Learning strategies of engineering

students
How do they study outside class, and why?
Master’s thesis in Learning and Leadership

MARIA CERVIN-ELLQVIST
DANIEL LARSSON

Department of Communication and Learning in Science

CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Gothenburg, Sweden 2019
Learning strategies of engineering students
How do they study outside class, and why?

MARIA CERVIN-ELLQVIST
DANIEL LARSSON
Learning strategies of engineering students

How do they study outside class, and why?

MARIA CERVIN-ELLQVIST
DANIEL LARSSON

© MARIA CERVIN-ELLQVIST &

DANIEL LARSSON, 2019

Department of Communication and Learning

in Science
Chalmers University of Technology
SE-412 96 Göteborg
Sweden
Telephone +46 (0)31-772 100
Abstract
While lecturers in engineering education may control what happens in class to promote
students’ learning, what happens outside class is up to the students themselves. One
important factor of what happens outside class is which learning strategies students use,
as some strategies are more effective than other. Another important factor is to which
extent students self-regulate their learning by attempting to monitor, regulate and
control it, which includes choosing learning strategies, using them and evaluating them.
This regulation can for example include strategies aimed at increasing knowledge
(cognitive strategies) or monitoring knowledge (metacognitive strategies).

This thesis aimed to (1) map what learning strategies engineering students use in a real-
world setting, in real courses; (2) investigate the students’ motivation for choosing
certain learning strategies and (3) probe their metacognitive awareness of the
effectiveness of different learning strategies. It also aimed to investigate if differences
could be seen across two engineering programs (bio- and civil engineering) or across
two types of courses (calculation courses and conceptual courses). To obtain insight into
this, 416 students answered a questionnaire specifically designed for this study.

Our results revealed a complex picture of what learning strategies students use and why.
It also revealed that the learning strategies students used varied across courses but not
across programs. Further, the students used the strategies, including the most used
strategy to study old exams, in several different ways. For example, they used them
aiming at either cognitive or metacognitive goals or sometimes both. The participants
were in general also found to be metacognitively aware of the effectiveness of different
strategies. Some students, however, used certain strategies not because they believed
them to be effective or aiming at cognitive or metacognitive goals, but to self-regulate
their motivation or behaviour.

We can conclude that students used their strategies for a number of different reasons
and in many different ways, which was not revealed by looking only at what students
did. This points out that it is crucial to not only investigate what students do, but also
why and how.

Keywords: learning strategies, self-regulated learning, metacognition, engineering

education

i
Acknowledgements
This master thesis would not have been possible to complete without the help and
support from several persons. First and foremost, we would like to thank our main
supervisors, Raffaella Negretti at Chalmers University of Technology, for supporting us
during the entire thesis project. Your ability to provide constructive feedback and help
us realising things on our own was a tremendous help. Further, your way of seeing
solutions rather than problems in combination with genuine honesty helped us
overcome some obstacles along the way. Also, we would like to give a special thanks to
our co-supervisors, Tom Adawi and Christian Stöhr at Chalmers University of
Technology, for helping us raising the bar on this thesis. Our common discussions and
your feedback were most appreciated.

Special thanks are given to all persons at the Department of Communication and
Learning in Science for welcoming us with open arms. The department might be small,
but your kindness was immense with a willingness to always find a place for us. Also, we
would like to thank Christina Johansson for support us in establishing a literature search
methodology which was very helpful.

We would like to give thanks to all students that participated in our survey or helped
improving it. Without your contribution, our thesis could not have been achieved. Also,
special thanks to Frida Jedvert for assisting us in the distribution of the questionnaire
when we had to be in three places at the same time.

Special thanks to our classmates and teachers at Learning and Leadership for all the
good times and for making this last two years memorable to us.

Last but not least, our warmest gratitude to our family, friends and Xuětíng, whose
support never wavered.

Thank you!

Maria Cervin-Ellqvist and Daniel Larsson

Gothenburg, May 2019

ii
Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................ i
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................ ii
1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Aim & Research questions ............................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Scope and delimitations .................................................................................................................... 3
2 Overview of theory and previous research ....................................................................................... 5
2.1 Self-regulated learning and metacognition ............................................................................... 5
2.2 Overview of research on utility and effectiveness of various learning strategies ..... 7
2.3 Methods for mapping students’ learning strategies ........................................................... 10
2.4 Overview of previous research on learning strategies ...................................................... 11
3 Method .......................................................................................................................................................... 17
3.1 Setting and participants ................................................................................................................. 17
3.2 Data collection ................................................................................................................................... 17
3.2.1 Questionnaire design .............................................................................................................. 18
3.2.2 Survey execution ...................................................................................................................... 24
3.3 Data analysis ...................................................................................................................................... 25
3.3.1 Categorisation of strategies ................................................................................................. 26
3.3.2 Categorisation of motivation ............................................................................................... 27
4 Results ........................................................................................................................................................... 30
4.1 Learning strategies (RQ1) ............................................................................................................. 30
4.1.1 Distribution of learning strategies for all students ..................................................... 30
4.1.2 Distribution of learning strategies between programs and type of course ...... 31
4.1.3 Significance test between programs and types of courses ...................................... 32
4.2 Motivation for learning strategies (RQ2) ................................................................................ 33
4.3 Rating of effectiveness of learning strategies (RQ3) .......................................................... 37
5 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................... 40
5.1 RQ1: What is the distribution of reported learning strategies across engineering
programs and types of courses? ........................................................................................................ 40
5.2 RQ2: What motivates the students' choice of strategies? ................................................. 42
5.3 RQ3: How aware are the students of the effectiveness of their strategies? .............. 45
5.4 Limitations .......................................................................................................................................... 46
5.5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 47
Attachment A................................................................................................................................................ A-1
Attachment B ................................................................................................................................................ B-1
1 Introduction
Students use various learning strategies when they study. The term strategy can be
described as a plan of action that is executed in order to accomplish a goal. Therefore, a
learning strategy can be considered a plan of action that students employ in order to
reach their learning goals (Schmeck, 2013). According to Paimin, Hadgraft, Prpic, and
Alias (2017), it is generally considered that learning strategies comprise motivation,
affect, cognition, metacognition, and behaviour in order to increase the likelihood of
learning, creating memories that are meaningful and retrievable, and carry out tasks of a
higher cognitive order, for example problem solving. Examples of learning strategies are
reading notes, doing practice problems and testing oneself.

