SOUTHLAND COLLEGE

Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental

School of Basic Education

Factors Contributing
to the Procrastination
During Online Learning Among
Senior High School Grade-12
STEM Students
of Southland College

In partial fulfilment of the requirements in Practical Research 2

Members:

Argamaso, John Mark

Gonzales, Chriscia

Jualayba, Jan Marvin

Moleño, Lourence Albert

Sebua, Gracelle Ann

Silvera, Charmie Ann

Valiente, Mariel Marie

 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Procrastination has typically been defined as a trait or behavioural disposition to postpone or delay

performing a task or making decisions (Milgram et al., 1998; Haycock et al., 1998; Kachgal et al., 2001).

Although procrastination is a common phenomenon among students and, is thought to be an unfavourable

personality trait, it seems hard to find a conventional definition on which all the researches agree.

However, procrastination is stated to be a personality trait intended to put off an existing work, a

behavioural tendency or an irrational delay.

This complex phenomenon is examined under five headings: (1) General procrastination; (2)

Academicprocrastination; (3) Decision-making procrastination; (4)Neurotic procrastination, and (5)

Non-obsessional or non-functional procrastination. While general and academic procrastination is related

to avoidance of task, other procrastination behaviours seem to be connected with decision making (Ellis

and Knaus, 1977). General procrastination behaviour is described as difficulties in performing daily tasks

due to incapability to organize time and management effectively (Ferrari et al., 1995).

Academic procrastination involves academic tasks and can be described as postponing academic tasks due

to some reasons. Solomon and Rothblum (1984) have simply described academic procrastination as

postponing primary academic tasks such as preparing for exams, preparing term papers, administrative

affairs related to school and duty of attendance. In consideration of these descriptions, academic

procrastination means delaying academic tasks and trouble experienced because of this delay.
 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
Many times procrastination does not have serious consequences, but in online learning it almost always

does. The biggest factor in successful online course completion is “self-regulation.” This is the ability to

independently self-organize and complete tasks without external pressure. Procrastination represents a

breakdown in self-regulation and it is one of the biggest drivers of failing to complete an online course.

We put off the course work, it builds up, we fall further behind, it becomes too hard or unpleasant to catch

up, and we fall further behind. The result of procrastination can be seen in the “product”—failing to

complete a course—and “process”—feelings of anxiety, anger, self-doubt, shame—of online course

participation.

A lot of findings from researchers on procrastination have been provide information about the factors

contributing to the procrastination during online learning. However, there is an absence of a study that

talks about the factors, to some students from senior high school department of Southland College.

Therefore, this study will conducted to determine and evaluate the factors contributing to the

procrastination during online learning among grade 12- STEM students of Southland College.

Statement of the problem

The study aims to know the factors contributing to the procrastination during online learning among
grade 12- STEM students of Southland college.

Specifically, it sought to answer the following questions.

1. What are the factors that contributes to the procrastination of the participants during online
modality?

2. How can these factors affect their academic performances during the online modality?

3. Is there a significant difference between the number of girls and boys who are experiencing

difficulty in controlling procrastination during online modality?

 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
Scope and Delimitation

This study will focus only on knowing the factors contributing to the procrastination during online

learning. The scope of this study is for the Grade 12 - STEM students of senior high school in southland

college. The study does not cover any strands or facilities that are not of use to grade 12 - STEM students.

Significance of the study

​At the end of the study, it is expected that the following groups of people would benefit the study:

Teachers. It will beneficial to them in order to have different strategies in helping their students to do

their task as early as possible and have proper time management to studying their lessons.

Parents. ​Parents can help their children by inspiring them to manage their time properly on doing their

task, and in to studying their lessons.

Students. ​It will help them to practice proper time management, in order for them to avoid

procrastination during online learning.

Future researchers. ​The result of this study can serve as the baseline data for developing future studies

as to be conducted and as a draft that is useful for conducting the same study.

