Self-regulation of resource management

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Joachim Wirth
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397641192

Academic learning at universities differs from learning in schools. Itdemands high skills in time management, help seeking as well asmotivation and effort regulation. To meet these demands students canmake use of resource management strategies. However, empiricalstudies on resource management in higher education are rare.Especially studies are needed which investigate the quality ofresource management, identify factors influencing resourcemanagement quality, and test the causal relationship of resourcemanagement and study success. During the first phase of funding, wedeveloped and evaluated a situational judgement instrument (SJI).Items of the SJI first describe fictitious but realistic study situations.Afterwards, conditional knowledge of resource managementstrategies is tested. Additionally, students estimate the quality of theirrespective strategy use in the fictitious study situation (self-reportdata). Empirical findings show that a large portion of students havegreat deficits in resource management. However, we found asubstantial correlation of resource management and study successwhich was as strong as the correlation of intelligence and studysuccess. Additionally, we were able to show the importance of thepersonality factor conscientiousness for both resource managementand study success. In the second phase of funding we extend thefindings of the first phase. In the first study, we set students resourcemanagement tasks and collect behavioral as well as self-report dataon strategy use in these real tasks. These data add on the datacollected with the SJI concerning fictitious (but realistic) studysituations and help to further validate the SJI. In the second study, weare going to test the causality of the correlational findings of the firstphase of funding. In an experimental study, we provide interventionsfor students with deficits in resource managements to overcome theirindividual deficits. And we compare the effects on study success withthe respective effects in a subsample of students who received nointervention to overcome their deficits. Additionally, we furtherinvestigate the role of conscientiousness. The question is whetherhigh quality resource management is a pre-requisite for (or enhancerof) the influence of conscientiousness on study success or whetherhigh quality resource management can compensate for lowconscientiousness. If resource management was a compensator forlow conscientiousness, trainings of the quality of resourcemanagement strategy use could facilitate students their studiesespecially in case of low conscientiousness.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Jens Fleischer; Professor Dr. Detlev Leutner