The effectiveness of different learning strategies vary; not all strategies are effective
(Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013), and previous research has
shown a difference between high and low performing students’ choice of learning
strategies (Duff, 2004; Ferla, Valcke, & Schuyten, 2008; Yip, 2009). Research has also
shown that students’ choice of strategies depends on the learning situation, where the
students adapt their choice of strategies in order to actively take part in the learning
process (Schmeck & Geisler-Brenstein, 1989). However, the students’ choice of
strategies can be changed with deliberate teaching of specific cognitive and
metacognitive strategies that can, when applied consciously, result in increased learning
(Bielaczyc, Pirolli, & Brown, 1995). While lecturers in higher education might control
what happens in class to promote learning to a relatively high extent, what happens
outside class is up to the students themselves. An important part of what happens
outside class is to which extent students self-regulate their learning by attempting to
monitor, regulate and control it (Pintrich, 2000). This includes choosing learning
strategies that are effective to achieve the students’ goal, contextual features taken into
account (Pintrich, 2000). It should because of these reasons be of great interest to both
universities and individual lecturers to investigate what learning strategies their
students use, why they use them, and how aware they are of the effectiveness of their
strategies, to be able to support the students.

Lecturers and universities must first establish what strategies are currently used to be
able to help students employing effective learning strategies. When doing that, context
should be considered as it may affect how students study (Hadwin, Winne, Stockley,
Nesbit, & Woszczyna, 2001; Van Etten, Freebern, & Pressley, 1997). Some research has
been done on engineering students learning strategies in language learning (Afshar,
Moazam, & Arbabi, 2014; Granescu & Literat, 2013). Other studies have investigated
psychology students’ learning strategies (Carrier, 2003; Gurung, 2005; Gurung, Weidert,
& Jeske, 2010). However, there seem to be very little research on engineering students
learning strategies in STEM1-courses. The few studies found has had slightly different
focuses, with one focusing on how certain strategies affected performance (Grohs,
Knight, Young, & Soledad, 2018), and another on how students use of strategies changed
over time in response to an intervention (Lawanto & Santoso, 2012). Previous research
in other contexts in higher education has also not investigated why students use

1 STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

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strategies, or how they actually use them. This should be of importance as one strategy
might be used in several different ways and for different purposes (see for example
Wissman, Rawson, and Pyc (2012) on students’ use of flashcards). Further, very little
research was found on students’ awareness of the effectiveness of different strategies.
Studies about awareness, not with engineering students, came to different conclusions.
While Karpicke, Butler, and Roediger III (2009) suggested students are not
metacognitively aware of the testing effect, Van Etten et al. (1997) instead made several
conclusions speaking in favour of students’ metacognitive awareness of the benefits of
certain strategies. For example, students used strategies to avoid over- and
understudying. This emphasises the need for more research on students’ awareness of
the effectiveness of their strategies.

One of the more interesting of the aforementioned studies, Karpicke et al. (2009),
investigated undergraduate students learning strategies, focusing on what strategies the
students used when studying for exams, if they used testing as a strategy, and if they
would choose testing or rereading when given only those options. The study was based
on previous findings about the testing effect, which refers to the positive effect testing
has on long term retention compared to spending the same amount of time repeatedly
studying (Karpicke et al., 2009). Testing has been shown to improve the long-term
retention of the material even if no feedback is given on the correctness of the response
(Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). However, previous research suggests students are not
aware of the effect of testing, but instead often reported re-reading as a learning
strategy, which has been shown not so effective (Karpicke et al., 2009).

Karpicke et al. (2009) focused on mainly two learning strategies while there is now
evidence for the effectiveness, or in some cases lack of effectiveness, of several other
strategies (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Another aspect of students’ learning strategies not
captured by Karpicke et al. (2009) is what motivates the students’ choice of strategies. In
addition, the context of Karpicke et. al.’s (2009) study was somewhat unclear, not
describing the course or the program in which the students were enrolled. The findings
of this study are interesting but there is a need to investigate the use of a greater variety
of strategies in different contexts, especially in an engineering education setting.

