Student Anxiety, Preparation, and Learning Framework for Responding to External Crises: The Moderating Role of Self-Efficacy as a Coping Mechanism

Abstract

In response to the Journal of Marketing Education special issue on teaching turmoil and triumphs in times of crisis, we develop and test a student anxiety, preparation and learning framework for responding to external crises. We use structural equation modeling to assess how COVID-19 anxiety impacts classrelated anxiety, class preparation, and class learning, and how these then affect class satisfaction and intent to pursue a sales career. Using three sequential virtual sales competitions, we test our model in the immediate aftermath of the transition from live in-class learning to virtual learning brought on by COVID-19, offering an ideal setting for investigating marketing education in a time of crisis. The findings are unique, and show that how crises are managed impacts the deleterious effects of anxiety on education and learning. While anxiety had the greatest influence on class preparation, class preparation in turn was not related to class learning, class satisfaction, nor intent to pursue a sales career. However, when digital self-efficacy was considered as a moderator, the expected effects of class preparation emerged. Our findings contribute to multiple theoretical contexts, including anxiety, crisis management, self-efficacy, marketing education, and virtual sales role-plays.

Don’t Waste a Crisis: COVID-19 and Marketing Students’ Self-Regulated Learning in the Online Environment

“…Our study also adds to a small but growing body of work in marketing education that explores how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting business students’ learning (e.g., Cao et al, 2021; Peltier et al, 2021). We show that the drastic shift in the learning environment and learning methods has led to student resilience.…”

“…We also provide novel insights into the relationship between crisis impact and marketing students' grade expectations, as many students in our sample expressed a heightened desire to attain good grades during the COVID-19 pandemic (see Figures 5 and 6). This expectation is not consistent with current pandemic pedagogy research that reports students' growing anxiety related to remote learning (Peltier et al, 2021). Marketing educators have long taught students to prepare for constant change through scenario planning and adaptive market strategies (Rayburn et al, 2020).…”

“…Yet the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about one of the most radical disruptions to higher education—namely, an unprecedented level of transformation in teaching, with an unknown impact on changes in student attitudes toward performance. The broader discussion on pandemic pedagogy among marketing academics was the impact this abrupt transition to remote learning had on students’ class preparation and class learning (e.g., Cao et al, 2021; Peltier et al, 2021; Rippé et al, 2021; Wooldridge et al, 2021). We aim to add to the emerging body of work on “pandemic pedagogy” that is underscored by recent radical disruptions in learning (Cao et al, 2021).…”

Navigating the New Normal: An S-O-R Perspective on Student Experiences of Environmental, Psychological, and Behavioral Changes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…As a result of this blurring, the academic and well-being facets of students’ lives became even more deeply intertwined and trying to understand one without considering the other risks resulted in an incomplete picture of the student learning experience. Despite some laudable recent efforts highlighting how factors such as positive attitude, self-efficacy, and resilience helped marketing students cope with pandemic stress (Peltier et al, 2021; Rayburn et al, 2020; Reisenwitz & Fowler, 2021), the field of marketing education continues to lack an integrative framework that can parsimoniously encompass student experiences of the pandemic, and their psychological and behavioral responses to it, in terms of academic effort as well as personal well-being. We aim to address this gap by undertaking a qualitative research approach to develop such a processual account that is anchored in the S-O-R framework.…”

“…First, we provide an inductive yet theoretically grounded account that encompasses environmental change and student response in the form of a parsimonious multistage conceptual framework. By doing so, we not only contribute to the growing research stream looking at student coping mechanisms amid the pandemic (e.g., August & Dapkewicz, 2021; Peltier et al, 2021) but also hope to provide a set of useful insights that educators and scholars could use. Second, by combining a focus on academic work and well-being, we also hope to provide a more holistic account of student life during the pandemic as respondent accounts reflect an inextricable link between their practices linked to academic work and those linked to personal well-being.…”