Transcript Perils and Promises of Undergraduate Research

Perils and Promises of
Undergraduate Research
C. W. Von Bergen
Southeastern Oklahoma—Management & Marketing
My Research (my writing) …
• Applied (business and psychology)
• Prescriptive
• Often counterintuitive/countercultural
– The Happy End Effect: Colonoscopies Provide
Clues on Enhancing Marketing Training
– Unintended Negative Effects of Diversity
Management
– The Tyranny of Optimism
– Your Best Ain’t Good Enough
One Peril in Students…
Inaccurate Self-Assessments
Top Performers
• consistently
underestimate their
performance
• Learn from feedback
Incompetent Performers
• consistently
overestimate their
performance
• Do not learn from
just feedback
– Feedback
– Teaching writing
skills
SE Students
“We have several years of assessment data
suggesting that students come to us by and
large underprepared for college and through
the education that we offer they are competitive
college graduates when they leave.”
—Doug McMillan, VPAA, SE
April 16, 2013
One Peril: Overconfidence Bias
“no problem in judgment and decision making is more prevalent
and more potentially catastrophic than overconfidence”
• 42% of engineers at one company thought their
work ranked in the top 5% among their peers
• 94% of college professors thought they do “above
average” work
• 90% of US adults expected to go to heaven yet
researchers found that only 86% thought Mother
Theresa was in heaven
One Peril: Overconfidence Bias
• “Napoleon’s Tragic March Home from Moscow:
Lessons in Hubris”
• “I Thought I Got an A! Overconfidence Across
the Economics Curriculum”
• “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in
Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to
Inflated Self-Assessments”
Student Wrote …
“Mail me my paper please..I have never
made less than a A on ANY paper I have
ever written and would love to read you
explinations for my grade!”
–.
– an A
– your
– explanations
In Writing with Me …
‘‘In preparing for challenging endeavors,
some self-doubt about one’s performance
efficacy provides incentives to acquire the
knowledge and skills needed to master the
challenges’’ (Bandura & Locke, 2003).
Applying Lewin’s Change Model
• Give short writing exercise
• Provide feedback; emphasize that their writing is
the problem but that we can fix it if they are
willing to put in the effort
• Teach English writing skills (e.g., i before e except
after c)
• Offer support and encouragement to those who
can but sometimes have to tell others that at this
point in time they need to work on their writing
Promises …
• See student writing improve
• Maybe even get a publication out of this effort
Why Students Have Not Learned?
• People seldom receive negative feedback about
their skills and abilities from others in everyday
life
• Even if people receive feedback that points to a
lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other
factor