Perils and Promises of Undergraduate Research

C. W. Von BergenSoutheastern 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 throughthe education that we offer they are competitive college graduates when they leave.”

—Doug McMillan, VPAA, SEApril 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