Enhancing and Facilitating Self‐Efficacious Behaviors in Distance Learning Environments

Abstract

The need to understand contemporary adult learners and the methods that promote continual, sustained learning is of paramount importance particularly for doctoral programs, but more specifically for online doctoral programs. The online format is viewed as an alternative way to learn in a technologically driven society that focuses on time, opportunity, and convenience as critical considerations for learning endeavors. An examination of the factors associated with attrition in doctoral programs includes understanding and confronting personal and institutional barriers to successful matriculation. Researchers have identified general characteristics of effective graduate students such as motivation, attitude, collegiality, writing/communication skills, values and integrity (Walpole, Burton, Kanyi, & Jackenthal, 2002) but have not established a clear understanding of the specific characteristics that facilitate or obstruct enduring and sustained learning. This paper proposes a conceptual model that includes attributes of learner autonomy (desire, resourcefulness, initiative, and persistence in learning) as influential mediators of self‐efficacy and motivation for learning and may improve retention and completion rates in higher education.

Exploring Emotional Intelligence, Learner Autonomy, and Retention in an Accelerated Undergraduate Degree Completion Program

“…Student endurance, another term for retention, has been considered extensively by Derrick, Ponton, and Carr (2005), who developed a model of quadratic reciprocity to explain the forces necessary for persistence. The model suggests four factors that determine the state of the learner: initiative, resourcefulness, persistence, and self‐efficacy.…”

“…In Chapter 6, the author cites the "centrality of caring and work-family dilemmas" as fuel for policy development regard- 31 Articles assert that emotionally intelligent people use thinking to regulate their emotions and they use emotions to regulate their thought processes. Because Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), Bean (1980), Tinto (1987), and Derrick et al (2005) placed so much emphasis on intentions in their models, intentions became of paramount importance in the proposed model of student retention in degree completion programs. However, the proposed model differs from existing retention models due to its inclusion of EI.…”

“…“Understanding the behaviors associated with persistence in learning is critical to understanding… why some individuals are successful and others are not successful in their learning endeavors” (p. 16). In a recent study by Ponton, Derrick, and Carr (2005) the authors assert that, “In higher education, persistence usually refers to a continuance of study to degree completion within some prescribed time period” (p. 123). They suggest that it is difficult to understand how people may persist in any endeavor unless they choose to engage in that endeavor over other activities.…”

Student retention in higher education: the role of creativity, emotional intelligence and learner autonomy

“…With this in mind, the LAP is comprised of inventories that measure five constructs: desire, resourcefulness, initiative, persistence and self-efficacy. Derrick et al . (2005) offered a refined version of the Confessore model that separates desire as a precursor.…”

“…Derrick et al (2005) developed a model of quadratic reciprocity to explain the forces necessary for persistence. These four factors comprise the state of the learner's intentions to engage in autonomous learning: resourcefulness, initiative, persistence and self-efficacy.…”