Levels of self-control in distance and classroom students and their relationship with academic goals

Abstract

Lack of motivation in the face of responsibility for controlling their learning is one of the reasons for student dropout. In distance education (ODL) environments, students are expected to be able to do much of the learning process. Thus, self-control would play a central role in academic success. Using self-control strategies can lead to higher success rates, especially in people with procrastination tendencies. The present work analyzed the self-control profile of classroom and distance learning students, to verify if they present different profiles and if higher self-control indices lead the students to reach their academic goals. It was possible to identify, from the Mann-Whitney-U comparison test, that the groups of students in classroom and distance education present different means in relation to self-control, having students of distance education higher indexes and, through the Spearman's correlation test found that higher self-control indices lead to the achievement of academic goals.