However, self-testing is an important strategy to improve learning Roediger and Karpicke, and has to be actively built into the learning process.
The fact that students reported using practice tests and testing themselves indicated again students' willingness to incorporate desirable difficulties into their learning. Students' learning process, as guided by their learning goal and characterized by active processing of subject matter and continuous monitoring of understanding, is further guided by a constant balance between adhering to established study habits, while maintaining a sufficient degree of flexibility to adapt to changes in the learning environment, assessment demands and time limitations.
For example, students often indicated they had fixed times or places for studying, or a fixed order in which to process the materials for studying. At the same time, students also found themselves in situations where they had to adapt to changes in their learning situation and reported several strategies to maintain this flexibility.
For example, one student indicated photocopying book sections in advance to be able to study when going home to parents during the weekends, thereby maintaining flexibility in time and location on which to study.
This flexibility was also evident in students' strategy use. As one student indicated:. But then you're just, I would almost say lazy, you just don't feel like changing it. Furthermore, several students indicated adapting their strategies according to the demands of the test.
Although some students reported using the same studying methods regardless of the way of questioning on the test, others indicated adapting their strategies depending on whether they would have to answer multiple choice questions focusing on retention and recognition or open questions studying more, with a stronger focus on understanding.
Students indicated in the second session that, when given a list of all strategies mentioned in the first session and asked to indicate which strategies they used most often, it was difficult to label these strategies properly. Then I thought, oh yes, I do this quite a lot. Focus group 1, session 2, participant B. It was especially difficult for students to indicate how they monitored their understanding, or how they distinguished between important and less important topics and how deep to process the information.
However, students used them in a way that helped them adjust to their learning situation, by using the strategies in an active way. Although there were some exceptions e. In fact, in one of the focus groups students indicated the need to incorporate desirable difficulties into their learning process, emphasizing the wish to attain long-term retention, rather than short-term storage, in order to become a competent doctor after graduation.
Students often recognized the need to invest effort in learning, as opposed to relying on low-effort surface-level strategies for example, purposefully using English rather than Dutch books, as the additional effort required prevents a shallow reading of the text. An overarching theme in this regard was a focus on creating understanding, finding the logic in the educational material and making connections between different topics and educational activities, as opposed to for example rote learning or memorizing symptoms.
One student explained:. Just because I like that, then I know that I understand and when it is written down on sheets everywhere then I think oh, why is this value high or that value low. Or, because that lab test, oh yes, that makes sense too.
Focus group 2, session 1, participant B. In summary, the participants in our study use a variety of strategies to regulate their learning and to incorporate desirable difficulties into this process.
In addition to active processing of subject matter and a continuous monitoring of understanding, participants understand the need to obtain long-term storage and understanding, rather than short-term results, in some cases prompted by the perspective of having to become a capable doctor. This paper outlines the results of a study investigating highly effective strategy users' approaches to learning. As a starting point, a survey was administered to students asking about how their study strategies and how they approach their learning.
Results from this survey indicated students' adherence to some highly effective strategies e. Afterwards, focus groups were organized in order to gain insight into how students use these learning strategies.
Specifically, as survey data can provide insight into which strategies students use and how often they use them, the qualitative approach can clarify why students use these strategies, under which circumstances, and how flexible they are regarding their use.
Based on the focus groups, a model was constructed which describes how these students prepare for different learning activities. The first element in our model, as emanating from the focus groups was the distinction between quantitatively vs.
The students who mentioned having a learning goal, expressed this in a way that suggests a sharp distinction between these two opposites: students are either quantitatively or qualitatively oriented.
However, from a motivational or self-regulatory perspective, one would expect this variable to fall along a continuum Ryan and Deci, , with students leaning more toward either side of the spectrum depending on varying contexts and conditions. For example, it is conceivable that students who have a predominantly qualitative orientation might become more quantitatively oriented in the face of insecurities or time constraints.
Conversely, generally quantitatively oriented students might adopt a more qualitative orientation when studying topics they are highly interested in.
