<p dir="ltr">For college students, using motivation regulation strategies (MRSs) is beneficial for important outcomes such as academic satisfaction and effort, with benefits for achievement. While extant research has investigated the quantity and types of MRSs students use, there is limited understanding of strategy quality and its development. This is due to a primary focus on understanding strategy use and change over time using self-report survey measures at multiple administrations, as well as early quality assessments that rely on brief scenarios and/or alignment with experts’ evaluation of MRSs. This study aimed to extend research by describing qualitative changes to students’ self-reported MRS use reflected in their course artifact reflections and investigating the role of metamotivational knowledge in this development, over the course of a semester. Participants were enrolled in an undergraduate learning-to-learn (L2L) course (N=43). Qualitative analysis of course artifacts coded for types of MRSs used early and late in the semester showed students’ improved use of more adaptive strategies and refined strategy repertoires. From the sample showing adaptive stability or positive change over the term (95.35%), six participants were selected for case analysis to richly describe quality MRS and metamotivation knowledge changes. Case analyses showcased the development of agency (self-responsibility) and progressive quality change in employed MRSs toward less reliance on extrinsic strategies and corresponding heightened reliance on intrinsic strategies. Students’ reported learning goals during self-regulated learning (SRL) shifted from a distal to a proximal focus and in quality from avoidance and completion focus to aiming for understanding. Students’ experiences in monitoring through course artifacts and developing their self-knowledge for MRSs provoked the positive progressions in quality changes of MRSs over the term. Findings from this qualitative study contribute to the emerging research about metamotivation knowledge by proposing discernment of a negatively valanced strategy for increasing value when regulating motivation involves the manifestation of negative affect. Further, this study highlights areas needing further contextual understanding when motivation is bolstered or sustained by modifying the environment, especially the influence of culture and diverse backgrounds in accessing resources.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p>

Healthcare costs in the United States continue to grow at an alarming rate. Concerning the cost of medications, there are a number of factors that drive these costs. While personnel costs are not the largest of these, they do contribute a significant portion. The cost of the cognitive component of order processing by pharmacists can range from three dollars to over six dollars per prescription depending on the production throughput of the pharmacist. Studies at the organization which was the focus of the research, as well as reports in the literature, indicated that work disruption and other environmental factors could impact the rate at which pharmacist process physicians' orders into prescriptions. At the time of this study the collaborating facility was undergoing a re-organization; funding had been allocated to relocate and redesign the outpatient pharmacy. This provided a timely opportunity to examine the effect that changes to the physical plant, with specific attention being given to reducing interruptions to the pharmacists finishing orders, would have on pharmacists' productivity. This was measured in orders processed per hour, before and after the reorganization. Sixteen months after the pharmacy was moved, supervisors were concerned that the outpatient pharmacy was still not performing at maximum efficiency and workload data was posted, with the intent that this information would motivate those professionals, whose output may have been below the average, to increase their production. All outpatient prescriptions are maintained in a data base which records, among other items, the pharmacist who processed the order which generated the prescription and the time and date this was done. Data for prescriptions filled before and after each intervention were abstracted from the data base and used to determine production rates before and after the interventions. There was a small, but statistically significant, decrease of two prescriptions per hour per pharmacist in production following the relocation. Fourteen of the twenty-one pharmacists (66.6%) had decreases in productivity averaging 4.1 prescriptions per hour while seven had an increase averaging 2.2 prescriptions per hour. All but one of the pharmacists who had an increase in productivity after the relocation also had a slight, but statistically insignificant, increase averaging 3.0 prescriptions per hour per pharmacist after the posting of the workload data. The effect of posting the workload data was not statistically significant even though the study group processed 16,692 more orders working only 221 more hours. Nine of the study pharmacists (42.8%) had decreases in productivity averaging 2.3 prescriptions per hour per person, while the remaining twelve increased production by an average of 2.8 prescriptions per hour per pharmacist. An analysis of both effects, using ANOVA, indicated that the pharmacist was a significant contributor to the effect in both cases. Only in the analysis of the impact of the relocation was the effect of the intervention significant and that was to decrease productivity. The net result of this research was that the postulated interventions to increase productivity had no real effect and the motivation of the pharmacists may be the most significant factor. The fact that a third of the study pharmacists had decreases in productivity after both interventions is telling and may indicate problems with job design and motivation. A further review of production rates and error are indicated with an emphasis on determining if there is an association between error rate and production rate. At this point there are little published data and what is available is either conjecture, as in the case of the North Carolina Board's determination of 150 prescriptions per day being a safe upper limit, to Malone's survey based research determining an average rate of 14.1 prescriptions per hour.