This thesis therefore aims to expand Karpicke et. al.’s (2009) study to an engineering
education setting, with students at different engineering programs studying for written
exams in different types of courses. The contribution is however not only to expand
Karpicke et. al.’s (2009) study into engineering education, but also to take into account
that both what programs students are studying and which courses they are currently
enrolled in might affect their use of different strategies. This hypothesis is in line with
previous research that students adapt their strategies depending on the learning
situation (Schmeck & Geisler-Brenstein, 1989).

This thesis contributes to existing research on learning strategies by investigating

students’ motivation for choosing certain strategies and their awareness of the
effectiveness of some of their strategies. In addition, the questionnaire developed as part
of the study is a contribution in itself, as it constitutes a theory- and research-based tool
which, as opposed to many previous tools (see for example Hadwin et al., 2001), takes
context (both type of course and program) into account. As students are also asked why
they use their strategies and to rate the effectiveness of some of their strategies, the

2
survey makes it possible to dig deeper into students’ learning strategies outside class
and the presumably sometimes complex reasons for their choices. In conclusion, this
study increases our understanding of engineering students’ learning strategies and
thereby provides important knowledge both for teachers to regulate their teaching and
for researchers to design effective interventions. The questionnaire in itself also serves
as a robust instrument that can be used by others, researchers as well as teachers in
engineering and other higher education, to further increase this understanding and
thereby provide an even better base for improving teaching to better support students
learning and for designing effective interventions.

The remaining parts of the thesis are structured as follows: The introduction will
continue by stating the aim, research questions, scope and delimitations of this thesis.
After this introduction, the next section 2 Overview of theory and previous research, will
provide a theoretical background and overview of previous research. Thereafter, our
method will be described in section 3, Method, and our findings reported in section 4
Results. Lastly, the findings will be discussed in section 5 Discussion, before drawing
conclusions in sub-section 5.5 Conclusion, to provide answers to the research questions.
The conclusion (section 5.5 Conclusion) also includes some further implications, an
explanation of what the contribution of this thesis is and some suggestions for future
research.

1.1 Aim & Research questions

This thesis aims to partially replicate and expand the article “Metacognitive strategies in
student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own?” by
Karpicke et al. (2009) by mapping what strategies engineering students use in a real-
world setting, investigate the students’ motivation for choosing certain strategies, and
probe their awareness of the effectiveness of some of their strategies. The thesis also
aims to compare these factors across two different engineering programs and
investigate if differences can be seen between courses focusing on calculations and
courses focusing on concepts (in other words on learning facts and reason based on
those facts). The following research questions are therefore addressed in this study:

RQ1: What is the distribution of reported learning strategies across engineering

programs and types of courses?
RQ2: What motivates the students' choice of strategies?
RQ3: How aware are the students of the effectiveness of their strategies?

1.2 Scope and delimitations

In total, we studied the learning strategies of students in four different courses, two at
bioengineering and two at civil engineering at Chalmers University of Technology. Two
of the courses, one at each program, were mathematical courses with a lot of
calculations. The other two courses were specific for bioengineering and civil
engineering respectively and consisted of learning facts and reasoning based on those
facts rather than doing calculations. This type of course may also be called conceptual.
No courses that were a mix of the two types, with both much facts to learn and much
focus on calculations, were studied.

The mathematical courses chosen were mandatory courses in the first year at each
program and the conceptual courses mandatory courses in the second year. This study

3
did however not focus on differences in learning strategies based on if the students
studied their first or second year. Students from both the first and second year were
studied, but this was based on when courses of the selected types were given.

Data was only gathered through a questionnaire, with both open and forced report
question, and through a focus group that aimed to improve the design of the
questionnaire. When the design was completed, data was only gathered through the
questionnaire. No other methods, such as interviews or focus groups, were used. This
choice is motivated further in section 3, Method.

Mostly students at bioengineering and civil engineering were studied, and only those
students were included in the comparisons across programs and types of courses. These
programs are quite different, with different focuses, which was partly why they were
chosen. They were also chosen because we have ourselves studied civil and
bioengineering respectively, which was beneficial for example when choosing
appropriate courses to include. One possibility would have been to study several
programs and not only these two, but this was disregarded to make the project
workload suitable for a master’s thesis. However, students from other programs that
were enrolled in the selected courses and thereby present when the survey was
conducted were included in the part of the study where no comparisons based on
context was done. In the courses belonging to civil engineering, data from students in
three other programs that participated in the same courses was included. Those
programs were civil engineering, architecture in combination with civil engineering and
the program for business and entrepreneurship.

The participating students had, presumably, different backgrounds in a number of ways.

For example, age, gender, cultural background, if they had studied at university before
and if so for how long may have differed. This master’s thesis did not focus on those
factors. However, it is important to notice that other factors than the ones studied may
be important to take into account when trying to make conclusions. For example, some
unstudied factors may still have affected why students chose to use certain learning
strategies. To address a small number of those factors, a few background questions were
included in the questionnaire.

Learning strategies may be what student apply both in and outside class. For example, it
can be considered a strategy to go to class when lectures are not mandatory. However,
this study only includes what students do outside class.

What is defined as an effective learning strategy will be based on previous research. The
effectiveness of the students learning strategies will not be cross-checked with their
exam results.