Possibly, students who did not express a learning goal might fall somewhere along this spectrum a point we have tried to emphasize by adding the dotted line connecting the two opposites. Validating the polarized vs. The second theme concerned students maintaining a continuous balance between established habits vs. Earlier research also correlated flexibility termed adaptive control with self-regulated learning, deep processing, and a propensity to undertake effortful cognitive activities Evans et al.
In terms of implications, several follow-up questions can be asked. First, what is the optimal combination between habits and flexibility? Will this balance be different in less effective students? What are students' core habits? What should be flexible, and what should be stable? What can be taught? Interventions should focus on optimizing this balance.
Monitoring of understanding could be at the core of these interventions. When students have an accurate insight into which aspects they do and do not understand, and which strategies lead to a better understanding, it can be easier to make decisions about which strategies need to remain stable, and which should be adapted.
The third theme arising from the data, which characterized students' learning process, was students' continuous engagement in active processing of the learning material and monitoring of understanding. In addition to being aspects of effective self-regulated strategy use Zimmerman, ; Dunlosky et al.
Indeed, one of the students in the focus group even indicated the problem-based curriculum as a reason for adopting an active approach to learning. Given the fact that this study has only been carried out in a PBL context, it is difficult to disentangle these influences.
Future studies could seek to unravel these factors further. The final theme emerging from the focus groups concerned students' metacognitive knowledge. This indicates that what matters most is not which strategies students use, but rather how they use them. In other words, students adapted strategies to fit their particular learning situation. Indeed, students' adaptability in their strategy use has been identified by other authors as an important feature of effective self-regulation in students Broekkamp and Van Hout-Wolters, This sense of flexibility was also evident in other parts of the model, where students maintained a continuous balance between established study habits on the one hand, and a sense of flexibility to deal with changes on the other.
Another reason for students' use of surface-level learning strategies could be the form of assessment. Students are often assessed with multiple-choice question tests or open question tests focused solely on short-term retention of information. Several studies have found that students will adapt their strategies based on what they perceive will be expected of them on the examination Thomas and Rohwer, ; Broekkamp and Van Hout-Wolters, Indeed, students in our study indicated changing their strategies according to whether questions would be asked in a multiple choice vs.
If the goal of the curriculum is for students to strive for deep-level processing and understanding, the test demands need to be aligned with this objective Broekkamp and Van Hout-Wolters, , asking questions that will require this approach from students.
On the other hand, several students indicated an understanding of the need to obtain long-term retention and understanding, an inclination that seemed to be promoted by a desire to become a capable doctor.
This can have important implications for interventions aimed at improving self-regulation for students who are less skilled self-regulators. Specifically, if interventions would focus on aiding students in attaining a clear perspective of their goals and long-term profession, this could improve their self-regulatory behavior and intention to build in desirable difficulties into their learning.
Although we did not originally set out to investigate the link between students' learning behavior and their future time perspective, previous work has been done to establish this link, with research indicating that students' long-term time perspectives are associated with adaptive self-regulatory strategies and deep cognitive processing Bembenutty and Karabenick, ; de Bilde et al.
As these studies are mostly correlational, the direction of these effects is not entirely clear. Future research could try to establish the direction of causality by employing a longitudinal de Bilde et al. The model identified can elaborate on existing theoretical models of metacognition by explicating the criteria students use to monitor and control their learning and how they adapt their strategies to fit their learning needs.
For example, Nelson and Narens outline a theoretical framework in which students' allocation of study time is determined by their judgments about the difficulty it takes them to master certain information ease of learning; EOL , their judgments about how well they have mastered certain recallable information judgments of learning; JOL , and the degree to which they believe they have previously known currently unrecalled information feeling of knowing; FOK.
Also when it comes to the allocation of restudy , students will allocate this restudy time to information they judge as poorly learned Nelson et al.
The current study adds to this literature by shedding light on some of the criteria students may use to make these judgments. Specifically, students seem to focus on qualitative or quantitative criteria for making these judgments. Furthermore, for FOK, Nelson and Narens indicate that these judgments monitor the recallable aspects of the information a student has in memory such as whether they have used it to correctly answer a question before.
