A Study Planning Exercise Associated with Decreased Distraction Levels among Introductory Biology Students.

Students struggle to regulate their learning during independent study sessions. In this study, we ask whether an online behavioral intervention helped introductory students decrease distraction while studying. The intervention consisted of exam 1 reflection, exam 2 planning, and exam 2 reflection exercises. During planning, students formed a goal, mentally contrasted (MC) a positive outcome of their goal to their present reality, identified an obstacle, and formed an implementation intention (II) to overcome that obstacle. During reflection, students self-reported their distraction while studying. Distraction was the most frequently reported study obstacle, and decreasing distraction was the second most frequently reported study goal. While students who aimed to decrease distraction as a goal did not follow through, students who planned for distraction obstacles did follow through on decreasing distraction levels. Only about half of students generated an II that aligned with their study goal, which may provide one reason for the opposing follow-through of distraction framed as a goal versus as an obstacle. Lastly, we examined the specificity of students' II's and found no relationship with follow-through. Overall, MC with II holds promise as a self-regulatory technique to help introductory biology students change their behaviors while studying.

To What Extent Do Study Habits Relate to Performance?

Students' study sessions outside class are important learning opportunities in college courses. However, we often depend on students to study effectively without explicit instruction. In this study, we described students' self-reported study habits and related those habits to their performance on exams. Notably, in these analyses, we controlled for potential confounds, such as academic preparation, self-reported class absences, and self-reported total study time. First, we found that, on average, students used approximately four active strategies to study and that they spent about half of their study time using active strategies. In addition, both the number of active strategies and the proportion of their study time using active strategies positively predicted exam performance. Second, on average, students started studying 6 days before an exam, but how early a student started studying was not related to performance on in-term (immediate) or cumulative (delayed) exams. Third, on average, students reported being distracted about 20% of their study time, and distraction while studying negatively predicted exam performance. These results add nuance to lab findings and help instructors prioritize study habits to target for change.

Participation in Voluntary Re-quizzing Is Predictive of Increased Performance on Cumulative Assessments in Introductory Biology.

Low-stakes testing, or quizzing, is a formative assessment tool often used to structure course work. After students complete a quiz, instructors commonly encourage them to use those quizzes again to retest themselves near exam time (i.e., delayed re-quizzing). In this study, we examine student use of online, ungraded practice quizzes that are reopened near exam time after a first graded attempt 1-3 weeks prior. We find that, when controlling for preparation (performance in a previous science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM] course and incoming biology knowledge), re-quizzing predicts better performance on two cumulative exams in introductory biology: a course posttest and final exam. Additionally, we describe a preliminary finding that, for the final exam, but not the posttest, re-quizzing benefits students with lower performance in a previous STEM course more than their higher-performing peers. But unfortunately, these struggling students are also less likely to participate in re-quizzing. Together, these data suggest that a common practice, reopening quizzes for practice near exam time, can effectively benefit student performance. This study adds to a growing body of literature that suggests quizzing can be used as both an assessment tool and a learning tool by showing that the "testing effect" extends to delayed re-quizzing within the classroom.