Definition of terms

​STEM STUDENTS - ​Conceptually, This are people who are enrolled in STEM ( Science,

Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) strand that is an approach to learning and development that
 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
integrates the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Through STEM, students

develop key skills including: problem solving. creativity. (Google.com)

SC- ​Conceptually, (Southland College) is an educational institution in Kabankalan City, Negros

Occidental, Philippines established in 2009.

Operationally, A private educational institution that offers pre-school, grade school, junior high school,

senior high school ( includes ABM, HUMSS, STEM), and undergraduate level programs.

Procrastination ​- is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline.

(www. verywellmind.com)

Online learning ​- education that takes place over the Internet. It is often referred to as “e-

learning” among other terms. (www.wlac.edu)

Traits ​- a distinguishing quality or characteristic, typically one belonging to a person. (Oxford dictionary)
 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
Theoretical Framework

Procrastination is defined as one's voluntarily delay of an action. Procrastination is common among

learners and those who are employed, whereas they were tasked to do a bunch of work. Procrastination

can be more understood using these theories.

Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT)

Steel and König's (2006) Temporal motivation theory is recognized as one of the more comprehensive

and promising theory to understand procrastination more further. This theory tried to elucidate selection

processes of someone’s deciding or behavior. TMT suggests that any individual always prioritize

activities which promise highest utility, a minimum of within the perspective of that person for that

certain time. In other words, people tend to procrastinate once they think the utility of doing the task is

low.

According to Steel and König (2006), the theory of motivation consists of various attempts to clarify

procrastination stemming from research in economy, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience. However,

although each theory adds its own perspective, these theoretical viewpoints haven't been integrated. Steel

and König (2006) therefore proposed a general model of motivation that comes with a range of aspects

believed to affect decision-making processes: temporal motivational theory (TMT).

Temporal motivation theory is a meta-theory of motivation that integrates expectancy theory and

hyperbolic discounting (from behavioral decision theory) with need theory and prospect theory

(Hodgkinson and Healey, 2008).

 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
Example that addresses the TMT:

Consider a student who is given one month to review for a exam. Throughout the month, the scholar has

two options: studying or socializing. the scholar enjoys socializing but must achieve an honest grade. At

the start of the student’s study period (where there's a protracted delay before the deadline), the reward of

studying isn't immediate (and therefore has low value); therefore, the motivation to check is not up to the

motivation to socialize. However, because the study period diminishes from several weeks to many days,

the motivation to check will surpass the motivation to socialize.

Cognitive Approach

Ellis and Knausin 1977 (cited in Ferrari, Johnson, and McCown, 1995) called procrastination as an

emotional disorder that was rooted in irrational thinking. There are three things that was proposed as

causes of procrastination, irrational beliefs, vulnerable self-esteem, and the inability to take decisions

(Ferrari, Johnson, and McCown, 1995). Irrational beliefs were likely to cause delay in starting, doing, and

completing other tasks. For procrastinators, delaying a task would give a good reason, because they can

attribute their failure on lack of time, or their idleness, not as a disability. Burka and Yuen in 1983

emphasize the importance of pro-

crastination as a strategy to protect a vulnerable self-esteem. Janis and Mann in 1977 (cited in

Ferrari, Johnson, and McCown, 1995) proposed a theory of conflict in decision-making related to the role

of an inability to take decisions.

Although relatively new, the theory of cognitive approach is much more popular to explain behavior and

psychological concepts, including procrastination.

 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education

Conceptual Framework

Input: Process: Output:

Conduct a study Researchers will Acquiring the factors

about the factors distribute survey contributing to the
contributing to the procrastination during
procrastination during questionnaires to the online learning among
online learning respondents using senior high school grade 12
among senior high random sampling STEM students of
school grade 12 method. Southland College.
STEM students of
Southland College.

Figure 1.

