exams. Second, students’ prior exam scores were not related to subsequent predictions, even though prior exam performance showed little bias with respect to predicting future performance. Thus, students appear to under-use prior performance despite its utility for improving prediction accuracy about future exam performance.     

College Credit on the Table? Advanced Placement Course and Exam Taking

Millions of high school students who take an Advanced Placement (AP) course in one of over 30 subjects can earn college credit by performing well on the corresponding AP exam. Using data from four metro-Atlanta public school districts, we find that 15 percent of students’ AP courses do not result in an AP exam. We predict that up to 32 percent of the AP courses that do not result in an AP exam would result in a score of 3 or higher, which generally commands college credit at colleges and universities across the United States. Next, we examine disparities in AP exam-taking rates by demographics and course taking patterns. Most immediately policy relevant, we find evidence consistent with the positive impact of school district exam subsidies on AP exam-taking rates. In fact, students on free and reduced-price lunch (FRL) in the districts that provide a higher subsidy to FRL students than non-FRL students are more likely to take an AP exam than their non-FRL counterparts, after controlling for demographic and academic covariates.     

Affective-motivational effects of performance feedback in computer-based assessment: Does error message complexity matter?

The impact of computer-based performance feedback on students’ affective-motivational state may be very different, depending on the positive or negative direction of the feedback message and its specific content. This experiment investigated whether more elaborated error messages improve students’ affective-motivational response to negative (i.e., corrective) feedback. We systematically varied the presence and complexity of corrective feedback messages (1 × 4 between-subjects design) and analyzed the effects of the provided feedback on students’ emotions, task-related perceived usefulness, and expectancy-value beliefs. University students (N = 439) worked on a low-stakes test with 12 constructed-response geometry tasks. They received either no feedback or different complexities of immediate corrective feedback after incorrect responses (i.e., Knowledge of Results [KR], Knowledge of Correct Response [KCR], or Elaborated Feedback [EF]), paired with immediate confirmatory KCR feedback after correct responses (i.e., confirming their response). Our data showed that students’ task-level performance moderated the emotional impact of feedback (i.e., beneficial effects after correct responses; detrimental effects after incorrect responses). Students’ performance further moderated several feedback effects on students’ expectancy-value beliefs. Regarding error message complexity, we found that students reported higher levels of positive emotions after receiving EF or KCR compared to KR, while only EF decreased students' level of negative emotions compared to KR and increased students' task-related perceived usefulness compared to all other groups. Overall, our results suggest that performance feedback is likely to improve students’ affective-motivational state when the feedback confirms a correct response. Moreover, when reporting an error, EF (or KCR messages) were more beneficial to affective-motivational outcomes than simple KR notifications.     

情绪调节策略与延迟满足关系的实验研究

为研究情绪调节策略对情绪类型与延迟满足关系影响,采用两种不同情绪类型的视频短片启动大学生产生相应的情绪(积极情绪或消极情绪),比较两种条件下使用认知重评策略与表达抑制策略对紧随其后的延迟满足任务成绩的影响。实验结果表明:积极情绪状态下,认知重评与表达抑制组延迟满足得分差异不显著;消极情绪状态下,认知重评组延迟满足任务得分显著高于表达抑制组。结论:认知重评策略能够有效地改善消极情绪对延迟满足表现的负面影响。     

The role of emotions and task significance in Virtual Education

This paper analyzed the role of emotions in a virtual world (Second Life) through students' level of enjoyment and boredom and their influence on students' achievement level. The virtual world was an educational tool used to fully immerse students in the content of the course. In addition to supporting prior research on the importance of task value on academic enjoyment, the current research provides a new perspective on the relationship between academic emotions and academic success, particularly for virtual worlds. A regression analysis was conducted to measure the relationship of task value and emotions on two types of academic performance: Individual exam scores and team scores on their Second Life assignment. Pekrun's Academic Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ) was used to measure two academic emotions: boredom and enjoyment. Both academic emotions were measured on an individual level. Results from this study show that task value was positively related to enjoyment and negatively related to boredom, yet it was unrelated to academic performance. While enjoyment had a positive relationship to exam performance, boredom also had a positive relationship to the team assignment conducted in the virtual world. The possibility that students might have answered the AEQ relating to the theoretical aspects of the course instead of the practical aspects of the Second Life Assignment, may be one possible explanation for this result.     