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2 Overview of theory and previous research
This chapter presents an introduction to self-regulated learning, which in short refers to
a process where students regulate their learning and use various learning strategies as
part of this process (Pintrich, 2000). The reader is also presented with an overview of
different learning strategies based on previous research and an overview of previous
research on what learning strategies students use.

2.1 Self-regulated learning and metacognition

Self-regulated learning (SRL) constitutes an important part of effective learning, as
students who are good at reflecting upon their own learning do learn better (Winne &
Hadwin, 2008). Pintrich (2000) explained self-regulated learning as:

“… an active constructive process whereby students set goals for their learning
and then attempt to monitor, regulate, and control their cognition, motivation,
and behaviour guided and constrained by their goals and the contextual features
of the environment.” (Pintrich, 2000, p. 453)

It can also be described as a cyclical process consisting of three phases; the forethought
phase, the performance phase and the self-reflection phase (Zimmerman, 2008). The
forethought phase involves task analysis, for example goal setting and planning, and
self-efficacy beliefs. The performance phase involves self-control, for example self-
instruction, attention focusing and task strategies, and self-observation such as
metacognitive monitoring. Finally, the self-reflection phase involves self-judgement and
self-reaction, for example self-satisfaction or self-affect. However, it is important to note
that not all learning is classified as SRL and that students might not self-regulate all their
learning experiences, even though it constitutes an important part of effective learning.
There are several theories on why students do not do this, including that SRL-strategies
often require additional preparation time, vigilance and effort (Zimmerman, 2008).

As suggested above, research and theories on SRL overlap with metacognitive research
(Tanner, 2012). Metacognition can be described as a people’s cognition about their own
cognitions, in other words how people think about their own thinking (Nelson, 2002).
Expansions on this definition include planning, monitoring and evaluating one’s own
learning process (Tanner, 2012). This overlaps with the descriptions of SRL above, even
though SRL also involves self-regulation of motivation, behaviour and agency on context
(Pintrich, 2000). However, students’ perceived metacognitive knowledge might
sometimes be incorrect. Metacognitive illusions often lead to students misjudging their
learning (Serra & Metcalfe, 2009). These illusions are based on how familiar students
are with the topic and how hard, or easy, they think it is (Serra & Metcalfe, 2009). In
addition to being inaccurate in judging their own learning, many students do not
understand how learning occurs or what learning strategies are effective (Karpicke et
al., 2009).

According to Flavell (1979), strategies can be aimed at either cognitive or metacognitive

goals. He stated that:

“cognitive strategies are invoked to make cognitive progress, metacognitive

strategies to monitor it” (Flavell, 1979, p. 909)

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An example of a metacognitive goal is assessing your knowledge, which makes “testing
what you know” a metacognitive strategy. If you instead choose to reread your notes or
the textbook, you use a cognitive strategy aimed at the cognitive goal of increasing your
knowledge. However, there is not always a clear distinction between cognitive and
metacognitive strategies, and they may overlap. The same strategy might be used in
order to achieve a cognitive or metacognitive goal or both types of goals. It may also be a
metacognitive strategy even though the student thinks of it as a cognitive strategy.
Flavell (1979) exemplified this by stating that a student may test his/her knowledge to
improve the knowledge itself, but at the same time monitors the knowledge, even
though that was not the student’s motivation for testing, and therefore unconsciously
uses it as a metacognitive strategy.

Several studies have investigated the important role of metacognition when students
engage in problem-solving and knowledge transfer activities (Grohs et al., 2018). For
example, high preforming students in a statistical course engaged in the metacognitive
strategy of self-explanation to a significantly higher extent than the low preforming
students (Litzinger et al., 2010). A similar relationship between the use of metacognitive
abilities and performance has been shown in courses of civil engineering (Meyer, Knight,
Callaghan, & Baldock, 2015) and chemical engineering (Ko & Hayes, 1994).

For engineering students specifically, five benefits of applying metacognitive activities

have been shown (Meyer et al., 2015); (1) it helps them in understanding how to
associate different knowledge to each other and create connections between them, (2)
aids in long-term understanding of concepts, (3) promotes self-confidence, (4) increases
awareness and aids in identifying knowledge gaps and (5) provides an opportunity for
teachers to aid the students understanding of the activity by giving feedback on a
corresponding metacognitive level. In other words, the use of metacognitive strategies is
highly beneficial for engineering students’ learning.

It has also been shown that students, although not specifically engineering students,
adapt what strategies they use to the cognitive level of the exam; more specifically based
on whether the exam tests surface or deep learning (Abd-El-Fattah, 2011). Both deep
and surface learning consist mostly of cognitive processes, but the former consists of
metacognitive processes to a higher extent than the later (Biggs, 1988). Abd-El-Fattah
(2011) not only showed that students chose strategies that matched the cognitive
processing demands of the exam, but also that they performed better because of this
adaptation. In addition, students performed better if their preparation matched the type
of exam.

In conclusion, self-regulated learning and the use of metacognitive strategies should be

beneficial for students learning in general and engineering students learning in
particular. It is thus both interesting and relevant to investigate whether engineering
students use metacognitive strategies, and to what extent they self-regulate their
learning. Since using metacognitive strategies, and thereby SRL-strategies, could be
done consciously or unconsciously, as suggested by Flavell (1979), it is also crucial to
find out how students reflect upon of why they study as they do, and how
metacognitively aware they are of the effectiveness of their learning strategies.

