Non-traditional Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of Instructional Strategies Used to Enhance Statistics Self-efficacy in Online Learning

https://doi.org/10.9743/JEO.2023.20.1.7

Abstract

Self-efficacy is defined as people’s perceptions of their abilities to organize cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral skills and their decisions on how much effort to use to attempt the action. This exploratory sequential, mixed-methods study examined nontraditional doctoral students’ perceptions on how instructional strategies helped with their self-efficacy in online statistics learning as aligned with four sources of self-efficacy (i.e., mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological reactions). The relationship between the instructional strategy used and the students’ statistics self-efficacy was examined. The effective instructional strategies are discussed and recommendations provided for online statistics instructors and course designers.