The impact of computer usage on academic performance: Evidence from a randomized trial at the United States Military Academy

We present findings from a study that prohibited computer devices in randomly selected classrooms of an introductory economics course at the United States Military Academy. Average final exam scores among students assigned to classrooms that allowed computers were 0.18 standard deviations lower than exam scores of students in classrooms that prohibited computers. Through the use of two separate treatment arms, we uncover evidence that this negative effect occurs in classrooms where laptops and tablets are permitted without restriction and in classrooms where students are only permitted to use tablets that must remain flat on the desk.     

Expectancy-value appraisals and achievement emotions in an online learning environment: Within- and between-person relationships

Motivation and emotion are of critical importance for students' academic learning and achievement. Drawing on Eccles and Wigfield's situated expectancy-value theory and Pekrun's control-value theory, we examined to what extent specific expectancy-value appraisals related to studentsʼ achievement emotions. We collected intensive state data of N = 95 university students over one semester in an online learning environment. Students' appraisals were analyzed on different aggregation levels in a hierarchical design, which accounts for variability within learning situations and between students. Our results corroborated theoretical assumptions that expectancy-value appraisals are positively associated with positive emotions and negatively with negative emotions. However, we found that students experienced positive emotions in learning situations of high intrinsic and utility value, but not in situations of high attainment value. Examining appraisal combinations and discrete emotions, we found that particularly studentsʼ perceived costs moderated the relationship between expectancy and frustration and boredom on the situation level.     

Study Behavior in the Closed-Book and the Open-Book Examination: A Comparative Analysis

The study focused on students’ perceptions in order to find out the study behavior put forward by them prior to and during the exam in each of both the open-book and the closed-book exam alternatives. Participants were 181 students, comprising a 72.8% response rate, who experienced both exam alternatives; they were asked to assess 39 statements referring to study behaviors on a 5-point scale (1 = not at all present to 5 = present to a very great extent) for both exam options. The results indicated that students preparing for a closed book examination tend to postpone their study at the end of the semester, focus on the assigned texts and memorize information. Students preparing for an open-book examination tend to consult various sources and interrelate the information acquired; when taking the exam, they work creatively while, at the same time, they probe deeply into the knowledge gained. When the 39 statements were factor-analyzed, four factors emerged having to do with (a) mastering the course content; (b) involvement in the learning process; (c) using the knowledge gained in a creative way; and (d) facing the exam with optimism. For all four factors, the composite score was higher for the open-book exam option than for the closed one. The implications of the study as well as its major flaws are also discussed.     

Cutting Class Harms Grades

An accessible business school population of undergraduate students was investigated in three independent, but related studies to determine effects on grades due to cutting class and failing to take advantage of optional reviews and study quizzes. It was hypothesized that cutting classes harms exam scores, attending preexam reviews helps exam scores, taking optional exam preparation quizzes helps exam scores, and earlier exam scores in the semester predict later exam scores. Using an objective measurement method of actual events and actual exam scores instead of the predominant nonexperimental survey method most often used, it was found that all hypotheses were significant and supported in the predicted direction. Implications for professors and students are provided, revealing that cutting class, missing preexam reviews, and ignoring chapter quizzes effects are real and they matter.     

Computer-based instruction’s (CBI) rediscovered role in K-12: An evaluation case study of one high school’s use of CBI to improve pass rates on high-stakes tests