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2.2 Overview of research on utility and effectiveness of various learning strategies
A framework for how effective various learning strategies are is needed to be able to
evaluate the students’ awareness of the effectiveness of their strategies. In a meta-
analysis of available research, Dunlosky et al. (2013) evaluated the relative utility of ten
different learning strategies and their generalisability across learning conditions,
student characteristics, materials and criterion task. They included re-reading and
practice testing, the strategies in focus in the study conducted by Karpicke et al. (2009),
as well as elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarisation, highlighting (or
underlining), keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, distributed practice
(spacing) and interleaved practice (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Variations in both
generalisability and effectiveness were seen, and the strategies were rated as having
generally high, moderate or low utility. The evaluation was based on existing research
and, in some cases, the need for further research to clarify the effectiveness of certain
strategies across different learning conditions, student characteristics, materials and
criterion task. The ratings and summarised motivations for the ratings can be seen in
Table 1.
.

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Table 1: Dunlosky et al.'s (2013) rating of the effectiveness of ten learning strategies, including motivations for the
ratings.

Strategy Effectiveness Comment

Practice testing High Refers to testing as a learning activity and not as part of a
course. The beneficial effects on learning, retention and
comprehension are relatively well studied, also for
undergraduates. Can mean testing to benefit from the testing
effect (less effective) or testing for feedback (more effective
as it also provides information on what to focus further
studying on). It is beneficial for students of different
knowledge levels and on actual summative course
assessments. It takes a modest amount of time and requires
minimal training. Further, it outperforms unguided restudy.
Distributed High Refers to when students spread out their studying over time
practice instead of massing it. Does not include what students do
(spacing) during sessions. The distribution can be within single study
sessions or across sessions; research has shown benefits for
both. A shortage is the phenomenon procrastination scallop,
which refers to the typical study pattern where the time
students spend studying increases as the exam gets closer
(Michael, 1991). Theories suggest that the benefit depends
upon that the studied material is not fresh in the student’s
memory in the same way as when massing learning
opportunities. This also lowers the risk of metacognitive
illusions based on familiarity (see Serra and Metcalfe, 2009,
on metacognitive illusions). Effective for undergraduates and
for many different materials and domains, including biology
and mathematics. More research on complex material is
needed.
Elaborative Moderate Means generating an explanation for why a stated fact or
interrogation concept is true. Effective for various factual topics and
materials, for example for undergraduates in a biology
course, as shown by (Smith, Holliday, & Austin, 2010).
Supports integration of new knowledge with prior
knowledge. The effect increases with increased prior
knowledge. Uncertain benefits for those with low level of
prior knowledge (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Self-explanation Moderate Means explaining to oneself how new information is related
to old information or explain steps taken when solving a
problem or a task. Has been explored for college students
over a wide range of materials, including solving various
math problem and learning from texts. The effect decreases if
the student has access to explanations. Works with little or
no practice, but the effect increases with the quality of the
student’s explanations. The results are promising but more
research is needed on several aspects.
Interleaved Moderate Refers to when students alternate practice of different kind
practice of items or problems. Relatively unstudied. Most research has
been done on college students. Results across materials are
mixed, but promising for several math skills, including
algebraic skills. It might help students discriminate between
different kinds of problems and solution methods by both
making comparison of tasks easier and make the practice of
problems of the same kind distributed over time. Students
need to practice enough, or get enough instructions, on an
individual task before starting to alternate between them to
benefit from interleaved practice. Great need for more
research.

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Summarisation Low More effective than just reading. Can mean many different
things, ranging from practicing recall to copying parts of
texts, which makes it hard to draw conclusions on its
effectiveness. According to A. L. Brown, Campione, and Day
(1981), a good summary excludes unimportant or repetitive
material, identifies the main points and successfully captures
the gist of the text. The synthesizing, as opposed to copying
parts of a text, is an important part of a successful summary.
More research is needed across different levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy (for more information on Bloom’s taxonomy, see
Krathwohl, 2002). Summarising might deserve a higher
rating for undergraduates, if the students are good at
summarising and find it easy to use.
Imagery for text Low Means creating mental images for content of text. Can involve
using prior knowledge when creating the image and may be
helpful for mental organisation or integration of information
from the text. There are many uncertainties and mixed
results regarding the effectiveness of this strategy. Some
studies have shown a positive effect while some have not.
What material imagery for text has an effect for is also
unclear. As with many other strategies, the longevity is quite
unstudied. However, there is some relatively new research
that is promising for the potential utility of the strategy. It is
more broadly applicable than keyword mnemonic but have
not been studied for undergraduates to the same extent.
Rereading Low Frequently used by students. Has been studied for
undergraduates for texts of various lengths and for various
materials, including physics and biology. Has been shown to
have some effect on free recall. Research on the effect on
comprehension has shown inconsistent results, as has the
few studies studying the effect in a real world setting with
course content and course related tests. It is easy to use and
needs no training, but many other strategies have been
shown more effective for promoting learning.
Keyword Low To identify or come up with keywords which you then
mnemonic visualise by creating mental images. One example of the
strategy is if you try to learn the French word la dent (the
tooth) and use the English word dentist as a keyword, which
you visualise as a dentist holding a huge tooth. One of the
most well studied strategies, also for college students. It has
been shown to enhance both learning and comprehension for
a variety of materials, including learning science terms and
medical terminology. Concrete keywords are easier to
visualise than abstract. There is a need for more studies both
where students have to generate their own keywords and on
the durability of the effect.
Highlighting/ Low Common strategy for students. Easy to use and adds little
underlining time compared to only reading. It is effective to some extent,
which may be explained by the isolation effect, meaning that
items that stands out are easier to remember. Overmarking,
which is common amongst undergraduates, takes away the
effect of having to process the information to identify the
most important parts. Most studies have shown no benefit for
highlighting/underlining over reading, but research in a real-
world context is limited.

