The role of academic emotions on medical and allied health students’ motivated self-regulated learning strategies

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Academic emotions have been found to be important predictors of students’ self-regulation. The goal of this study was to investigate the role of academic emotions on undergraduate students’ self-regulation at a medical college in Malawi. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 1st year students (n = 205) from the college responded to two separate questionnaires assessing their emotions and motivated self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies employed in their classes of anatomy (n = 51), pharmacy (n = 44), medical laboratory science (n = 44), and physiotherapy (n = 66). Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 20. RESULTS: Students experienced hope (F [3, 201] = 3.05, P = 0.030) differently across the four programs. Female students reported high levels of anxiety (P < 0.05) and boredom (P < 0.05) than male students, while male students reported high levels of enjoyment (P < 0.001) and hope (P < 0.001) than their counterparts. Cognitive strategies were positively predicted by enjoyment (β = 0.42), hope (β = 0.34), anger (β = 0.18), and value (β = 0.61) while resource management was positively predicted by enjoyment (β = 0.56) and value (β = 0.46). Finally, task value was positively predicted by hope (β = 0.33) and enjoyment (β = 0.29), while expectancy was positively predicted by hope (β = 0.37). CONCLUSIONS: The study shows that class-related emotions and motivation have an influence on medical students’ SRL. Therefore it is important to foster pleasant emotions, which trigger motivation for the betterment of students’ self-regulation.