This could potentially explain the differences between the qualitative and quantitative orientations found in our study. For some students, the qualitative aspects related to the studied information may be hard to recall. For example, some of the information may never have been tested yet, making it difficult for students to derive these judgments. This may lead them to focus on more easily recallable, quantitative information instead.
Following this line of reasoning, this focus on easily recallable, quantitative aspects of learning may lead students to adopt more surface-level strategies, as these might be sufficient to satisfy the quantitative criteria. Indeed, Koriat found that extrinsic cues are less informative for students' JOLs than intrinsic cues, and these inaccurate JOLs could in turn lead to inadequate study strategies.
Although students in our study seemed to follow the same general path of self-regulation, the qualitative approach might lead to more elaborative learning strategies and incorporation of desirable difficulties. However, a focus on quantitative criteria is apparently sufficient for students to pass their exams and be successful in university a point which was already elaborated upon above. However, we do not have any information about their long-term retention. Future studies should focus on more elaborative learning outcomes and longer retention intervals, to further unravel the potentially differential effects of the different approaches to learning.
This study has several limitations. First, our focus groups were limited to second-year undergraduate medical students who were effectively self-regulating their learning. Given the PBL context in which these students are learning, this provided a fruitful basis to start from when investigating effective students' approaches to learning, but we cannot be sure about how these findings relate to other student populations.
Furthermore, our study was limited to students from the undergraduate medical program. It is possible that there are characteristics in this program, which are not easily transferable to programs focusing on other domains.
A specific example of this can be found in the long-term perspective that several students indicated as the basis for their desire to understand the subject matter, as hinted at above.
In a study program like Medicine, the end goal of becoming a doctor is quite clear. In many other undergraduate programs, this long-term perspective may be less evident. Future research could look into what constitutes effective self-regulation in other study programs and other, non-PBL oriented universities.
Furthermore, although the purpose of this study was to illustrate effective self-regulation rather than to contrast different groups of students, it would be interesting to see what picture will emerge when asking the same questions to low self-regulating students. We have tried to ensure replicability by providing rich descriptions of context, methods, and results, in an attempt to increase opportunities for judgments of transferability.
Related to the distinction between effective vs. We used students' mentors as informants for our purposeful sampling strategy. We have confidence in this strategy, as mentors are among the few key persons who have a bird's eye view of students' overall performance, for both the entire duration of the program, as well as in comparison to other students.
They also discuss students' learning strategies at least two times during the first year in an individual mentor meeting.
However, their judgments are inherently subjective, and although they were given instructions on what is meant by effective strategy users, we have no insight into their decision making when they selected these students. Although it was a conscious decision not to include grades as a measure of self-regulation as students using shallow strategies may very well obtain good test results in the short term , it could be worthwhile to think about other ways to triangulate students' strategy effectiveness.
Finally, we chose to use learning questionnaire used by Hartwig and Dunlosky as a starting point for our study, in order to build further on this work and demonstrate the added value of the focus groups in this context.
However, as this survey measures each strategy by only one item, it was not possible to compute reliability or internal consistency estimates. This problem is mitigated by the fact that we used the survey as a starting point for our focus groups, rather than conducting analyses analyzing differences between groups or as a result of some intervention. However, the research design could be strengthened by adding more items per strategy, in order to be able to make inferences about the reliability and internal consistency of students' responses.
Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing an in-depth, qualitative description of how highly self-regulated medical students in a PBL curriculum approach their learning and build in desirable difficulties in their learning process.
This model can serve as a framework for further study into the various factors that influence effective self-regulation, and as a starting point for designing interventions focused on improving strategy use in less effective students. AdB and RS were responsible for the design and data collection of the study.
All authors made a substantial contribution to the interpretation of the data for this work. This research was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research Veni grant number The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Arbesman, S. The Half-life of Facts. Google Scholar. Bembenutty, H. Inherent association between academic delay of gratification, future time perspective, and self-regulated learning.
