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Record W14073113 · doi:10.3181/00379727-113-28501

Transitioning from Quarters to Semesters: Changes in College Students' Predicted and Perceived Motivation.

2014· article· en· W14073113 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

aboutThe title or abstract carries a Canadian signal from the geographic lexicon.
no affNo Canadian affiliation: this work is invisible to an affiliation-only frame.
No Canadian affiliation. An affiliation-only frame, the usual design, would never have seen this work. It is one of the works that make the case for inverting the frame.

Bibliographic record

VenueCollege and university · 2014
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldAgricultural and Biological Sciences
TopicDiverse Educational Innovations Studies
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsQuarter (Canadian coin)CourseworkHigher educationGraduation (instrument)PsychologyMathematics educationUniversity systemMedical educationPolitical scienceGeographyEngineeringMedicine

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

A NUMBER OF U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS ARE CONVERTING FROM QUARTERTO SEMESTER-BASED ACADEMIC CALENDARS; IN FALL 2012, SEVENTEEN OHIO INSTITUTIONS DID SO. OVER A TWO-YEAR TIME PERIOD, COLLEGE STUDENT SAMPLES WERE RECRUITED FROM A LARGE, PUBLIC, URBAN, MIDWESTERN UNIVERSITY THAT WAS UNDERGOING A TRANSITION FROM A QUARTER-BASED TO A SEMESTER-BASED CALENDAR. RESULTS INDICATE THAT DURING THEIR LAST YEAR ON THE QUARTER CALENDAR, MOST STUDENTS FAVORED THAT SYSTEM AND PREDICTED LITTLE TO NO CHANGE IN THEIR MOTIVATION HEADING INTO SEMESTERS; BUT AFTER THEIR FIRST YEAR ON THE SEMESTER CALENDAR, THEIR FAVORITISM OF QUARTERS DECREASED. THIS MIXED METHODS STUDY ASSESSED COLLEGE STUDENTS' FAVORITISM OF QUARTERS AND SEMESTERS; THEIR PREDICTED AND PERCEIVED CHANGES TO THEIR MOTIVATED BEHAVIORS; AND THEIR SELF-REPORTED MOTIVATION. EVEN THOUGH MOST STUDENTS PERCEIVED LITTLE TO NO CHANGE IN THEIR MOTIVATION AFTER THE CONVERSION TO THE SEMESTER CALENDAR, THERE WAS A NOTICEABLE INCREASE IN THE PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS WHO REPORTED HAVING ADOPTED MALADAPTIVE BEHAVIORS AND BECOMING DE-MOTIVATED. DESPITE THIS INCREASE, A STATISTICAL INCREASE IN STUDENTS' SELFEFFICACY TOWARD THEIR COURSEWORK WAS ALSO OBSERVED. IMPLICATIONS OF THESE FINDINGS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ARE DISCUSSED.Seventeen higher education institutions in Ohio converted from FUTURE RESEARCH quarter to semester systems in 2012-13 (Farkas 2012, Pyle 2009, Pyle 2012). Other institutions and systems that have undergone similar transitions include the Rochester Institute of Technology, California State University-Los Angeles, Auburn University, the University of Minnesota system, the Utah State system, and Northeastern University (Mayberry 2009). The decision to convert to a semester system is typically multifaceted (see Quann 1998), with rationales ranging from the financial to student transfer and curriculum, to name a few. The University System of Ohio (2012) identifies credit transfers as the greatest factor in the decision to make the change. Those who believe that all higher education institutions in Ohio should operate according to the same academic calendar contend that the change to a semester calendar would enable students to transfer credits more easily to different institutions within the state (Fingerhut 2010).Despite the perceived benefits of converting to semesters, student motivation is rarely a primary focus of decision maldng about such a conversion; yet research indicates that achievement motivation may greatly influence students' learning outcomes. Motivation is defined as the process whereby goal-directed actions are instigated and sustained (Schunk, Pintrich and Meece 2014). Therefore, it is worth considering that an institution's change of its academic calendar may alter its students' goaldirected actions. The conversion from three ten-week quarters to two fifteen-week semesters has the potential to change how students manage their time and/or their confidence in their ability to maintain their energy and focus throughout a fifteen-week academic term. Students who become fatigued (or de-motivated) as a result of the change may behave in a manner that is maladaptive to their learning and/or to the institution's mission. At the same time, students who perceive that a fifteen-week semester will provide them with more time to master course content may adapt their learning strategies (e.g., time management, self-regulation, etc.) accordingly. Thus, even though the decision to convert from a quarterto a semester-based calendar may rest primarily on issues related to institutional finances, student transfer protocols, and/or curriculum changes, the decision can have significant implications for student-motivated behaviors.The literature suggests that faculty members favor semesters whereas students (undergraduates in particular) appear to favor quarters (Pyle 2007, 2009, 2012). Explanations for the difference include the notion that undergraduates may favor quarters because they are shorter and provide more opportunities to quickly obtain grades to demonstrate their competence {i. …

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.020
Threshold uncertainty score0.189

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.016
GPT teacher head0.201
Teacher spread0.185 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it