How can we help students learn more effectively and procrastinate less?
Procrastination and ineffective study habits: two major stumbling blocks for students. How can we help them overcome these, so that studying becomes less of a struggle and their motivation isn’t a rollercoaster with sharp ups and downs? With her recently awarded Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Anique de Bruin (SHE) is set to investigate this. She hopes this will help smooth out the rollercoaster, improve study behaviour, and reduce stress levels amongst students.
“Quite early on in my psychology degree, I was fascinated by education and by learning,” says Anique. “Perhaps it helped that my father was a psychotherapist and my mother was a teacher. As I was part of the first cohort of psychology students in Maastricht, we were involved in the development of the programme. Lecturers were keen to receive feedback from us. Because we were a small group, we were very connected to each other, which created a positive learning environment. All of that inspired me to develop further in that direction.”
“During my PhD, my supervisor, Henk Schmidt, launched a new psychology programme in Rotterdam and wanted me to help out. At first I thought, ‘what an opportunity, but there goes my PhD, how am I supposed to do that?’ In the end, it was brilliant. So I was introduced to the combination of educational development and research early on in my career, and it has remained that way ever since.”
Spotlight
Last February, Anique was awarded the Vici grant by NWO for the ‘Silence the Struggle’ project. She had previously been awarded the Veni and Vidi grants as well. “Thanks to those two grants, I now have a research group that I was very happy to bring on board with the Vici idea. The inspiration for this didn’t come from me alone, but from the whole group. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword: a Vici is a personal grant that puts one researcher in the spotlight. But I’ve drawn up a list of people who contributed directly to this. There are already twenty of them, not to mention all those who contributed indirectly. I’m absolutely delighted to have been given this opportunity and that everyone was so incredibly willing to devote their time to it and contribute their ideas.”
We regularly conduct interview studies, and students tell us they want to change this but don’t know how.
Self-regulation in education
“For about twenty years now, I have been researching how students regulate their study behaviour: how they assess their own level of knowledge and skills (‘monitoring’) and what they then do to improve this (‘control’); the two central processes of self-regulation. This is an important skill in all forms of education, including higher education. In addition, it is our job to prepare students well for everything they will encounter in their future careers. In today’s world, it is increasingly necessary to keep developing yourself, and for that you need strong self-regulation skills.”
“This research reveals two things. Firstly, that students often spend a great deal of time on learning strategies that do not work well, leading to inefficiency and frustration. Secondly, we see that students struggle to study consistently. They often procrastinate until just before the exam or deadline. A large proportion of students find this frustrating themselves. We regularly conduct interview studies, and students tell us they want to change this but don’t know how. We want to examine these two phenomena, ineffective studying and procrastination, more closely through the Vici study.”
The students' struggle
“Most research on this topic focuses on the short term: why do students do this, and what interventions can we use to help them right now? These interventions often involve a teacher telling them how to do things. The downside of this is that we know the struggle students face is actually very dynamic in nature. It’s not the case that one student finds it very difficult whilst another doesn’t: it varies over time. When students have sat a test that didn’t go so well, they feel motivated to change and they often do so. But after a while, that motivation decreases again, and with it their study habits. As the next exam draws nearer, pressure builds and the struggle begins anew, because they have no choice but to get back to work. This creates a dynamic pattern, a sort of motivational rollercoaster.”
We hope that students will feel better about themselves and that the struggle will be silenced.
Influencer
“We don’t yet know exactly how that dynamic pattern varies between and within students. We want to map this out properly so that we can develop appropriate interventions. One example is harnessing the power of successful fellow students. We believe there is a lot of potential in this. That is why we want to look at students’ social networks, identifying ‘seed students’: those who have learnt to apply effective learning strategies consistently, but who also know what that struggle feels like. A sort of influencer within the study group. We want to investigate whether our learning strategy training courses are more effective if we involve those students. We’re also looking at the timing of an intervention. If your ‘rollercoaster’ looks different during a period than mine does, then you might need your intervention at a different time to me.”
Study materials
“We have a great partnership with MemoryLab, a company affiliated with the University of Groningen. It is led by Hedderik van Rijn. He has developed an algorithm based on how memory works, which helps students study more effectively. It is a very powerful tool that is being used successfully worldwide. We want to integrate this with our students’ study materials. We also have a learning strategy programme that is implemented across all faculties: Study Smart. With this, and with MemoryLab, students can really get started.”
A smoother ride
Ultimately, Anique hopes that her research will lead to reduced stress amongst students, more effective study behaviour, and that they will be better able to cope with the struggle. “We want to identify the seed students and see if we can offer an effective intervention at the right time. In doing so, we hope that students will study both more effectively and more consistently. And we believe that this will, in turn, lead to less stress amongst students, because they’ll see that their learning is improving. We also hope that students will feel better about themselves and that the struggle will be silenced, the rollercoaster will become smoother. This will help them gain more confidence in their own approach.”
Text: Joëlle van Wissen