A closer look at students' knowledge of effective learning strategies, where they learn about them, and why they do not use them.

Abstract

The current survey measured students' knowledge, use, and perceived effectiveness of different learning strategies. Whereas a common assumption from previous research is that students forego using effective strategies because they lack awareness of them, the current results demonstrate that students are quite aware of certain strategies such as retrieval practice, spacing, and explaining, but are less aware of other strategies like pretesting and interleaving, and seem to overrate the effectiveness of highlighting and rereading notes. Even when students were aware of effective learning strategies, their primary reasons for not using them were the cognitive costs associated with them (time, effort, anxiety, and increased planning and preparation). Students reported teachers, friends, and self-discovery as the most common sources of learning about both effective and ineffective strategies, and published research as the least common source. We discuss the implications of these results for designing interventions aimed at improving students' self-regulated learning decisions.