Examining students' self-efficacy and perceptions of task difficulty in learning from multiple texts

Abstract

We examine students' ratings of task difficulty and associate these with self-efficacy and objective and subjective measures of task performance, within the context of learning from multiple texts. Participants were asked to report their self-efficacy for multiple text task completion and then to compose an argument about a controversial topic (i.e., the U.S. adopting a universal basic income). Students were asked to rate and justify their perceptions of task difficulty following multiple text task completion. While self-efficacy was found to be associated both with students' ratings of task difficulty and with measures of subjective task performance, objective task performance was found to only be associated with effort expenditure, as measured by the total time that students devoted to text access. Implications for future research are discussed.