Department of Psychological Science
University of Mary Washington
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This study is very informative as a future teacher! The limitations and suggestions for future studies highlight very key differences and effects that could have taken place and they are well planned out. I wonder if this were tried on a different area of study, math for example if the cheating effects would have been more significant. Since professor effort made a positive difference – in an area where students are generalized to be not as confident (math), would you expect the same results?
Hi, Amy! Thank you for your comment! I think you make a great point that subjects that are thought to be harder might produce higher levels of cheating. Based on the research, I believe instructor effort can alleviate some of the negative feelings a student may feel toward the subject which will in turn decrease cheating overall. In our study, the negative apprehension did not go away with our manipulation of the study guides, but we believe that was due to the limitations of an online experiment and students only having 15 minutes to study for a test. We did see significantly fewer rates of cheating in the high effort study guide so that might be beneficial to remember in your own classroom! As a future educator myself, I want to ensure that I am doing my best to help my students achieve greater self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation in the content that I am teaching them. Instructors can exhibit high effort in various forms. It is evident that more research needs to be done to highlight the best methods!
Important area of research. How confident are you about your construct validity re: your manipulation? There’s an effect, e.g., on cheating behavior, but does this necessarily relate to faculty effort or is there another factor in play? There are surely many differences between the two study guides, not only the perceived effort on the creator’s part.
Hi, Dr. Stahlman! Thank you for your comment! You bring up a great point that perceived effort may not have been the only thing different about the two study guides. The organization of the material was edited so that it would be easier to understand the topics in a fast way since participants only had 15 minutes to study. This time constraint is problematic in its own way. The main point our research team wanted to convey to the participants in the high effort study guide group was that a good amount of effort was put into their study material and whoever it was behind the study guide wanted them to succeed. In our limitations portion of our presentation, we describe that the online setting wasn’t our preferred method to perform our experiment. If this experiment was in person we would have 1. Included an actual instructor that is caring and an instructor who displays minimal effort to give the test to both groups. 2. We would have wanted to give our participants the study guide days in advance of taking the test so they could have had more time to study and feel prepared as students realistically are able to do before taking a test. If these two things were done, we would not have had to emphasize such a huge difference in layout of the study guides. Our main goal in our manipulation was to convey higher effort from an instructor and nothing else. However, It is possible that because of the limitations of the methods of our online study, there might be errors in construct validity of the manipulation.
I think you make a good point in your discussion of limitations about the online presentation of the study guide being perceived differently from an in-person delivery, especially given the lack of interaction with an ‘instructor’ of some kind for the participants to attribute their reactions to. Is there anywhere where we would be able to see the study guides you used? I’d be interested, especially in light of the significant findings of your study.
Hi Alex! Thank you for your comment! In hindsight, I am now wondering how why we forgot to include our study guides. If you look on qualtrics under our study, you should be able to find them! I also have them saved to my google drive so you can email me at watkins2@mail.umw.edu and I will send you them if you are interested! I think because they were each 4 pages long, we thought that we wouldn’t have time to include them, but now I’m thinking it would have been highly beneficial to include at least one page of each!
This is very important topic to do research on and your presentation was very clear to understand! Since COVID began, our life has been significantly impacted. Which makes me wonder how being online for the past year has also played a role in both your independent variable and your dependent variables. If there was any significant changes from before COVID to during COVID.
Great job on your presentation! I thought it was really well organized with a lot of helpful graphics. I think the topic of this study is very interesting and relevant to current and future teachers when considering how to motivate students. One thing I’m curious about is the measurement of intrinsic motivation. Did you measure intrinsic motivation before the test or only following the test? Also, do you think this study could be applicable to a wide array of ages? How is instructor effort perceived among different ages? Also, I would be interested to see the study guides used for this study.
Hi Gretel! Thank you for your comment! I realized while we were analyzing the tests that we totally should have assessed intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy beforehand to see if the different study guides actually changed their mindsets. I’m really glad you pointed that out because that is one thing we forgot to talk about in our limitations! Future research on our topic should absolutely measure participant’s baseline psychological variables before any manipulation is done to see if a real change has occurred or if there was an odd variance between groups.
This is a really interesting study. Your presentation was organized well and provided a lot of insightful information. I think given the context of having the study online might have yielded different results than if it were in person. As a future teacher, I think it is important to note considerations when motivating students. I would agree that self-report bias was probably a limitation of the study. I wonder if you did the study at different points throughout the school year how that would impact the results. Overall, very informative study and presentation!
You all picked a really great project topic. It is very relevant also! I found this to be a great topic since I am planning on being a teacher. I definitely think it is very important to motivate your students in proper ways. It’s really cool that you did find some significant results as well. Do you think it would have made a difference to do the study throughout the entire year?
Overall, I loved this presentation and found it very interesting. I never really thought about the instructor’s role in student’s cheating until listening to this presentation. You guys had a very organized and informative presentation.
This was a wonderful presentation! I really loved the way you manipulated instructor effort; the teacher made study guide and textbook copied study guide. If you had to adjust your manipulation for self efficacy, what would be your first step?
I do not mean to belabor a point that has been made in other places, but I am also interested in student perceptions of the study guides. While we can always intend to produce a stimulus that is perceived in a particular way, we might not always match what are participants actually perceive. Do you think including a measure of students’ perceptions of the study guides could have shown you anything interesting about why some of your findings were opposite of your hypotheses? Maybe something about the “high effort” study guide actually led to a reduction in intrinsic motivation because students believed too much was being done for them and it was not their own efforts that influenced their performance?
Great job to all who worked on the presentation. The organization was evident and the graphics were clear and concise. Aside from instructor effort, do you believe there are any other factors that could significantly affect the frequency of cheating behaviors? and if not, why?
I believe that I had taken this study and was very interested in seeing the outcome of your results! It was so interesting to see how in depth your study guide had gone (the one I believe I had gotten), was the process of making those study guides difficult?
Good job group! I appreciate you addressing teachers and their own motivation since I believe it has a great effect on students. I have noticed that organized and well-rounded professors and classes have less students complaining about the class versus disorganized classes. I wonder how past and/or current experiences that students have had with their professors and classes played into this study. For example, in future research, students could be asked if they feel better motivated in a classroom with an organized vs disorganized teacher and if they believe it played a part into whether they cheated in the class or not.
I really like the topic of your study. Instructors play a huge role in students learning experience, I’m glad you chose to look at that.