Measuring the impact of Academic Coaching on mindset, self-efficacy, belongingness, and study skills

Eley, TC and Poljak, M.

The Academic Coaching program worked with the Eberly Center to design pre- and post-test surveys to measure mindset, self-efficacy, and belongingness among CMU students using Academic Coaching’s services in the CMU student population over the Academic Year of 2018–2019. Students were given the pre-test before they first started using our services and were given the post-test after they finished their last session—an average of four sessions. Overall, sixty-two students completed both tests. The results were analyzed using paired samples t-tests. There were statistically significant improvements for mindset and self-efficacy. These results varied when demographic variables were analyzed. The implications of this research are that Academic Coaching is effective at increasing students’ growth mindset and self-efficacy, which are linked to positive academic outcomes, and it points to a need to better understand our services and why some populations are making significant gains while others are not.

TC Eley, Academic Coaching
Mike Poljak, Academic Coaching