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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Effect of Precommitment on Student Achievement Within
a Technology-Rich Project-Based Learning Environment
Qiang Hao
1
&Robert Maribe Branch
2
&Lucas Jensen
3
#Association for Educational Communications & Technology 2016
Abstract This study investigated the effects of precommit-
ment on college students’goal setting and academic perfor-
mance, and students’attitude towards precommitment-related
activities. Precommitment refers to a procedure in which stu-
dents set up learning goals, possibly with a time limit at the
beginning of a learning phase, then report the comparison
between their goals and actual learning progress to their peers
and teachers by the end of the learning phase. This study used
a single-group repeated-measures design. 41 students from a
large university in the southeastern United States participated
in the study. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that
precommitment was significantly effective in optimizing stu-
dents’goals and improving their academic performance, but
the attitude survey result indicated that students could not fully
recognize the value of precommitment-related activities.
Keywords Precommitment .Goal setting .Academic
achievement
Introduction
Current educational trends in colleges require students to engage
in independent learning practices, wherein students set goals,
monitor their own progress, adopt strategies, and systematically
reflect on their learning results. However, such requirements can
be difficult to achieve for many students. One major reason for
the difficulty is the high metacognitive demand. The skills in
setting challenging yet reachable goals or implementing effective
and suitable strategies usually need deliberate training and years
of experience in certain subjects (Zimmerman and Schunk
2008). Another important reason is that many students grow
up in a passive learning environment, where they have become
accustomed to being told what to do and how to learn. Students
who exhibit passive learning preference tend to have difficulties
in adjusting to college requirements (Hung 2011; Rasku-
Puttonen et al. 2003). The lack of adjustment to the independent
learning practices often becomes a barrier to success in college.
The critical learning process by which students set goals,
record progress, adopt strategies, and reflect on learning results
is known as self-regulated learning (Zimmerman 2000; Loyens,
Magda, and Rikers 2008). Goal setting, as the first step in self-
regulated learning, is critical to the efficacy of other steps of self-
regulated learning. Though many instructional models have been
constructed on self-regulated learning, empirical studies explor-
ing practical instructional design strategies on components of
self-regulated learning, such as goal setting, appear to be scarce
(Cleary and Zimmerman 2004; Choi and Chung 2012).
Aimed at filling this research gap, this study examined the
effects of precommitment, as a practical instructional design
strategy, on scaffolding goal setting in college-level classroom
learning and teaching. Precommitment originally refers to a
mechanism wherein people set up goals that might have costly
consequences if unreached (Ariely and Wertenbroch 2002). For
the purposes of this study, precommitment specifically refers to a
procedure where students establish learning goals possibly with
time limit, report and compare their goals and actual learning
progress to their peers and instructors. Sharing learning goals
and progress might apply social pressure to students, motivating
*Qiang Hao
neohao@uga.edu
1
Learning, Design, and Technology & Computer Science, University
of Georgia, 850 College Station Road, Athens, Georgia 30605, USA
2
Learning, Design and Technology, University of Georgia, 850
College Station Road, Athens, GA 30605, USA
3
Leadership, Technology, and Human Development, Georgia
Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia 30458, USA
TechTrends
DOI 10.1007/s11528-016-0093-9
them to study harder and optimize learning goals (Ariely and
Wertenbroch 2002; Hollenbeck, Williams, and Klein 1989).
Literature Review
Goal Setting
Self-regulated learning can be viewed as a cyclic process with
three phases: 1) forethought, 2) performance, and 3) reflection
(Zimmerman 2008). Each of the three phases features differ-
ent components, such as goal setting, self-evaluation and self-
monitoring. Goal setting, as a key component of the fore-
thought phase, is defined as setting the standard of proficien-
cy, usually with a specified time limit (Locke and Latham
2002; van Den Hurk 2006; Zimmerman 2008).
Burton et al. (1998)andZimmerman(2008) indicated the
importance of goal setting to an individual’s learning proficien-
cy and academic performance. Setting goals gives students clear
directions and engages them in learning activities. High-quality
goals may also improve students’self-satisfaction and learning
achievement (van Den Hurk 2006; Zimmerman 2008).
