Teaching “Study Skills”: The Effectiveness of the Strategies-For-

An educational psychology-based “study skills” program called Strategies-for-Achievement was developed to teach learning and motivation strategies to college students. It involved teaching students four major achievement strategies: take reasonable risk, take responsibility for outcomes, search the environment (for information), and use feedback. Each strategy was divided into two substrategies, and used to teach students to overcome procrastination, build self-confidence and responsibility, manage their lives, learn from lecture and text, prepare for exams, and write papers. The training was provided as a course taught using a “hybrid” technology-based instructional model called Active Discovery And Participation thru Technology (ADAPT). Students who took the training course earned significantly higher grade point averages in comparison to a matched group, both the term they took the course (with and without the course grade included) and the term after taking the course, and were more likely to return for their next year of college. Introduction Current U.S. retention figures have not improved over time, in spite of large amounts of money expended by colleges and universities on programs and services to retain students. According to recent data, the dropout rate for first-year college students hit a new high. The national freshman-to-sophomore dropout rate had risen to 26.9%; it was 24.5% in 1983. In addition, only 50% of those who enrolled in college earned bachelors degrees and one-third did not complete the first two years (U.S. Department of Education, 1999). The problem is particularly acute among African-American students among whom only about 15% earn baccalaureate degrees. A very high percentage of students enter college inadequately prepared to face the academic challenge. McCabe (2000) reports that more than one million students nationwide (42% of first-time college-goers) enroll in remedial courses annually. Clearly, lack of preparation is a major factor in college failure. There is evidence that attrition follows poor grades. Many students tend not to withdraw from courses or drop out of college their when grades are acceptably high. In 1990, the National Center for Student Retention published a study that suggests a strong correlation between grade point averages and persistence in college. Among dropouts, 42% had earned GPAs below 2.0 while only 16% of persisters had performed equally poorly (Schreiner, 1990). However, this is not to discount the fact that a considerable number of students leave college for other than purely academic reasons (Tinto, 1993). A potential solution to the freshman retention problem may lie in the teaching of study skills. What is the likelihood that teaching study skills will enhance college performance? Regarding near transfer, that is, improvement of performances that are closely related to the training tasks (e.g., are actually part of the training itself) the likelihood is high. Huang (1992), for example, found the effects of teaching students to use self-questioning strategies on achievement of a specific set of materials to be highly successful. Hattie, Biggs, and Purdie (1996) conducted a meta-analysis and report similar success in near transfer across a wide range of such studies, but considerably less success in producing far transfer, that is, improvement in performances distantly related to the training tasks (e.g., performance in other situations than the training itself, or at other times). The current study was undertaken to evaluate a new, psychology-based approach for teaching study skills, called Strategies-for-Achievement. Hadwin & Winne (1996) advocate that “institutions should provide means for students to develop adaptable strategies with which to pursue knowledge and solve problems during and after postsecondary experiences” (p. 693) which will contribute to both their abilities and motivation. The impact of being taught this approach was examined in terms of both near and far transfer, as reflected in grade point averages during the term in which the training was received, and in the following term, as well as the Teaching “Study Skills”: The Effectiveness of the Strategies-Forhttp://dennislearningcenter.osu.edu/references/stACH paper-APA'031.htm 1 of 7 8/29/2014 4:21 PM subsequent retention of previously at-risk students. From a psychological perspective, “study skills” refers to the learning and motivation strategies considered essential to being successful in college. Their importance is underscored by the fact that academic tasks at the college level tend to demand far more higher-level thinking and independent learning than those encountered in secondary school (Carson, Chase, Gibson, and Hargove, 1992). A relevant general approach to teaching learning strategies, labeled “learning-to-learn” has its basis in informational and generative models of learning, and its emphasis on self-regulated and strategic learning (Simpson, Hynd, Nist, and Burrell, 1997). Building on this approach, and the work of Pintrich, McKeachie, and Lin (1987), Weinstein and Underwood (1985), and Dansereau et al. (1979), the work described here features a more integrated and focused approach, using a set of specific strategies and substrategies to cover a variety of learning and motivational tasks. Strategies-for-Achievement and Related Literature. This psychological approach for improving students’ achievement in college focuses on teaching them learning and motivational strategies, and hence carries a more explicit label then “study skills.” It evolved from the achievement motivation model espoused by David McClelland (1965), whose work went on to suggest that the use of strategies such as these increases learners’ motivation and subsequent achievement (McClelland, 1979). The original model has been expanded and updated in its application to reflect Garcia and Pintrich’s (1994) framework