Bernacki, M. The effects of achievement goals and self-regulated learning behaviors on reading comprehension in technology-enhanced learning environments.
Bjork, R. Which is not good at all, and we barely have outside of school to get our sports or exercise in because every student at school is busy with homework. In conclusion, the school lunches should not be changed because a lot of kids would not eat the new lunches, kids not buying the new lunches means the school would loose money for our supplies, and if you want us to be healithier the easiest thing to do is make more time for.
Teachers are forced to share classrooms and supplies with teachers on other tracks in many year round schools, making it difficult to use their room to its full potential for learning Zubrzycki. Any teachers and staff that want to continue to further their own education by attending college over summers will have to find another way to fit it in their schedule, or just not do it at all Vandewater. If teachers Cannot further themselves educationally in college, their students will be at a disadvantage because their teacher simply would have less information to teach them Vandewater.
They also might try to fit in college after school Vandewater. This could result in the educator falling behind on grading and could. Document 7 Later a man wrote about the kids that were working for a long time everyday saying that the kids should not put up with these long hours and ages six to thirteen had to go to school to learn math and writing.
This made the children very happy. However, it later change the ages six to eighteen had to go to school and learn math and reading. Less kids were dying and it had Economic growth. There were no kids dying of lung disease at a young age and there were less pollution in the air for them to breathe because they were basically in school the whole time. Stats say that an average student is having Where does that leave room for family, friends, sports, jobs, church, and special events?
Students need to have those moments to make memories with friends and families. Teachers are taking that privilege away from students to have that bond. Also, when students get off of school for eight hours, they need that time to shut down and relax.
Therefore I believe that the syllabus and it 's great way of showing what it 's worth can improve on many students on following. Also, new evidence shows that children with learning challenges require a break from academic learning, as well as other students in the classroom. When students are actively involved, they have a greater focus on other tasks throughout the. Reading: Determining the main idea and supporting details.
Math: Using tools like a fraction number line. Using strategy instruction in your classroom requires some planning. Identify and prioritize. Think about an area where your students get tripped up in your content curriculum.
Then, pick a strategy that will help students learn that material. For example, if your students have a hard time with memorizing, try the strategy of mnemonics. Connect the strategy to a class activity or assignment. Teaching a strategy in the context of a real activity or assignment is essential. It helps students understand the value of the strategy and gives them a clear incentive to master it.
Explicitly and sequentially model the strategy. Introduce the strategy to students and briefly describe its specific steps. Then, model each step using explicit instruction. This reduces the likelihood of overwhelming students. Universal Design for Learning UDL note: Model the strategy using multiple forms of representation, like creating a visual to go along with your think-aloud. Make sure to also invite students to express their understanding of the strategy in varied ways, like doing a call-and-response chant, creating a song, or drawing their own visual.
Help students internalize the strategy through practice. The more practice students get with the strategy, the more likely they will internalize it. Start with easier examples for practice and then gradually introduce more difficult examples. Make sure students have a chance to practice the same strategy in different scenarios. For instance, you might extend your mnemonics strategy to science and ask students to come up with their own sentence to memorize the order of the planets.
As they practice, provide quick feedback that is specific, positive, and corrective to help students become fluent with the strategy. You can also ask students to reflect on and assess their use of the strategy.
Support the strategy. Plan to reteach, remodel, and remind students about the steps involved in the strategy. Continue to give corrective feedback. At this point, you might also talk about ways to use the strategy in other subject areas or in general life tasks.
Actively encourage students to use the strategies for various activities and assignments. Watch this video of a student using a self-monitoring strategy he learned. Think about these guiding questions as you watch:. Create a homework editing checklist for their child to reference. These kinds of conversations help children think about their thinking.
Help their child set up organizational routines, like using a backpack checklist to make sure they have everything they need for school.
Students need to manage their learning more than ever during distance learning. Strategy instruction can help students navigate this new learning environment.
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