Think, feel, act: motivational and emotional influences on military students’ online academic success

This study employed a social-cognitive view of self-regulated learning to examine how several personal factors relate to academic success in an online course. Service academy undergraduates (N = 481) completed a survey that assessed their motivational beliefs (self-efficacy and task value); negative achievement emotions (boredom and frustration); and several outcomes that included their use of self-regulated learning strategies (elaboration and metacognition), course satisfaction, and continuing motivation to enroll in future online courses. Results from several multiple regressions revealed that task value beliefs were the strongest and most consistent positive predictors of elaboration, metacognition, satisfaction, and continuing motivation; whereas self-efficacy beliefs were moderately strong positive predictors of satisfaction and continuing motivation only. On the other hand, students’ boredom and frustration were statistically significant predictors of metacognition, with boredom emerging as a negative predictor and frustration unexpectedly emerging as a positive predictor. Furthermore, both boredom and frustration were negatively related to satisfaction and continuing motivation. Taken together, results from this study provide some insight into the complex relations between students’ thoughts, feelings, and actions in an online course. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed, as are study limitations and future directions.

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