The researchers will be conducting a study about the factors contributing to the procrastination during

online learning among senior high school grade 12 STEM students of Southland College. The researchers

will be collecting the needed information for the study by distributing questionnaires to the respondents

through the random sampling method. The data collected can be used to determine the factors

contributing to the procrastination during online learning among senior high school grade 12 STEM

students of Southland College.

Review of related literature

Steel (2007) conducted a meta-analysis of procrastination’s possible causes and effects, by looking at 216

separate works about procrastination (7 book chapters, 7 conference proceedings, 3 unpublished papers, 5
 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
electronic sources, 141 journal articles, and 53 theses) for a total of 691 correlations across student,

general, and adolescent/child populations. The Hunter and Schmidt psychometric meta-analytic procedure

was used to analyze the data. Steel concluded that procrastination is correlated with low conscientiousness

and self-regulatory failure. This indicates that procrastination largely accounts for the relationship of

conscientiousness to performance, and that procrastination is strongly associated with distractibility, poor

organization, low achievement motivation, and an intention-action gap. Additionally, agreeableness and

sensation seeking traits generated low correlations with procrastination. One possible way to decrease

procrastination for tasks is to increase expectancy of success, or self-efficacy by verbal persuasion,

emotional arousal, and modeling. Steel (2007) also concluded that task aversiveness, or decreasing the

value of a task, increases the frequency of procrastination. Procrastinators tend to be impulsive,

distractible, and lacking in self-control. Due to procrastination’s association with distractibility and

organization, two potential methods of reducing distractions include stimulus control and automaticity.

Stimulus control may help prevent distractibility by helping people surround themselves with cues that

confirm their goals and banish signs that remind them of temptation.

Procrastination does not simply result from a deficit in time management or ineffective study habits; it

involves a complicated interaction among behavioral, affective, and cognitive elements (Rothblum, 1994

as cited in Rakes & Dunn, 2010)). One of the most commonly encountered components among them is

self-regulation. From a conceptual viewpoint, procrastination and self-regulation are closely related

constructs (Tuckman, 2005). The inclination to procrastinate is very frequently attributed to an

insufficiency in self-regulation processes (Michinov et al.,

2011; Yamada et al, 2016). Elsworth (2009) reports that conceptualizations of procrastination resulting

from self-regulation failure have been substantially supported by empirical research. For example, in his

comparative study with high, moderate, and low procrastinators; Tuckman (2002) found a negative
 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
correlation between self-regulation and procrastination; the more the students were self-regulated, the less

they procrastinated.Similarly, in their study, Rakes & Dunn (2010) found that when students lack intrinsic

motivation to learn and have diminished self-regulation, there is an increase in procrastination.

Schunk and Zimmerman (1998 as cited in Rakes & Dunn, 2010) suggest that self-regulated learning

strategies should be more important considering the increasing number of students’ participation in

distance learning environments where instructors do not physically teach. These environments require

more autonomous students (Rakes & Dunn, 2010) and in these environments, teachers should be aware of

the tendency of their students to procrastinate (Delaval, Michinov, Le Bohec, & Le Hénaff, 2017).

McElroy & Lubich, (2013, p. 85) states that ‘the nature of online classrooms increases the need for

students to have greater intrinsic motivation and to initiate the learning process, thereby exacerbating the

tendency to delay for many students in online classrooms’.

Regarding the procrastination and achievement, both coherent and contradictory findings are seen in

literature in DL setting. For example, the study by Michinov et al. (2011) demonstrated that learners who

are most likely to procrastinate are the ones who perform the worst in online learning environments. Yet,

in another study, while procrastination in online sections was negatively correlated with exam scores, the

same correlation was not observed in FtF sections (Elvers, Polzella, & Graetz, 2003). However, in another

study by Romano et al.. (2005), all students followed the same class syllabus and schedule, and they took

the same objective-style examinations in distance and blended learning. According to the findings of their

study, ‘students with live instructors (blended) and less transactional distance tended to procrastinate

more

than total distance students with greater transactional distance’ (Romano et al., 2005, p. 303). Their

findings contradict with the expectations based on transactional distance (see: Moore & Kearsley, 2011).
 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education

