forrja: The importance of studying in our daily life in this era

The importance of studying in our daily life in this era

Decades ago, McKeachie, Pintrich 

Lin (1985) conducted a study to evaluate a semester-long introductory cognitive psychology course that taught both concepts of cognitive psychology and their application to learning strategies with intact groups of students. 

Their study found that the learning strategies course was substantially successful in affecting students' self-reported study habits and modestly successful in affecting students’ achievement in the two semesters following the study. 

1- Normally, providing comprehensive training on 

SRL strategies to students in various traditional classroom settings led to improved task performance (Hofer & Yu, 2003; Weinstein, Husman, & Dierking, 2000) and metacognitive understandings (Ching, 2002), more positive motivation (Ching, 2002; Weinstein et al., 2000), more strategy use ( Hofer & Yu, 2003), and even a better retention rate (Weinstein et al., 2000). 

New learning environments, such as web-based or -enhanced instruction, require more proactive learning to construct knowledge and acquire skills. As Schunk & Zimmerman (1998) mentioned that “an area that lends itself well to self-regulation is distance learning, where instruction originates at one site and is transmitted to students at distant sites… 

2- Self-regulation seems critical due to the high 

Degree of student independence deriving from the instructor’s physical absence” (p. 231-232). Bandura’s (2000) social cognitive theory has been successfully used with Internet-delivered interactive guidance for self-management of health issues, such as weight-control (Taylor, Winzelberg, and Celio, 2001) and Dietary changes (Clark, Ghandour, Miller, Taylor, Bandura, & Debusk, 1997). 

Azevedo and Cromley (2004) conducted a study to provide students with a 30-minutes training on SRL in order to facilitate their learning about the circulatory system with hypermedia. They found that SRL training did foster more sophisticated conceptual understanding and use of learning strategies. According to the 2009 

3- Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, 

72 percent of faculty used course management systems (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2010). More universities or colleges are using web-enhanced instruction, and instructors are spending less time on face-to-face contact if they used emails to communicate with students or websites to post course-related information (Warburton, Chen, & Bradburn, 2002) 

4- Self-regulation has been identified as one of the major 

Determinants to completion in community college education; however, fewer studies have empirically examined the role of SRL strategy training in community college student success. Considering the large percent of college faculty using .

web-based or -enhanced instruction (Warburton, et al., 2002), the relationship between academic self-regulation and educational outcomes in the e-Learning environments, especially at community colleges, has not been extensively examined for the benefit of learners as well as sponsors for college education

 5-Method

The purpose of this study was to examine, in a community college web-enhanced College Success course, whether a web-based SRL strategy training will positively influence: (1) achievement measured with individual assignment scores and final grade for the course, (2) learner motivation in terms of task value, self-efficacy, goal orientation and self-satisfaction, and (3) learners’ self-reported use of strategies. This study was conducted in a fall semester

 6- Participants

The participants in this study were 21 (8 treatment vs. 13 control) undergraduate students enrolled in 2 sections of the course. The participants were freshmen (N=18) and sophomores (N=3), whose ages ranged from 17 to 24 (M= 18.9). 

Fifteen (71%) of the participants were female and 6 (29%) were male. They were made up of 7 (33%) AfricanAmericans, 13 (62%) Caucasians, and 1 (5%) Hispanic. Five (62.5%) participants in the treatment and seven (53.8%) in the control condition were required to take this College Success course because of deficiency on College Placement Test. 

Only students who completed all the intervention procedures constituted the participants in this study, and comparison between the pre- and post-intervention results were made on exactly the same set of individuals.

 7- Instructional context 

The course, College Success, was designed to develop and reinforce skills necessary for college and career success. It covers topics such as interpersonal relationships, employability skills, financial management, choosing a college major and other career planning topics. 

The course was designated as web-enhanced, which means materials, such as syllabus and course schedule, were posted to the course’s Blackboard website and the instructor and students could use the website for instructional purposes. 

 8- Intervention materials 

The SRL strategy training included two parts: an online tutorial on SRL Strategies and web-based interactive strategy application practices using online questionnaires. The web-based tutorial focused on what SRL strategies are, more specifically, the definitions of metacognitive, motivational and cognitive strategies, and examples of the strategies and when and how to use them. 

Participants were required to complete the tutorial at least once. In addition to knowledge about SRL strategies, the tutorial also provided participants with practice on the knowledge in each chapter. Some multiple choice or case-study exercises were used for participants to become familiar with SRL (See Figure 1 for a tutorial screen capture). 

After they practiced the knowledge about SRL, the learners were encouraged to apply the strategies to their actual studying of the course through completing a series of interactive online questionnaires.  

9- Procedure

This study consisted of 4 stages, which lasted for 14 weeks. In the 2nd week of the semester, an email with the informed consent was sent to students to solicit participation. Interested students began by completing the first set of online questionnaires, within which they provided demographic information, such as year in school, age, gender,

 GPA, and completed an assessment on their initial motivation indicators and use of SRL strategies. During this stage, the researcher assigned the 2 intact sections of the course to the treatment and control conditions. One week after the beginning of the 1st stage, students received another email to start their participation in Stage II. 

 10- Within this stage, treatment participants went through 

Chapters 1 to 5 of the online SRL tutorial consistent with their instructional content for the course, and they completed all the exercises and a test within the tutorial. Participants in the control condition did not receive any of these treatments. 

This stage lasted for 4 weeks. After the 2nd stage, treatment participants received another email to start their participation in Stage III, within which they first completed an online study plan, and then a self-evaluation for a learning period of 4 weeks. Study plan questionnaires appeared at the beginning of each 4-week period for learners to set goals and select strategies for completing tasks. 

- Conclusion

Self-evaluations appeared at the end of each 4-week period for learners to reflect on their progress and effectiveness of strategies. Control participants did not receive any of these treatments. This stage lasted for 8 weeks (2 learning periods). After Stage III, participants in both conditions received another email with a link to the final questionnaires. 

In this stage, which lasted for 1 week, learners’ motivation indicators and reported use of strategies were measured again. Open-ended questions were also used to collect qualitative data about participants’ use of learning strategies.