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Universities prepare students to become contributing members to the workplace and to society. However, with rising tuition costs and other increasing time and resource demands, students face substantial adversity. Students' ability to cope with that adversity influences successful completion of academic coursework and retention in degree programs, ultimately providing a source of potential effective future employees. Previous research has demonstrated numerous direct relationships between dispositional resilience and pivotal outcomes, such as performance, life satisfaction, and subjective well-being. However, research has failed to explore underlying mechanisms through which resilience may affect these outcomes, especially in academic contexts. The purpose of the current study was to use self-regulation theory as a framework for examining the effects of students' resilience on outcomes. Using a sample of undergraduate students from a Midwestern university in the U.S. (N = 141), we proposed and tested a path model addressing self-efficacy, self-set goals, and state anxiety as mechanisms through which resilience influences performance and subjective well-being. Our results provided evidence supporting a structural model involving resilience, such that student resilience (a) has an indirect effect on performance through self-efficacy and self-set goals, (b) has an indirect effect on state anxiety through self-efficacy, and (c) accounts for unique variance in subjective well-being after controlling for state anxiety. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our purpose was to examine whether positive error framing, that is, making errors salient and cuing individuals to see errors as useful, can benefit learning when task exploration is constrained. Recent research has demonstrated the benefits of a newer approach to training, that is, error management training, that includes the opportunity to actively explore the task and framing errors as beneficial to learning complex tasks (Keith & Frese, 2008). Other research has highlighted the important role of errors in on–the–job learning in complex domains (Hutchins, 1995). Participants (N= 168) from a large undergraduate university performed a class scheduling task. Results provided support for a hypothesized path model in which error framing influenced cognitive, motivational, and affective factors which in turn differentially affected performance quantity and quality. Within this model, error framing had significant direct effects on metacognition and self-efficacy. Our results suggest that positive error framing can have beneficial effects even when tasks cannot be structured to support extensive exploration. Whereas future research can expand our understanding of error framing effects on outcomes, results from the current study suggest that positive error framing can facilitate learning from errors in real-time performance of tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We proposed a multi-level model examining the differential effects of ability and task complexity (objective and subjective) on performance, self-efficacy, and the cognitive appraisals of threat and challenge. For individuals (N = 183) performing a class scheduling task simulation, results indicated that cognitive ability and objective and subjective task complexity accounted for unique variance in performance and self-efficacy and that subjective task complexity accounted for unique variance in cognitive appraisals. Results highlight the importance of distinguishing between objective and subjective task complexity and examining effects on factors related to emotion such as cognitive appraisals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]