9
As can be seen in Table 1, only practice testing and distributed practice were rated as
having high effectiveness (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Three strategies, elaborative
interrogation, self-explanation and interleaved practice, were rated as moderately
effective, while the remaining five strategies were rated as having low effectiveness.
However, it is important to note that the strategies may vary in effectiveness depending
on materials, subject, the learners themselves and other factors (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
For example, summarising got the lowest of the three ratings but Dunlosky et al. (2013)
also pointed out that it might deserve a higher rating for undergraduates who are skilled
at summarising, and may also be used to practice testing.

2.3 Methods for mapping students’ learning strategies

A major challenge in research on learning strategies is the difficulty of obtaining data of
what students actually think and do. Some researchers have used a software to trace
what students actually do when they study with the help of that same software (see for
example Nesbit et al., 2006; Winne & Jamieson-Noel, 2002, 2003), while many use self-
report data, relying on the students’ perception of their studying (see for example
Carrier, 2003; Gurung, 2005; Gurung et al., 2010; Hadwin et al., 2001; Van Etten et al.,
1997). Self-report data can be gathered by interviews, focus-groups or, perhaps more
efficiently, questionnaires (Esaiasson, Gilljam, Oscarsson, & Wängnerud, 2007). Many
studies have been based on questionnaires designed for that specific study, but there are
some standardised questionnaires related to learning strategies, including the Learning
and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI; Weinstein, Zimmermann, & Palmer, 1988) and
the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich, 1991). These two
questionnaires are presented briefly below. In addition, some criticism against them is
summarised and some general issues with self-report data on learning strategies
presented.

The LASSI consists of 77 questions and aims to measure the students’ strategies for
learning in the form of thoughts and behaviour (Weinstein, 1994). It addresses covert
and overt behaviours relating to learning and studying in general (Hadwin et al., 2001;
Weinstein et al., 1988). According to Cano (2006), LASSI is based on two models. The
first one is the general model of learning and cognition by Simon (1979), which
describes the student as an active, self-determined individual that manufactures
knowledge and processes information. The second model is the model of strategic
learning by Claire Ellen Weinstein (1994). It too puts the individual in the centre by
identifying the student’s skill, will and self-regulation as three interactive components
important for successful learning.

The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich, 1991) addresses
learning strategies and motivational orientation in relation to specific courses and was
design to be used at college level. It consists of 81 items, of which 31 items regards
students' motivations, 31 items for students’ use of cognitive and metacognitive
strategies and 19 items for students’ use of resources. The motivation section of MSLQ
can be divided into 6 categories. These describe both the motivation to why students
participate in the course and more task specific motivation within the course, for
example the motivation to how they prepare for an exam.

10
Hadwin et al. (2001) criticised both LASSI and MSLQ for not taking context into account
in a good enough way, pointing out that none of the questionnaires asses if and how
students adapt across contexts. In addition, one strategy (for example summarising)
might be used either to learn and integrate knowledge or to for example practice testing.
These nuances are not captured by the questionnaires. Gurung et al. (2010) also
criticised LASSI and similar questionnaires, meaning they are too long and general and
do not provide guidance on how to advise students to study.

However, it is also impossible to be sure whether students’ self-report data is actually

correct, regardless what questionnaire is used. Some research has therefore used a
software to trace what students do (for example Nesbit et al., 2006; Winne and
Jamieson-Noel, 2002, 2003). The results have conclusively suggested differences
between what students self-reported that they did and what the software traced (Winne
& Jamieson-Noel, 2002, 2003). However, Nesbit et al. (2006) found that using a software
to trace what students do in a real-world setting is not easy, as the students may choose
not to use the software but instead completely or partly use strategies not registered by
it (for example summarising on paper) or be logged in but do something else completely.
The software also only contained the possibility to use and trace a limited number of
strategies. Another problem with using this type of software can, according to Nesbit et
al. (2006), be that students know they are observed and because of this change their
behaviour. Some of these problems are specific for traces, while some also adopts to
other methods, like questionnaires (Gurung et al., 2010), in real-world settings. In
conclusion, there is currently no perfect method for finding out what learning strategies
students use in a real-world setting and why, and there is a need to be careful when
interpreting self-report data as well as traces.

