Have you ever felt like you were spinning your wheels when it comes to studying for exams?
Do you notice your students studying, but still not getting results?
If so, you definitely want to check out Milenko Martinovich’s new article in the Stanford News. This article features the work of Stanford University psychology professor, Patricia Chen’s new work on how to help students study more effectively.
In the study, the intervention group was encouraged to utilize their meta-cognitive abilities- quite simply to “think about their thinking.”
Specifically, students were given an online survey prior to their exams in a statistics course and asked to “think about what might be on the exam and then strategize what resources they would use most effectively” according to Martinovich’s article.
Importantly, students were then asked to self-reflect, recalling why they chose the resources they chose and how they believed it would be effective in their learning.
This intervention leads to an increase in grades in the course by almost a third of a letter grade.
Please click here to read the article.
Questions for Discussion
- What was professor Chen’s research hypothesis?
- What is meta-cognition?
- Describe their intervention- “Strategic Resource Use.”
- In what circumstances does professor Chen say this would likely be most effective?
- What might educators need to do to support students in a “resource-scarce” environment?
- Besides studying for tests, how else does Chen suggest this might be used?
- How would you develop further research to learn more about this topic?
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