Work in Progress: Investigation of the Psychological and Demographic Characteristics that Impact Performance in Online Modules and Courses

This work-in-progress research study is being conducted as part of a larger project funded by the National Science foundation investigating online learning pathways in Advanced Manufacturing and Data Science. The overall project will create multiple online modular learning experiences for learners in four different populations: industry professionals, 2-year college students, 4-year college students, and informal learners. These four learner contexts provide an opportunity to study how the structure of online modules/courses and the characteristics of learners could potentially impact learners’ performance and behaviors. Literature from educational psychology posits several constructs that can potentially impact academic performance and course behaviors. One variable includes the learner’s beliefs about the malleability of human traits (such as ability or intelligence), also known as growth vs. fixed mindset. According to Dweck (2016), learners with growth mindsets have the belief that human traits are incremental and can be changed with practice and training. Learners with fixed mindsets believe that traits are immutable and cannot be changed, regardless of practice or training. Research has supported that having a growth mindset positively relates to academic performance (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007), self-efficacy (Komarraju and Nadler, 2013), and motivational beliefs (Dinger, Dickhäuser, Spinath, & Steinmayr, 2013). Mindset, self-efficacy, and metacognition individually have each been shown to be influenced by the learning environment and to impact student performance. However, little research has been done to explore the interaction between these constructs. Exploring the interaction between these different constructs across multiple learning contexts will allow the researchers to further explore these relationships to find ways to encourage improved learner performance. Five research questions are being studied for this project, which are listed here: 1) How do psychological characteristics of learners, including mindset, self-efficacy, and metacognition affect performance in the online course modules? 2) How do the learners’ demographic characteristics, such as gender, prior knowledge, and educational background affect performance? 3) What is the interaction among the psychological characteristics and demographic characteristics of learners that affect performance? 4) How do the psychological characteristics and their inter-relationships (mindset, self-efficacy, and metacognition) differ across the four learning settings? 5) How do the learners’ demographic and psychological characteristics affect their preferences and navigation patterns (i.e. preferences for specific types of assignments and course behaviors) with the various course design elements (i.e. less challenging versus more challenging assignments, reflection activities)? Our research design will utilize existing survey instruments with validity evidence from educational psychology as well as the development of new instruments. Newly created instruments will follow test development procedures identified in the most recent Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (APA, AERA, NCME, 2014). The work-in-progress paper will describe the research design and progress to date, with a literature review grounding the work in psychology and social sciences research. The work-in-progress format for this paper will be ideal, as the authors would like to receive feedback from the engineering education community on the research questions, interventions and study design.