2.4 Overview of previous research on learning strategies

In this section, previous research on students’ use of learning strategies in a real-world
setting is summarised. All included studies investigated learning strategies of students
in higher education. What learning strategies engineering students use in STEM-courses
seem to be relatively unstudied. Therefore, this chapter includes previous research on
engineering students learning strategies in other types of courses as well as research on
learning strategies of other students in higher education. Hadwin et al. (2001) pointed
out that investigations of which learning strategies students actually use and why they
chose those strategies should be done in different contexts, as context might affect the
students’ decisions. For example, Hadwin et al. (2001) showed that different forms of
examinations within a course in educational psychology affected how frequently the
students used different learning strategies, selected different study-related resources
and adopted goals. This supported Hadwin et al.’s (2001) assumption about students’
perception of making different decisions in different study contexts and was also in line
with models of self-regulated learning. Different forms of exams are only one example of
how context may differ; different courses or different subjects are two other contextual
factors that may vary. However, there is little previous research on engineering students
learning strategies. Some factors may be similar in other contexts, which means also
studies on undergraduates studying non-engineering courses are of interest.

11
Some research has been done on engineering students learning strategies in language
learning (Afshar et al., 2014), in other words with the students we are interested in but
in the wrong type of course. Even though some of the strategies used by students have
been very specific for language learning (Afshar et al., 2014; Granescu & Literat, 2013),
guessing what a word meant based on background knowledge was for example the most
frequently used in one study (Granescu & Literat, 2013), some results are still
interesting as the students might use similar strategies or show metacognitive
awareness to a similar extent in their STEM-courses. For instance, one study found that
20 percent of students used self-evaluation of some sort (Granescu & Literat, 2013).
However, these studies used MSLQ to gather data, which as described above has some
shortcomings.

Another interesting set of studies are those that have investigated courses where
students learn various facts and then reason based on these facts, as some STEM-
courses, for example biology courses, may be of this type. Many of these studies have
used questionnaires designed specifically for one study, or sometimes gathered data by
interviewing students individually or in focus groups. In psychology courses, which may
be considered courses of this type, some strategies were common in several studies.
Carrier (2003) found that reviewing lecture notes, rereading, highlighting and making
chapter notes were used by over half of the students. Similarly, Gurung (2005), who not
only investigated what strategies students used but also the time spent on each strategy,
found that reading notes or text was reported to be used the most often. Testing
knowledge was on the other hand reported as one of the least used (Gurung, 2005).
Finally, Gurung et al. (2010), who also investigated students learning strategies in a
psychology course, made an interesting remark that it is possible that the reason why
their participants used only basic study strategies, such as studying practice exams, was
that the exam itself consisted of multiple-choice questions and the course wasn’t very
advanced. The students therefore did not need any more advanced strategies to succeed.
This is in line with research on students’ adaptation of their strategies to the cognitive
processing demands of the exam (Abd-El-Fattah, 2011).

The study that inspired our study, Karpicke et al. (2009), focused mainly on the
strategies rereading and testing, and students’ metacognitive awareness of the testing
effect. When investigating undergraduates use of learning strategies when preparing for
an exam, Karpicke et al. (2009) found that as many as 83.6 percent of the students listed
rereading textbook or notes as one of their strategies, while 54.8 listed it as the strategy
they used the most often. This made it the most popular of all strategies the students
listed and is also similar to what Carrier (2003) and Gurung (2005) found. Further, some
of the students got to choose between rereading and testing their knowledge without
the possibility to restudy afterwards, while some got to choose between rereading and
testing their knowledge with the possibility to restudy. Out of the first group, only 17.8
percent of the student chose the option to test without restudying, while 57.4 percent
chose rereading parts of the text or the entire text. When the testing option included the
possibility to restudy 42.1 percent chose testing and 40.8 percent restudying. Based on
these results, Karpicke et. al. (2009) suggested students lack metacognitive awareness of
the testing effect. They also suggested this has consequences for students’ real-world
study behaviours. Based on the results in Karpicke et. al. (2009), students seem to think
testing for feedback is better than just testing, which has been shown to be correct
(Dunlosky et. al., 2013). This could be interpreted in favour of the students’

12
metacognitive awareness when choosing strategies, even if they are not metacognitively
aware of the testing effect.

In contrast to Karpicke et al.’s (2009) suggestions, Van Etten et al. (1997) concluded that
students are sometimes aware of the benefits of certain strategies, like distributed
practice instead of massing study sessions and procrastinating their studying to the last
week, but still do not always use that knowledge. Their study focused on mapping what
strategies undergraduates used as well as trying to draw conclusions about how aware
students are of the benefits of certain strategies. They stated that there are many
complex factors that could influence students’ preparation for exams (Van Etten et al.,
1997). As opposed to Karpicke et al. (2009), Van Etten et al. (1997) made several
conclusions in favour of students’ metacognitive awareness of the benefits of certain
strategies. For example, students perceived studying in a group beneficial to avoid
missing important information, find and sort out misconceptions and to get feedback
about test readiness, which could help them avoid over- or understudying. Students also
mentioned spacing as part of an effective preparation for an exam (Van Etten et al.,
1997), which indeed shows some awareness. Further, memorising, highlighting,
rewriting and similar strategies were used by over 90 percent of the students, while
strategies focusing on more transformative processing, like reorganising, making
acronyms and imagery, were each used by about 30 percent of the students. However,
some strategies in this study were still somewhat ambiguous as to what they actually
meant, as the strategy study old exams, despite a very ambitious method with several
rounds of focus groups before finally designing a questionnaire. Van Etten et al. (1997)
did also not take the participants academic major or what course they were enrolled in
into account, which is interesting as they themselves stated that many complex factors
could influence what students do and that it is important to take that into account.

