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Abstract Undergraduate STEM lecture courses enroll hundreds who must master declarative, conceptual, and applied learning objectives. To support them, instructors have turned to active learning designs that require students to engage inself-regulated learning(SRL). Undergraduates struggle with SRL, and universities provide courses, workshops, and digital training to scaffold SRL skill development and enactment. We examined two theory-aligned designs of digital skill trainings that scaffold SRL and how students’ demonstration of metacognitive knowledge of learning skills predicted exam performance in biology courses where training took place. In Study 1, students’ (n = 49) responses to training activities were scored for quality and summed by training topic and level of understanding. Behavioral and environmental regulation knowledge predicted midterm and final exam grades; knowledge of SRL processes did not. Declarative and conceptual levels of skill-mastery predicted exam performance; application-level knowledge did not. When modeled by topic at each level of understanding, declarative knowledge of behavioral and environmental regulation and conceptual knowledge of cognitive strategies predicted final exam performance. In Study 2 (n = 62), knowledge demonstrated during a redesigned video-based multimedia version of behavioral and environmental regulation again predicted biology exam performance. Across studies, performance on training activities designed in alignment with skill-training models predicted course performances and predictions were sustained in a redesign prioritizing learning efficiency. Training learners’ SRL skills –and specifically cognitive strategies and environmental regulation– benefited their later biology course performances across studies, which demonstrate the value of providing brief, digital activities to develop learning skills. Ongoing refinement to materials designed to develop metacognitive processing and learners’ ability to apply skills in new contexts can increase benefits.
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A Systematic Implementation of Four Versions of a Course-Based Intervention to Reduce Attrition Among Civil Engineering Students: Overall Study Design and Implementation of First Version
This works seeks to develop and assess a retention intervention that addresses the key drivers of attrition and learns from existing interventions for engineering students. The resulting intervention addresses key competencies for the major and profession, and also addresses a gap in current approaches: the need to synergistically support students’ social-cognitive disposition with respect to attrition by training them in social-cognitive skills and strategies adapted from the theories of Sense of Belonging (SOB) and Self-Regulation of Learning (SRL). Because the degree of skills and strategies around SRL and SOB needed to make the largest impact to retention is unknown, four versions of the intervention are proposed: A base intervention which provokes students to think about their learning and belonging, an intervention augmented with specific training in effective SRL, an intervention augmented with specific training in SOB; and an intervention augmented with training in both effective SRL and SOB. An overarching research design plans the offering and assessment of each version of the intervention, including a numerical longitudinal analysis of retention at the end of the study, with the ultimate goal of identifying which version of the intervention has the largest positive impact to retention and other key metrics. After a general description of the intervention as a while, the focus was reoriented to the base version of the intervention. The detailed design was presented along with the assessment methods for short-term effectiveness and the preliminary results for its first offering in Fall 2022. Overall, students found the topics covered in the intervention to be helpful and used many of the skills and strategies from the intervention in other major courses. The impact of the intervention on performance in major courses taken alongside the intervention and their persistence rate in the major for another semester improved significantly for one major course but were inconclusive for a second major course. Recommendations were made to refine the materials provided to students and several of the activities in the base intervention; and the formative assessment tool.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2235705
- PAR ID:
- 10542626
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- STEM education retention sense of belonging self-regulation of learning
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Baltimore , Maryland
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--42521