for self-regulation at the college level that includes both a motivational and cognitive component, and two sources of influence: knowledge and beliefs, and strategies. The four basic strategies for achievement used in the current approach and the two substrategies that accompany each strategy are shown in Figure 1. (The substrategies may be referred to by others as tactics; e.g., Hadwin & Winne, 1996.) The motivational component. The Strategies-for-Achievement approach deals with explicit strategies that students can be taught to use for motivating themselves. The take reasonable risk strategy represents a contrast, therefore, to the focus on need for achievement or goal orientation as a basis for motivation, As this strategy evolved, it became seen as an adaptive cyclical process of self-evaluation and reevaluation relative to task difficulty to enable an individual to ascertain and pursue an optimal level of challenge required to achieve mastery (Harter, 1978; Dweck, 1986). The preference for moderately challenging tasks in the academic environment serves the function of empowering individuals toward greater academic achievement by providing them with the diagnostic information necessary for progressively improved performance. This is consistent with Bandura’s (1977) concepts of (a) reciprocal determinism, the mutually interactive relationship between thoughts, behaviors, and environmental consequences, and (b) self-efficacy, ways people can be the agents of their own self-regulation and success, based on the beliefs they have in their own capability. Clearly, goal setting, a prominent self-regulation strategy (Zimmerman, 1998, 2000), and breaking tasks down into sub-tasks, serve as mechanisms for taking reasonable risk. For example, in the module on procrastination, students are taught to: (a) distinguish between rationalizations for procrastination (e.g., “I work better under pressure”) and real reasons (e.g., self-doubt); (b) recognize the thoughts (e.g., “math confuses me”), feelings (e.g., fear) and behaviors (e.g., skipping class) that are provoked by potentially difficult situations (e.g., an impending math midterm); (c) overcome the tendency to procrastinate by using the four major strategies for achievement previously described; and (d) effectively manage their time by creating a “to-do checklist,” a self-regulatory procedure that facilitates planning, and incorporates many of the substrategies. In the module on building self-confidence, the four techniques taught to students that are based on Bandura’s (1977, 1986, 1997) four sources of self-efficacy information are: (a) regulating your emotional level, (b) seeking affirmation, (c) picking the right models, and (d) “just doing it”. In teaching students to use the take responsibility strategy, causal explanations and their properties, such as those described in attribution theory (Weiner, 1986, 1995), are used to show students the importance of focusing on effort as the explanation for their outcomes. Perceptions of the intentionality of others’ actions, based on causal explanations, also factor importantly on taking responsibility, and have been shown to be modifiable by training (Graham, 1997). The cognitive component. In this domain, the search the environment strategy plays a prominent role. For example, Pressley and Wooloshyn (1995) and Mayer (2002) have described techniques for teaching students to use cognitive strategies to acquire and process information, and Mayer (1989) has shown the value of conceptual models for visualizing ways of solving problems. Robinson (1961), and Mayer (1984) relied extensively on the question-asking approach in teaching students to extract meaning from text, and Rosenshine, Meister, and Chapman (1996) reported a meta-analysis showing that teaching students to generate questions resulted in gains in comprehension. Other work has also focused on enhancing students’ capability to learn from text by using outlining (e.g., Tuckman, 1993). Zimmerman (2000) refers to “seeking information,” but search the environment is taken to have a somewhat broader meaning, one that focuses on question asking as a generic form of information processing. For example, students are taught to view information that is either heard in lectures or read in text as “answers” to implicit questions. By making those questions explicit through the construction of a “Q & A Outline,” students learn both to schematize the information and organize it into visual forms such as diagrams and charts. The outlines and diagrams then help students organize and store their thoughts in long-term memory in preparing for and taking tests, and in writing papers. Sahari, Tuckman, & Fletcher (1996) found that students who were trained to write outlines designed to help them schematize and organize text material demonstrated significantly greater improvement on reading comprehension tests than students not similarly trained. Based on a review of training studies, Hadwin & Winne (1996) “cautiously recommend” self-questioning as an approach that improves student achievement. The use feedback strategy has traditionally focused on external or outcome feedback (Butler and Winne, 1995) which has been found, in general, to result in performance improvement (Kulhavy, 1977; Kulik and Kulik, 1988). More recent emphasis has been on internal feedback, consisting of learner judgment decisions regarding task success relative to multifaceted goals, and productivity of learning strategies relative to expected progress (Butler and Winne, 1995). The use feedback strategy subsumes the self-regulating areas of self-monitoring, keeping records, self-evaluation, and self-consequences (Zimmerman, 1998, 2000). Carver and Scheier (1990) and Butler & Winne (1995) see monitoring or the acquisition and use of feedback as the hub of self-regulated cognitive engagement, while Hadwin & Winne (1996) cite monitoring as an approach that “modestly” enhances student achievement.