Despite good intentions, people often encounter challenges and obstacles in pursuit of their goals. The types of difficulties people experience each day have been well-documented (e.g., desires and temptations, resource depletion, social influences). However, despite these difficulties, some people are still able to attain their goals. Research on self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) suggests that relative autonomous motivation (RAM) may explain inter-individual (and intra-individual) differences in effort and persistence when self-regulation is difficult (e.g., Ntoumanis et al., 2014). In two manuscripts, a series of daily diary designs are used to examine the role of motivation when self-regulation is difficult. The first focuses on the role of RAM during goal striving in a healthy eating across each day (Study 1) and during lunches (Study 2). These studies provide some evidence that students with higher (vs. lower) RAM are more likely to attain more difficult healthy eating goals, which may be due to perceiving fewer obstacles in pursuit of these goals, or through the use of more effective (i.e., approach-based) strategies. Then, the second manuscript involves undergraduate students enrolled in online (Study 1) and in-person classes (Study 2) during the Covid-19 pandemic, and focuses on how their situational motivation to do schoolwork may be impacted when they experience motivational interference. Mixed findings emerged regarding the impact of motivational interference on students’ situational motivation but further evidence highlighted the protective effects of RAM when interference occurred. Taken together, these manuscripts contribute to a growing body of research on the study of self-regulation in daily life and on the role of RAM when difficulties arise. / Graduate / 2022-12-14

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Online learning continues to widen in popularity by providing greater access and flexibility in time and location the learning occurs. There is a shift in the profile of a traditional college student. Almost half of the students who are enrolled in online classes are 24 or older and tend to carry increased time constraints due to external factors such as employment and family responsibilities. Student retention remains a concern for institutions. Many students lack the skills necessary to be successful in the online platform. Research reports self-regulation learning skills are essential. Providing reminders for an upcoming assignment may give needed scaffolding. Intervention research is sparse in this domain. This dissertation is written in a three journal article format. Article 1 is a systematic review of the literature focused on the use of auto-reminders or nudges as an intervention in higher education. This review employed systematic criteria to allow rigorous analysis, critique, and synthesis of related literature search. The search strategy focused on auto-reminder interventions in online classes. Keywords were searched in each of the databases (n = 3) ERIC, PsychINFO, and Scopus. Articles (n = 291) were added to Zotero. Three themes emerged. Health (n = 3), procrastination (n = 2), and motivation (n = 4) for a total of 9 articles. Findings reveal that the health field is successful in nudging their patients into better health practices; however, published research in the education field is lacking. Building on findings from Article 1, Article 2 sought to address nudging in the education field. Instructors volunteered to use a nudging app to remind students of upcoming assignments in their courses (n= 158). Enrolled students were invited to download a mobile app. This study attempted to create a profile of students who used the app. Findings reveal that students who used the app were more likely to be Asian and International and had higher scores on college entrance exams. App users had slightly lower prior GPAs, despite having earned significantly more credits in college at the time of the study. Building on Article 2, Article 3 explored the behavioral interaction with app users tapping (n = 443) and not tapping (n = 1102) of push notifications. Findings reveal app users submit more assignments and have higher average assignment grades when they tap the notifications. Assignment weight is generally lower, and there is generally less time between the time the student submitted the assignment and the assignment deadline. When push notifications are not tapped, assignment weight is higher, and there is more time between submission and deadline. More research is needed to determine push notification behavior.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosed during childhood can continue into adulthood, but most research on the topic has been done on children and adolescents. This research focus has thus often left out the population of adults with this disorder. In particular, there is little research on the role that self-regulation plays in the lives of adults on several life domains, especially in the workplace. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to understand the role that self-regulation plays in the occupational functioning of adults with ADHD. Self-regulation theory provided the tenets that were used to examine how adults with ADHD self-regulate their emotions in the occupational setting. A modified version of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method of analysis of phenomenological data was used to analyze transcripts of participant interviews with 11 Adults who have an ADHD diagnosis and at least one year of work experience. The results showed that many of the participants had difficulty with self-regulation, particularly with effectively managing the situation by considering the long-term consequences for their actions. The study has several social change implications. First, the findings might add to scholarly literature regarding the later-life impact of adult ADHD, enabling such changes as additional treatment of ADHD in adulthood and potential accommodations, support, and training on the job. Given the centrality of employment issues in the life of an adult, the findings may provide direction and insight to employers in managing employees with ADHD, making them more productive members of the workplace.

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Book Summary: Sexual Offending presents the latest theory and research relating to the social cognition, emotion, and motivational goals of individuals who have committed sexual offences. Explores how individuals who have committed sexual offences perceive the world and themselves, and how understanding this can inform their rehabilitation Provides a broad-based view of cognition, and explores the complex relationship between cognition, emotion and associated constructs such as motivational goals Integrates recent work on female sexual offenders alongside the literature on their male counterparts, providing researchers and practitioners with a single resource A valuable handbook for researchers, practitioners and students concerned with understanding and rehabilitating individuals who have committed sexual offences

Debugging is a significant part of programming. However, a lot of introductory pro- gramming classes tend to focus on writing and reading code than on debugging. They utilize programming assignments that are designed in ways such that students learn debugging by completing these assignments which makes debugging more of an im- plicit goal. In this thesis, we propose a cognitive awareness scaffolding in debugging to help students self-regulate their debugging process. We validate its effectiveness by conducting experiments with students in four sections of a Data Structures course, which is one of the introductory computer science classes at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. In this form, students identified the debugging stage, described the bugs in their own words, and tracked their attempts to fix them. The exit survey responses that students filled out at the end of the quarter indi- cate that students seemed to find the debugging form helpful with self-regulation in debugging process. For further investigation, we attempt to measure students’ under- standing of the bugs explained on the form. Additionally, we also discuss potential improvements for the debugging form.

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