{"title":"A Case Study to Observe How Students\u2019 Perception of the Possibility of Success Impacts Their Performance in Summative Exams","authors":"Rochelle Elva","volume":206,"journal":"International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences","pagesStart":100,"pagesEnd":106,"ISSN":"1307-6892","URL":"https:\/\/publications.waset.org\/pdf\/10013505","abstract":"<p>Faculty in Higher Education today are faced with the challenge of convincing their students of the importance of the mastery of skills through learning. This is because most students often have a single motivation -to get high grades. If it appears that this goal will not be met, they lose their motivation and their academic efforts wane. This is true even for students in the competitive fields of STEM, including Computer Science majors. As educators, we have to understand our students and leverage what motivates them, to achieve our learning outcomes. This paper presents a case study that utilizes cognitive psychology\u2019s Expectancy-Value Theory and Motivation Theory, to investigate the effect of sustained expectancy for success on students\u2019 learning outcomes. In our case study, we explore how students\u2019 motivation and persistence in their academic efforts are impacted by providing them with an unexpected path to success, which continues to the end of the semester. The approach was tested in an undergraduate computer science course with n = 56. The results of the study indicate that when presented with the real possibility of success, despite existing low grades, both low and high-scoring students persisted in their efforts to improve their performance. Their final grades were on average one place higher on the +\/-letter grade scale, with some students scoring as high as three places above their predicted grade.<\/p>","references":"[1] S. Branca and E. 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