Improving Study Skills using Program Integrating Reflection Seminars

TL;DR

This study presents a three-year course integrating reflection seminars to enhance study skills among computer science students, emphasizing long-term engagement and self-regulated learning.

Contribution

It introduces a novel longitudinal, naturalistic approach to teaching and evaluating study skills through reflection seminars and follow-ups over three years.

Findings

78% of students believed the course improved their ability to analyze and adapt study habits

Students showed interest in specific study skills and continued using them over time

No immediate change in overall study satisfaction after initial module

Abstract

If students have a broad spectrum of study skills, learning will likely be positively affected, since they can adapt the way they learn in different situations. Such study skills can be learned in for example learning-to-learn courses. Several studies of such courses have been done over the years, but few of these have been carried out in longitudinal naturalistic settings, where the effect has been evaluated over several years in non-experimental settings. In this paper we present a novel approach for learning study skills, as a part of a course running over three years. The course starts with a learning-to-learn module, followed by 11 follow-ups that includes, among other things, peer discussions about learning strategies with the aim of promoting self-regulated learning. This evaluation shows which study skills the computer science students were most interested in trying, how successful they were in continuing to use the study skills and which effects the students believed the study skills had after trying them. No significant change was found in how satisfied the students were with their overall study technique immediately after the initial module, but in the long term 78% of the students believed the course had promoted their ability to analyze and adapt their study habits.