Patriot High School (PHS) adopted a remediation strategy to help its 10th-grade students at risk of failing the Math portion of MCAS, the state’s end of year competency exam. The centerpiece of that strategy was a computer-based instructional (CBI) course. PHS used a commercially available CBI product to align the course content with the competencies covered on the MCAS exam. This case study examines the overall effectiveness of the PHS strategies, and in particular, the role of CBI. Participant MCAS scores and CBI performance (measured by module-mastery data) are analyzed, and an interview with the course instructor is summarized. Finally, PHS scores were compared to the overall state MCAS scores for the same years. Overall scores of all 10th graders increased significantly compared to their 8th-grade scores, students who participated in the CBI course improved more than the students who did not. The passing rate at PHS improved from 40% in 1999 to 84% in 2001, compared to an improvement of from 47% to 75% statewide. A significant correlation was identified between the MCAS scores and the program usage data, with student CBI module mastery correlated with higher MCAS scores. Overall, the instructor was positive about the impact of the course and believed that the course gave many under-performers a chance to succeed when more traditional methods had failed. It seems likely that CBI contributed to PHS’s success. Although we report herein on just one case, we argue that CBI might play an important a role in the high stakes test environment in the USA and eleswhere.

Emotionally Intense Science Activities

Science activities that evoke positive emotional responses make a difference to students’ emotional experience of science. In this study, we explored 8th Grade students’ discrete emotions expressed during science activities in a unit on Energy. Multiple data sources including classroom videos, interviews and emotion diaries completed at the end of each lesson were analysed to identify individual student's emotions. Results from two representative students are presented as case studies. Using a theoretical perspective drawn from theories of emotions founded in sociology, two assertions emerged. First, during the demonstration activity, students experienced the emotions of wonder and surprise; second, during a laboratory activity, students experienced the intense positive emotions of happiness/joy. Characteristics of these activities that contributed to students’ positive experiences are highlighted. The study found that choosing activities that evoked strong positive emotional experiences, focused students’ attention on the phenomenon they were learning, and the activities were recalled positively. Furthermore, such positive experiences may contribute to students’ interest and engagement in science and longer term memorability. Finally, implications for science teachers and pre-service teacher education are suggested.     

主观报告下情绪标注对正负性情绪的作用

在情绪标注的研究中,存在着情绪标注是增强还是抑制了情绪的争论。实验1以负性情绪图片为材料,分别在实验条件和预期条件下,比较了情绪标注和观看情绪刺激后的主观评定。结果发现,在预期条件下,被试在情绪标注时比观看时对情绪刺激评定的情绪强度更高;而在实验条件下,被试在情绪标注时比观看时对情绪刺激评定的强度更低。实验2以正性情绪图片为材料。分别在实验条件和预期条件下,比较了情绪标注和观看情绪刺激后的主观评定。结果发现,在预期条件下,被试在情绪标注时比观看时对情绪刺激评定的情绪强度更高;而在实验条件下,被试在情绪标注时和观看时相比在情绪刺激评定上没有差异。研究表明被试认为情绪标注会增强情绪,而在实际进行情绪标注时会抑制情绪,尤其是在负性情绪时。     

Decision making for borderline cases in pass/fail clinical anatomy courses: The practical value of the standard error of measurement and likelihood ratio in a diagnostic test

Several studies have shown that the standard error of measurement (SEM) can be used as an additional “safety net” to reduce the frequency of false‐positive or false‐negative student grading classifications. Practical examinations in clinical anatomy are often used as diagnostic tests to admit students to course final examinations. The aim of this study was to explore the diagnostic value of SEM using the likelihood ratio (LR) in establishing decisions about students with practical examination scores at or below the pass/fail cutoff score in a clinical anatomy course. Two hundred sixty‐seven students took three clinical anatomy practical examinations in 2011. The students were asked to identify 40 anatomical structures in images and prosected specimens in the practical examination. Practical examination scores were then divided according to the following cutoff scores: 2, 1 SEM below, and 0, 1, 2 SEM above the pass score. The positive predictive value (+PV) and LR of passing the final examination were estimated for each category to explore the diagnostic value of practical examination scores. The +PV (LR) in the six categories defined by the SEM was 39.1% (0.08), 70.0% (0.30), 88.9% (1.04), 91.7% (1.43), 95.8% (3.00), and 97.8% (5.74), respectively. The LR of categories 2 SEM above/below the pass score generated a moderate/large shift in the pre‐ to post‐test probability of passing. The LR increased the usefulness and practical value of SEM by improving confidence in decisions about the progress of students with borderline scores 2 SEM above/below the pass score in practical examinations in clinical anatomy courses. Anat Sci Educ. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.