Bandura (1988), van Den Hurk (2006), and Zimmerman
(2008) provide valuable information on features of effective
goals. The features guiding this study’s design include specific-
ity, proximity, and hierarchical organization. Specificity refers to
the degree of specificity of a goal. General goals like Btry your
best^usually do not improve learning; specific goals do because
they make progress toward goals easier (Zimmerman 2008).
Proximity refers to nearness in time between a goal and the
current time. Proximal goals, such as a list of daily goals, are
easier for learners to track and reflect on based on their progress.
Proximal goals can help learners better regulate themselves than
distal goals (Bandura and Schunk 1981). Hierarchical organiza-
tion refers to the combination of long-term and short-term goals.
Short-term goals can provide immediate feedback on progress,
while long-term goals could stretch one’s vision (Zimmerman
2008). Effective scaffolding strategies on goal setting should
empower students by letting them set learning goals that are
specific, proximal, and hierarchically organized.
There is a lack of empirical studies on helping learners set
and utilize goals more effectively, though the features of ef-
fective goal setting have been studied extensively. Cleary and
Zimmerman (2004), Hofer and Yu (2003), and Choi and
Chung (2012) suggested students should learn together with
self-regulation coaches or recommended stand-alone
learning-how-to-learn courses. However, learning-how-to-
learn courses or self-regulation coaches may not be available
in many authentic settings, which necessitates research on
goal setting facilitation during subject learning and teaching.
If goal setting could be trained while the subject learning is
going on, students may understand better what goals are chal-
lenging, yet reachable within certain subject contexts.
Therefore, it is necessary to explore scaffolding strategies for
goal setting that can be integrated with subject learning.
Precommitment as a Scaffolding Strategy for Goal Setting
Precommitment was chosen as the scaffolding strategy for this
study. Precommitment refers to a mechanism that people set
up goals that may bring them costly consequence if they fail to
reach the goals (Ariely and Wertenbroch 2002). Efficacy of
precommitment on self-control and procrastination has been
confirmed empirically in behavioral economics and psycho-
logical studies (Ariely and Wertenbroch 2002; Kivetz and
Simonson 2002; Kurth-Nelson and Redish 2010). However,
precommitment has rarely been explored as a learning scaf-
folding strategy in educational settings.
Precommitment, in this study, specifically refers to a proce-
dure where students establish learning goals possibly with time
limits, and report and compare their goals and actual learning
progress to their peers and instructors. The possible cost for
students in such situations is being deemed as less competent
if they set goals requiring no efforts or fail to reach their goals.
Therefore, the awareness of others’judgment may give stu-
dents more incentives to optimizing their learning goals and
putting more efforts to maximize learning efficiency.
Precommitment and Project-Based Learning
Environments
Project-based learning was selected as the context of this
study. Project-based learning, recognized as one of the best
learning approaches in supporting students’self-regulated
learning development, is defined as a teaching and learning
approach that engages students through multiple stages of
complex activities around authentic questions (Blumenfeld
et al. 1991; English and Kitsantas 2013; Loyens, Magda,
and Rikers 2008;Markham2003).
Firstly, experience of project-based learning increases stu-
dents’familiarity with precommitment. Learning in project-
based learning environment may inevitably involve some forms
of self-regulation, such as setting goals, selecting learning tasks
and strategies, and monitoring progress toward goals
(Blumenfeld et al. 1991; English and Kitsantas 2013;Kivela
and Kivela 2005; Sungur and Tekkaya 2006). These activities
related to goal setting are explicitly required by the precommit-
ment. Therefore, precommitment is not expected to be totally
strange to students who are accustomed to project-based learning.
Secondly, project-based learning augments the potential ef-
fect of precommitment by increasing familiarity among peers.
Students are supposed to learn knowledge by forming small
groups, designing collaborative projects, and deepening under-
standing through sharing, discussion, and reflection in project-
based learning contexts (Blumenfeld et al. 1991; English and
Kitsantas 2013). All these activities, depending on constant
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communication, increase students’familiarity with each other,
which in turn make students, value more peers’opinions and
judgment (Peters 2010). Theoretically, precommitment works
best when students deem peers’negative judgments costly,
which strengthen their motivations to set reasonable goals and
work harder. Therefore, project-based learning provides an ideal
environment for boosting the effect of precommitment.