Since online students do not meet with their peers and instructors in regular classes, they are more likely

to procrastinate and squeeze more work into less time, which leads to less effective outcomes (Rakes &

Dunn, 2010). It appears as if students perceive such unstructured distance-learning environment as an

excuse to procrastinate (Klingsieck, Fries, Horz, & Hofer, 2012). There has been more research on

procrastinating and non-procrastinating students in online, blended and face-to-face environments in the

last decade (Geri, Gafni, & Winer, 2014; Klingsieck, Fries, Horz, & Hofer, 2012; Michinov et al., 2011;

Rakes & Dunn, 2010; Romano, Wallace, Helmick, Carey, & Adkins, 2005; Yamada et al., 2015; You,

2015). Some part of these studies shows that procrastinators are more disadvantaged than

non-procrastinators in DL in terms of their academic achievement.

Several studies (e.g., Bernard et al., 2014; Chigeza and Halbert, 2014; González-Gómez et al., 2016;

Israel, 2015; Northey et al., 2015; Ryan et al., 2016; Southard, Meddaug and Harris, 2015) have compared

F2F teaching to online learning and/or blended learning in order to try to define which of the formats

provides, e.g., the highest learning outcome, creates the most satisfied students or has the highest rate of

course completion. In the following, we make an introductory review of recent comparative studies of the

three formats mentioned. The main focus will be on summing up the results developed by these studies

and discussing some of the limitations said to accrue to comparative studies of teaching formats. In the

literature reviewed, it is often shown that teaching and learning are influenced by more than teaching

format alone as many other factors play significant roles. Before embarking on our comparative review of

the three different teaching and learning formats, we will begin by clarifying how each of them is

definable according to studies of the different formats. Although there has not been complete agreement

among researchers about the precise definition or meaning of the term ‘blended learning’ in particular

(Bernard et al., 2014; Chigeza and Halbert, 2014), consensus has still built up around a sense of fairly
 SOUTHLAND COLLEGE
Don Emilio Village, Kabankalan City, Negros​ ​Occidental
School of Basic Education
clear distinctions between the three formats. Definitional questions do not, however, seem to haunt the

terms ‘face-to-face learning’ and ‘online learning’ in the same way as they do ‘blended learning’ in the

articles reviewed. Their meaning appears to be more or less agreed upon.

Several studies find that strong educator presence along with quality course content are essential elements

in courses that successfully facilitate online student engagement and learning (Moore, 2014; Swan and

Shih, 2014). Establishing educator presence in online courses can be achieved in a number of ways, such

as through regular communication with students, consistent feedback and critical discourse modeled by

the educator (Gray and DiLoreto, 2016). Online students need to feel connected to the educator, to other

students in the course and to the course content (Southard, Meddaugh and France-Harris, 2015;

Martín-Rodríguez, Fernández-Molina, Montero-Alonso and González-Gómez, 2015), which can be

achieved in a supportive learning environment in which educators strategically combine audio, video,

synchronous and asynchronous discussions, practical activities and other online tools to engage students

(Gray and DiLoreto, 2016). Southard, Meddaugh and France-Harris (2015) found the use of high-impact

videos featuring the educator and/or the course content particularly useful in promoting a strong educator

presence and in cultivating students’ interest in the topic under study, in particular in pure online courses

where there is little or no synchronicity between the student and the educator. In the study carried out by

Southard et al. (2015), introductions to undergraduate history lessons were filmed on the location of

historical sites, and props as well as stop motion videos where static objects were brought to life and

moved as the educator narrated were successfully used to strengthen students’ feelings of connectedness

to the educator and the content (Southard, Meddaugh and France-Harris, 2015).