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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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Promoting the Self-Regulated Use of Retrieval Practice and Elaboration in an Undergraduate Biology Course
Retrieval practice (i.e., recalling information from memory) and elaboration (i.e., generating meaningful explanations and examples) promote learning, but students underutilize these strategies when studying. We developed a strategy-training intervention addressing prominent barriers to students’ strategy use: lack of knowledge, lack of motivation, and poor management of study time. Undergraduates in an Introductory Biology course were randomly assigned to receive the strategy-training intervention or to a healthy life habits control group. No significant differences were found between the two groups on measures of learning behavior or achievement collected across the semester, emphasizing the challenge of changing students’ learning habits. Future research should investigate strategy training with lower performing students integrated into a course.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2203971
- PAR ID:
- 10547962
- Publisher / Repository:
- AERA
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 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/10.3102/2094964