Research Questions
Research questions guiding this study include:
1. Is precommitment an effective scaffolding strategy for
improving students’goal setting in project-based learning
environment?
2. Is precommitment an effective scaffolding strategy for
improving students’academic performance in project-
based learning environment?
3. What are students’attitudes towards precommitment-
related activities?
Methods
Participants
Participants were 41 undergraduate students (28 women and
13 men) enrolled in a course on instructional technology in a
large research university in the southern United States. The
course adopted project-based learning as one of the main
learning and teaching approaches. Students learned instruc-
tional design and interface design through analyzing extensive
worked-out examples in class. As time went on, the analysis
of worked-out examples faded out, and students were required
to construct their own projects.
Research Design
A single-group repeated-measures design was used to answer the
first two research questions regarding the effect of precommit-
ment on goal setting and academic performance. All participants
in the study were required to complete two individual projects on
educational technology product design one after the other in one
semester, and precommitment was applied as a treatment when
participants started working on the second project.
Allowed projects types included app prototypes, social net-
work designs, and multimedia pieces. Two project products
developed by students are presented in Fig. 1. Along the way,
participants must draw up budgets, set goals, build a portfolio,
present their project details to others, create prototypes, and
develop a social media presence.
Setting weekly goals online was required for all participants.
An example weekly goal from one participant is as the following:
BI have decided to move forward with my original plan
for the project for this class. I want to make a grocery
shopping app because I know how frustrating it gets
when you get to a store and forget your paper list or
don’t have a pen to mark things off. The most ore with
everything except the one thing I came for. I want to
create an application for smartphone users that makes
it easier to keep track of a grocery list.^
Participants were instructed on the features of effective goals
(Time limit, proximity, and hierarchical structure) by the begin-
ning of the semester, and required to post their weekly goals on
their individual portfolio. By the beginning of their second
project, precommitment was introduced as a treatment, which
required students to finish the following activities each week:
1. Post their weekly goals on their individual portfolio, and
share the portfolio links with their other group members
and the instructor
2. Give a brief presentation to their groups about their week-
ly progress in class
3. Compare their progress and their weekly goals in the
presentation
A modified version of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory sur-
vey (see Appendix) was used to answer the third research
question (attitude towards precommitment related activities).
The survey was distributed to all participants to explore their
attitudes towards precommitment related activities. The
Intrinsic Motivation Inventory is a multidimensional measure-
ment tool assessing participants’subjective experience about a
target activity, particularly as it relates to their own motivation.
This survey was developed and validated by McAuley, Duncan,
and Tammen (1989) and Deci and Ryan (2000). Four dimen-
sions of participants’attitude were explored in the survey:
1. Interest: whether participants are interested in the activity
2. Perceived choice: whether participants perceive that they
are doing the activity because of the requirement or their
willingness
3. Va l u e /Usefulness: whether participants believe the activi-
ty is of value to them
4. Relatedness: whether participants like the interaction with
others in the activity and feel connected to them
Data Collection
The participants’grades of the two projects from the course,
their weekly goals, and the survey data were collected in this
TechTrends
study. Rubrics developed by the authors (Table 1)wereusedto
assess the quality of participants’weekly goals (scale: 0–4
points). Two trained raters (doctoral students) scored the week-
ly goals independently. Participants’goals that were rated with
gaps (bigger than one) were identified and reevaluated. The
inter-rater reliability (Pearson’s r) is .751. Average scores be-
tween the two raters were used for final data analysis.
Results
Is Precommitment an Effective Scaffolding Strategy
for Improving Students’Goal Setting and Academic
Performance in Project-Based Learning Environment?
Data from 41 students were collected and six of them were
excluded from analysis due to missing major information in
their weekly goals. One-way within-subject MANOVA was
applied to examine the effect of precommitment on students’
academic performance and goal setting. Using Pillai’strace,a
significant effect of precommitment on academic performance
and goal setting was found, V= .938, F(2, 23) = 174.60,
p< .05. Within-group univariate analysis indicated significant
effect of precommitment on students’academic performance
(F(1, 24) = 32.71, p< .05, η
2
= .58) and goal setting (F(1,
24) = 326.27, p<.05, η
2
=.93) (Table 2).
