Self-regulated Learning In Medical College Students:the Role Of Academic Emotions On Motivated Strategies For Learning

Self-regulated learning has emerged as a powerful new learning practice that is able to promote the transfer of knowledge and skills to real-life situations. It makes students more independent of their teachers in extending and updating their knowledge base, especially in the emerging medical’Problem-Based Learning’(PBL) curriculum. Personal factors such as emotions, positively or negatively affect the existence of self-regulation in students. Considerable research has been generated on these concepts in other fields of education. Yet the study of these emotions and learning strategies has largely been neglected in the education field of medicine.The goal of this study was two folds:first, it was designed to investigate the extent to which undergraduate medical students experience academic emotions (enjoyment, hope, anger, anxiety, boredom and hopelessness) before, during and after attending classes. Second, it was aimed at exploring the relationship between these academic emotions and self-regulated learning strategies. Two hundred and five first year medical students from four programs (Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Surgery, Bachelor of Pharmacy, Bachelor of Physiotherapy, and Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences) participated in this study. They responded to two,5-point Likert scale, self-report instruments assessing their emotions and self-regulated learning strategies employed in their respective classes of Anatomy, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy and Medical Laboratory Science, during their entire first year of their profession.The results showed that students experienced a rich variety of emotions; the most experienced being positive emotions of hope and enjoyment. In addition, students portrayed more motivational beliefs than the actual learning strategies. Pharmacy and Physiotherapy students reported higher levels of hope while Medical Laboratory Science students reported the highest level of hopelessness. Other emotions were statistically experienced the same way across all the four programs. Female students experienced more negative emotions while male students experienced more positive emotions. Furthermore, students whose both parents never acquired tertiary education had more enjoyment, anxiety and employed more cognitive strategies than those whose either parent obtained tertiary qualification. Finally, regression results indicated that cognitive strategies were positively predicted by enjoyment, hope, anger and value while resource management was positively predicted by enjoyment and value; hope and enjoyment also predicted value positively while expectancy was positively predicted by hope.The research suggests the significant role of class-related emotions on students’ motivation and self-regulated learning. The study further suggests that students’motivation is equally very important for their learning. It is, therefore, important to foster pleasant emotions, which trigger motivation for the betterment of students’self-regulation in schools, especially where Problem-Based Learning is practiced.