What’s the Eberly Center reading and thinking about this month?

The Research and Scholarship Digest, published the first Monday of each month, consists of short summaries of recently peer-reviewed studies on teaching and learning topics. This digest offers a view into what we are reading and thinking about at the Eberly Center that:

• adds to our understanding of how students learn
• is potentially generalizable across teaching contexts in higher education
• provokes reflection on implications for our teaching and educational development practices.

We hope the readers of this digest will find it a useful resource for staying in-tune with the rapidly expanding education research literature.

Muenks, K., Sievers, J., Kroeper, K. M., & Canning, E. A. (2025). Exploring effects of mixed mindset messages from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics instructors. Motivation Science, 11(3), 349–365. 

Instructors often intend to promote a growth mindset to their students, but, like any human, may unintentionally send mixed messages through their comments and behavior. Furthermore, students’ perceptions of these behaviors may only serve to further the misalignment in some instances. In three lab studies, the authors of this paper investigated the impact of these “mixed messages” by experimentally manipulating whether students encounter “pure growth" mindset messaging (i.e., no mixed messages), mixed-messaging growth mindset, or no mindset messaging at all. Participants were asked to imagine a hypothetical situation where an instructor sends an email to all students in the class immediately following the posting of grades from the first course exam. Participants were then presented with one of three emails - pure growth message, mixed-message, or no mindset message - and surveyed about their perceptions based on the email. The survey contained several Likert-type measures, such as students’ perception of instructor mindset, positive perceptions of the instructor, anticipated motivation, anticipated fear of asking for help, and performance expectancies. In study 1, results for most of the measures showed significant positive effects for the pure growth message while the mixed message and no message conditions did not differ significantly. Study 2 added a “pure fixed” condition and mostly replicated these results, although there were some instances where the no mindset message had more positive results than the mixed message condition. Study 3 varied the extent to which the mixed message condition contained fixed mindset components, with the results showing that a greater volume of fixed mindset content leads to steadily deteriorating outcomes. Overall, these results suggest that sending “mixed messages” about growth mindset can negatively impact students, and perhaps in some cases lead to worse outcomes than if mindset was never mentioned at all. 

https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000381

Patzak, A., Zhang, X., & Marzouk, Z. (2025). From research to practice: Facilitating time management instruction in higher education. College Teaching, 1–8.

This systematic review analyzed 18 empirical studies involving 11,724 students to determine whether and how explicit time management instruction improves students’ academic performance as well as their ability to manage their time. The authors determined that a range of explicit strategies can be effective for improving students’ ability to manage time, including goal-setting, contingency planning, visualization, and tracking. Students who received time management instruction were more likely to develop and practice behavioral strategies that support academic success, including spending more time studying, setting and managing goals, and anticipating and managing challenges. In addition to improving academic performance, explicit instruction in time management reduced students’ procrastination, lowered stress, and improved well-being. The article concludes with evidence-based suggestions for educators who wish to incorporate the most effective time management instructional strategies in their courses. In particular, they suggest incorporating activities that engage students in setting goals and developing a schedule for completing specific assignments, using time logs or other methods of tracking their time, and anticipating and planning for obstacles to progress.

https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2025.2495681

Thomas, D. R., Borchers, C., Bhushan, S., Gatz, E., Gupta, S., & Koedinger, K. R. (2025). LLM-generated feedback supports learning if learners choose to use it. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.17006. 

A new study from CMU, LLM-Generated Feedback Supports Learning If Learners Choose to Use It , provides insight into how learners’ attitudes toward generative AI (GAI) shape their learning outcomes. The research analyzed over 2,600 completions of seven scenario-based tutor training lessons, where students practiced skills such as praising effectively, responding to errors, and supporting a growth mindset.

Learners were divided into three groups: those with no access to AI feedback, those given the option to use it, and those who actually engaged with it. All students still received corrective system feedback. The results showed that students who chose to use AI-generated explanatory feedback outperformed their peers on posttests, with statistically significant gains in two lessons. Nearly 94% of learners rated the AI feedback as helpful, and it did not increase time spent completing lessons.

The takeaway is not simply that GAI can improve learning, but that its impact depends on students’ own willingness and openness to engage with it. Learners who approached the AI feedback positively benefited more, while those skeptical or reluctant to use it did not. This highlights an emerging challenge in teaching: student attitudes toward AI are now part of the learning equation. It means supporting not just the integration of AI tools, but also helping students reflect on and develop constructive orientations toward using them in their learning.

van Jaarsveld, G. M., Wong, J., Baars, M., Specht, M., & Paas, F. (2025). Enhancing goal attainment in higher education with a scripted conversational agent: Effects of monitoring and reflection support in digital learning. Computers & Education, 105441. 

This study explores how scripted conversational agents can help students in higher education follow through on their academic goals. Across a five-week trial with 84 undergraduates, the researchers tested whether prompts for goal monitoring and reflection would boost self-regulated learning (SRL). The results showed that students who received monitoring prompts—either alone or combined with reflection—reported higher goal attainment than those who only set goals or reflected, underscoring monitoring’s critical role in sustaining goal-directed behavior. While all students improved their SRL skills simply by engaging in weekly goal-setting, neither reflection nor monitoring produced additional gains in this short time frame, and no condition significantly affected academic performance. Overall, the findings suggest that scripted conversational agents, even without AI, can provide scalable, low-cost support for SRL by reinforcing progress monitoring, with reflection likely requiring longer or more targeted interventions to show benefits.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2025.105441

Wetzel, D. P. (2025). Transforming faculty office hours: Student-centered design increases student perceptions and usage of office hours. College Teaching, 1-8. 

The impact of office hours is relatively understudied in higher education. For this paper, the author designed and concurrently implemented four student-centered interventions targeting office hours for an upper-level STEM course (n = 32) and tracked student attendance and student perceptions via pre and post course surveys. In short, the interventions were 1) getting student input for when the hours should be, 2) explicitly reflecting with students on the purpose and benefits of office hours, 3) increasing communications regarding invitations to office hours and rebranding them as “study sessions”, and 4) adding structure by creating weekly themes or topics. These interventions led to an average of 10 students attending office hours each week, which was over a 400% increase from the last time the author taught the course without these interventions. In addition, 69% of the students who completed the survey reported attending at least once, with only 31% reporting not having attended at all. About 50% of the students reported that they attended office hours more frequently in this course compared to their other courses. Qualitative responses indicated that students appreciated the weekly topics and welcoming climate surrounding the office hours. These results suggest that there are some highly generalizable strategies instructors can use to promote office hours use and enhance the office hours experience for their students. Further details on the interventions themselves and their theoretical underpinnings are explained in the paper.

https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2025.2533961