When precommitment was introduced as the interven-
tion, participants tended to exert more efforts in apply-
ing the effective goal principles to their goals, and write
longer than before. As an example, before precommit-
ment was introduced, a participant had his second
weekly goal for his first project Mathematics 101
Learning Hub as:
BI want to keep the website simple and not overly artisy
but pretty professional. I will also write an opening
Bblurb^on the front page.^
The same participant had his second weekly goal for the
second project Learning Chemistry Multimedia Repository as
the following when precommitment was introduced:
BI plan to do the three following things in this coming
week: 1). Develop the default theme for teaching and
learning multimedia repository pages, 2) Research on
how to use PowToon to develop basic multimedia prod-
ucts, and 3) Publish a 3-minute PowToon multimedia
product. Of course, I will make sure to have the theme
and product on my website.^
Similarly, another participant had her third weekly
goal for the first project Integrated Bill Payment App
as the following:
Fig. 1 An app prototype
developed by a student to
compare insurance costs of major
companies (on the left); An app
design by a student to find nearby
restaurants (on the right)
Tabl e 1 Rubrics for grading quality of goals
Rubrics Rationales
Specificity Specificity refers to the degree of specificity of the goal.
General goals like Btry your best^usually do not
improve learning, while specific goals do because
they make the progress toward the goal easier
(Bandura 1988; Schunk and Rice 1989;
Zimmerman 2008).
Proximity Proximal goals, such as a list of daily goals, are easier
for learners to track and reflect on based on their
progress. Proximal goals can help learners
better regulate themselves than distal goals
(Bandura and Schunk 1981).
Hierarchical
Organization
Hierarchical organization refers to the combination of
long-term and short-term goals. Short-term goals
could provide immediate feedback on progress,
while long-term goals could stretch one’svision
(Zimmerman 2008). Their combination provides
learners self-regulatory benefits (Zimmerman 2000)
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BI’ll be honest, I’m a little scared of prototyping my app.
IknowthatI’m a bit of a perfectionist and that I want to
create a prototype that is as close as I can make it to a
usable product. I look forward to using some tools to
help me create a decent prototype.^
The quality of her third weekly goals for the second project
Daily Checklist improved significantly:
BI will write a product comparison summary based on
the 4 scheduling web services that I found. Doodle is
probably the best, but there are some other good sites
out there. I will also need to decide whether I am going
to include a feature that locks users out of their social
media outlets. I will write a benefit and cost analysis on
this feature.^
What are students’Attitudes Towards Precommitment
Related Activities?
Survey data from 41 students were collected and nine of
them were excluded from analysis due to missing data.
Four dimensions of participants’attitude were explored
in the survey:
1. Interest: whether participants are interested in the activity
2. Perceived choice: whether participants are doing the ac-
tivity because of the requirement or their willingness
3. Va l u e /Usefulness: whether participants believe the activi-
ty is of value to them
4. Relatedness: whether participants like the interaction with
others in the activity
Students scored high on both value/usefulness
(Mean = 4.00, SD = .89) and relatedness (Mean = 4.07,
SD = 1.14), but lower on Interest (Mean = 3.11,
SD = 1.25) and Perceived Choice (Mean = 4.00, SD =.89)
(Table 3).
Discussion
Is Precommitment an Effective Scaffolding Strategy
for Improving students’Goal Setting and Academic
Performance in Project-Based Learning Environment?
Precommitment was found to be effective in improving both
students’goal setting and academic performance in this study.
This finding indicated that exposing learning goals and prog-
ress to classmates and teachers made students aware of judg-
ment and progress of others, and therefore motivating them to
work harder and improve the quality of their goals.
This unique contribution of this finding is the exploration
of a more economical facilitation on goal setting is possible.
