Effect of instruction and experience on students’ learning strategies

When students are left to choose their own approaches to studying, they frequently engage in ineffective learning strategies, such as rereading textbooks or cramming. Given this natural tendency amongst students, there has been significant interest in how to increase the use of more effective methods of studying. Efforts to-date have typically entailed either explicit instruction (e.g., teaching students which study habits are more/less effective) or direct experience (e.g., having students attempt to utilize an effective technique), yielding somewhat mixed results. The aim of the present study was to examine whether a combination of explicit instruction and direct experience with effective learning strategies positively impacts how students study. After an in-classroom intervention, 316 participants (177 women, M age = 19.03) were asked to indicate how frequently they used various studying strategies and how effective they perceived them to be. Participants demonstrated both a change in knowledge regarding the (low) utility of more ineffective strategies and indicated that they were using those strategies less frequently. However, there was not a global change in their perceptions/use of more effective strategies. Instead, there were increases only for a subset of the more effective strategies. These results support metacognitive theories of desirable difficulties, wherein individuals prefer less effortful strategies and less effortful shifts in behavior, as well as suggest possible directions for furthering effective learning practices amongst students.