Qualitative analysis of a Self Administered Motivational Instrument (SAMI): promoting self-feedback, self-efficacy and self-regulated learning

Abstract

A Self-Administered Motivational Instrument (the SAMI) was designed to assist university entrants to reflect on their approaches to tertiary study and to consider how they could develop more effective approaches to learning and focus on the provision of self-feedback. The instrument was used in a controlled experiment with entrants to nursing programmes at the University of the West of Scotland. These pre-registration nurses completed the SAMI in their second week of study and again in Week 11. This provided the opportunity to assess the SAMI as a means of stimulating students towards self-regulation and form self-feedback mechanisms. A measure of constructive friction, dissonance or ambivalence is created in the SAMI by asking students to consider how well they have been doing with their current study regime, how well they could potentially do if they tried their hardest, drawing students to consider aspects of how they learn and reflect on the organisation of their study routines. These measures within the SAMI provide the basis from which students complete questions structured by tutors and construct useful self-feedback. In the current paper, the aim is to confirm the outcomes of previous studies that have found a link between student completion of the SAMI and performance and to investigate whether this quantitative finding is accompanied by autonomous use of experiential feedback students had of themselves (self-feedback) to initiate, monitor and control changes of study approach. The results of a mixed-method approach indicate that students undertook self-regulated change and had the self-efficacy to understand they could succeed in making changes and in attaining their academic goals.