Most prior studies recommended a stand-alone Blearning to
learn^course or learning coaches regarding facilitating skills
of self-regulated learning, such as help seeking or goal setting,
which demands a lot of resources and time from both teachers
and students (e.g., Hofer and Yu 2003;Clearyand
Zimmerman 2004;ChoiandChung2012). The finding of this
study indicates that precommitment can facilitate goal setting
while the subject learning and teaching is going on. Therefore,
precommitment can be considered as an alternative approach
to facilitating self-regulated learning, especially when time
and resources are limited.
This study also gained experience in the technology-rich
implementation of precommitment that will be helpful for
future studies. Personal blog was used as the platforms for
participants to list their weekly goals. During the experiment,
participants have to be frequently reminded to check others’
goals. Future studies may consider taking advantage of social
media platforms that can push information to students, such as
private group on Facebook, or Twitter with unified hashtags,
which may further strengthen participants’connections
(Chatti, Jarke, and Frosch-Wilke 2007;Liu2010).
What are students’Attitudes Towards
Precommitment-Related Activities?
As for students’attitude towards precommitment, the partici-
pants of this study expressed that precommitment might be
important, but they did not have a strong interest in doing
related activities, as evidenced by the results of the Intrinsic
Motivation Inventory. Such reluctance suggested that students
Tabl e 2 Means, standard deviation for academic performance and goal
setting and results of repeated-measures MANOVA
Measure Scores of Two Projects Repeated-measures
MANOVA
1st Project 2nd Project Precommitment
Mean SD Mean SD F (1, 24) p η
2
Academic performance 32.40 1.40 35.00 1.73 32.71 .00 .58
Goal setting 7.28 .71 8.98 .73 326.27 .00 .93
Full score of academic performance is 40; full score for goal setting is 12
Tabl e 3 Means and
standard deviations for
attitude towards
precommitment survey’s
dimensions
Dimension Mean SD
Interest 3.11 1.25
Perceived choice 2.70 1.07
Value/Usefulness 4.00 .89
Relatedness 4.07 1.14
5-point scale was adopted for the survey
TechTrends
either did not fully recognize the value of precommitment or
the design of precommitment needed further refinement. In
reality, it may be a combination of both of the two factors. A
possible improvement of the design of this study is to capital-
ize on the pedagogical affordances of social media
(McLoughlin and Lee, 2010;DabbaghandKitsantas2012).
For instance, allowing students to post their learning goals on
Twitter with the unified hashtag will make the interaction
among students easier and increase the study’s transparency.
Limitations
All participants of this study came from the same university.
This study only lasted for 15 weeks. Data gathering over a
long period and repeated observation are suggested for future
studies on this topic. Some participation in this study failed to
see the benefit of precommitment, so they did not fully com-
mit to completing the required activities, which led to a high
dropout rate of this study. Future studies may consider ampli-
fying the benefit of precommitment and giving students extra
grade-wise incentives to lower the dropout rate. The rubrics
for grading projects were developed in class between the in-
structors and the students, but the Bone-size-fits-all^approach
might not be helpful to these projects, as they require a lot of
creativity and are quite varied in nature. Benchmarking a
board game against an app prototype is problematic, so, while
the rubric is helpful in codifying student achievement, it might
not be very generalizable from project-to-project, given the
idiosyncratic nature of each project.
Conclusion
Facilitation of self-regulated learning is important for many
college students to adapt to academic life. This study focused
on goal setting as an important component of self-regulated
learning, explored the effect of precommitment as a scaffold-
ing strategy on college students’goal setting and academic
performance. The results indicate that, although students do
not show strong interest in its related activities, precommit-
ment may prove effective in improving both students’goal
setting and academic performance in project-based learning
environments.
Appendix
Survey: Attitude towards Precommitment-Related Activity
1. I think weekly goal setting and progress report is quite
enjoyable.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
2. I would describe weekly goal setting and progress report as
very interesting.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
3. I felt like it was not my own choice to set weekly goals and
progress report for this course.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
4. I set weekly goals and report progress to others for this
course not only because of the course requirement but also
because I wanted to.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
5. I believe weekly goal setting and progress report could be of
some value to me.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
6. I think weekly goal setting and progress report is an impor-
tant activity.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
7. I felt really distant to the classmates of this course.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
8. I interacted a lot with my classmates of this course.
A. Not at all true B. Slightly true C. About halfway true D.
Most true E. True
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