Study smart - impact of a learning strategy training on students' study behavior and academic performance.

Recent research shows the importance to teach students the self-regulated use of effective learning strategies at university. However, the effects of such training programs on students' metacognitive knowledge, use of learning strategies, and academic performance in the longer term are unknown. In the present study, all first-year pharmacology students from one university attended a learning strategy training program, i.e., the 'Study Smart program', in their first weeks. The 20% (n = 25) lowest scoring students on the first midterm received further support regarding their learning strategies. Results showed that all students gained accurate metacognitive knowledge about (in)effective learning strategies in the short- and long-term and reported to use less highlighting, less rereading, but more interleaving, elaboration, and distributed practice after the training program. Academic performance was compared to the prior cohort, which had not received the Study Smart program. While in the previous cohort, students in the top, middle, and bottom rank of midterm 1 stayed in these ranks and still differed significantly in the final exam, students in the Study Smart cohort that received the training program improved throughout the year and differences between ranks were significantly reduced. A learning strategy training program including a remediation track for lower performing students can thus support students to study more effectively and enhance equal chances for all students at university.

Preaching Through the Choir. What Interprofessional Education Can Learn From Choir Singing.

Collaboration between healthcare professionals from different backgrounds is a true art to be mastered. During interprofessional education (IPE), learners from different professions learn with, from and about each other. Landscape of Practice (LoP) theory can offer insight into social learning in IPE, but its application is rather complex. We argue that choir singing offers a helpful metaphor to understand different concepts in LoP (brokers, engagement, imagination and alignment) and how they are manifested in IPE. Based on similarities between choir singing and IPE, we present four lessons: 1) The teacher sets the tone: a lesson for brokers; 2) You can only learn so much alone: a lesson for engagement; 3) Listening is not as easy as it sounds: a lesson for imagination and 4) A song is more than the sum of its parts: a lesson for alignment. Moreover, we reflect on differences between choir singing and IPE, and insights from these differences.

Optimizing self-organized study orders: combining refutations and metacognitive prompts improves the use of interleaved practice.

During category learning, students struggle to create an optimal study order: They often study one category at a time (i.e., blocked practice) instead of alternating between different categories (i.e., interleaved practice). Several interventions to improve self-study of categorical learning have been proposed, but these interventions have only been tested in learning tasks where students did not create the study order themselves. Instead, they decided which type of study order to follow. This pre-registered experiment examined whether an intervention that combines refutations and metacognitive prompts can enhance students' engagement in interleaved practice, specifically when they organize the learning materials themselves. Ninety-one undergraduate students were randomized into the intervention and control condition and learned visual categories. Prior to the intervention, students used more blocked practice. After the intervention, the use of interleaved practice significantly increased in both immediate and delayed-transfer tasks. More interleaved practice was associated with better classification performance. Our findings indicate that refutations and metacognitive prompts form a strong intervention that corrects students' erroneous beliefs and increases their engagement in interleaved practice.

Understanding effort regulation: Comparing 'Pomodoro' breaks and self-regulated breaks.

BACKGROUND: During self-study, students need to monitor and regulate mental effort to replete working memory resources and optimize learning results. Taking breaks during self-study could be an effective effort regulation strategy. However, little is known about how breaktaking relates to self-regulated learning. AIMS: We investigated the effects of taking systematic or self-regulated breaks on mental effort, task experiences and task completion in real-life study sessions for 1 day. SAMPLE: Eighty-seven bachelor's and master's students from a Dutch University. METHODS: Students participated in an online intervention during their self-study. In the self-regulated-break condition (n = 35), students self-decided when to take a break; in the systematic break conditions, students took either a 6-min break after every 24-min study block (systematic-long or 'Pomodoro technique', n = 25) or a 3-min break after every 12-min study block (systematic-short, n = 27). RESULTS: Students had longer study sessions and breaks when self-regulating. This was associated with higher levels of fatigue and distractedness, and lower levels of concentration and motivation compared to those in the systematic conditions. We found no difference between groups in invested mental effort or task completion. CONCLUSIONS: Taking pre-determined, systematic breaks during a study session had mood benefits and appeared to have efficiency benefits (i.e., similar task completion in shorter time) over taking self-regulated breaks. Measuring how mental effort dynamically fluctuates over time and how effort spent on the learning task differs from effort spent on regulating break-taking requires further research.

Changes and Adaptations: How University Students Self-Regulate Their Online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

During the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, universities had to shift from face-to-face to emergency remote education. Students were forced to study online, with limited access to facilities and less contact with peers and teachers, while at the same time being exposed to more autonomy. This study examined how students adapted to emergency remote learning, specifically focusing on students' resource-management strategies using an individual differences approach. One thousand eight hundred university students completed a questionnaire on their resource-management strategies and indicators of (un)successful adaptation to emergency remote learning. On average, students reported being less able to regulate their attention, effort, and time and less motivated compared to the situation before the crisis started; they also reported investing more time and effort in their self-study. Using a k-means cluster analysis, we identified four adaptation profiles and labeled them according to the reported changes in their resource-management strategies: the overwhelmed, the surrenderers, the maintainers, and the adapters. Both the overwhelmed and surrenderers appeared to be less able to regulate their effort, attention, and time and reported to be less motivated to study than before the crisis. In contrast, the adapters appreciated the increased level of autonomy and were better able to self-regulate their learning. The resource-management strategies of the maintainers remained relatively stable. Students' responses to open-answer questions on their educational experience, coded using a thematic analysis, were consistent with the quantitative profiles. Implications about how to support students in adapting to online learning are discussed.