Regarding academic achievement and the use of various learning strategies, some
research has been conducted in higher education although not specifically in
engineering education (see for example Seabi, 2011; Yip, 2007), including more detailed
descriptions of what strategies students used. For example, (Hartwig & Dunlosky, 2012)
found a positive association between psychology students’ use of both self-testing and
rereading and achievement in the form of GDP (grade point average). Students’ choice of
strategies was however not a strong predictor of achievement, despite the fact that some
strategies have been shown to be more effective. Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012) argued
that it is possible that high achieving students achieve their success in spite of using the
same strategies as low performers due to a more adaptive use of those strategies. Their
success may be connected to other factors rather than the use of effective strategies.
Such factors could be prior experience, intelligence or degree of motivation.

Further, Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012) focused especially on rereading and practice
testing, similarly to Karpicke. Hartwig et al.’s (2012) study was an expansion of Kornell
and Bjork (2007). The results of both studies are interesting to compare with how
engineering students’ study in the absence of previous research on engineering
students. Kornell and Bjork (2007) concluded that students make choices in accordance
with how highly prioritised the information is in the course rather than to try
maximising long-term learning. Some of the learning strategies reported in the study by
Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012) can be seen in Table 2.

13
Table 2: Students' reported use of learning strategies in the study by Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012)

Strategy Percentage of students who

reported they used the strategy
Test yourself with questions or practice problems 71
Use flashcards 62
Recopy your notes 33
Reread chapters, articles, notes, etc. 66
Make outlines 22
Underline or highlight while reading 72
Make diagrams, charts, or pictures 15
Study with friends N/A 50
“Cram” lots of information the night before the test 66
Ask questions or verbally participate during class 37
Other (Please describe:__________) 6

As shown in Table 2, practice testing was the most common strategy. Note that the
questions were forced report questions and the strategies were already listed in the
questionnaire. This might explain why so many students listed practice testing
compared to the study by Gurung (2005), where it was one of the least used strategy.

Some results from both Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012) and Kornell and Bjork (2007)
about students’ use of rereading and their motivation for quizzing themselves are shown
in Table 3.

Table 3: Survey results from Kornell and Bjork (2007) and Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012)

Questions Choices Percentage of students who

agreed to the statement

Kornell and Hartwig and

Bjork, 2007 Dunlosky,
2012
When you study, do you typically Yes, I reread whole 16 19
read a textbook/article/other chapters/articles
source material more than once? Yes, I reread sections that I 60 64
underlined/ highlighted/marked
Not usually 23 17
If you quiz yourself while you study I learn more that way than I 18 27
(either using a quiz at the end of a would through rereading
chapter, or a practice quiz, or To figure out how well I have 68 54
flashcards, or something else), why learned the information I’m
do you do so? studying
I find quizzing more enjoyable 4 10
than reading
I usually do not quiz myself 9 9

As can be seen in Table 3, these studies focused very much on if and why students quiz
themselves. Still, the motivations have some ambiguity to them and only 9 percent of the
students in each study said they did not quiz themselves. The second motivation, “to
figure out how well I have learned the information I’m studying”, could possibly be
interpreted as practice testing. On the contrary, Wissman et al. (2012) found that about
60 percent of the students motivated their use of flashcards saying that it helps in
memorising and about 30 percent in a way that pointed out that it is easy to use. None of
these motivations explicitly stated that students practice testing and this is therefore not

14
in line with the results from Kornell and Bjork (2007) and Hartwig and Dunlosky
(2012). This emphasises the need to be careful when interpreting what students actually
do, and not only ask what they do but also why and how. It also points out that there is
an ambiguity to previous research when these issues have not been investigated further.

A related example of the importance of being careful when interpreting this kind of self-
reported data is that Gurung et al. (2010) listed study practice exams as a metacognitive
strategy, even though it was not clear what the students actually did when using that
strategy as Gurung et al. (2010) did not investigate this. However, using practice exams
to study was positively correlated with students’ exam scores, which suggests it was
effective to some extent (Gurung et al., 2010). This conclusion about using practice
exams being a metacognitive strategy and the aforementioned ambiguity as to how
quizzing and flashcards were used further highlights the importance of investigating
more thoroughly what students do, as one strategy might be used in many different
ways and for different purposes. In addition, it is important not to draw conclusions on
students’ use of a strategy, for example flashcards, and their awareness of its
effectiveness without knowing for sure how or why the students use the strategy,
especially when only using forced report questions. Students may well be aware of a
strategy’s effectiveness or lack of effectiveness for different purposes, regardless of
whether they use it or not or how they use it. For example, Van Etten et al. (1997) found
that many students seemed to be aware that using flashcards to drill important
information as a rote strategy for memorising information (which is probably not using
it to test oneself) does not help much in understanding the material.

This ambiguity to what students actually do and why, combined with the overlap and
lack of clear distinction between metacognitive and cognitive strategies (see Flavell
(1979)) might explain why previous research has classified strategies in slightly
different ways and into different categories. For example, one study specified rehearsal,
organization of ideas, elaboration of ideas and critical thinking categorised as cognitive
strategies; metacognition as a metacognitive strategy and time and study environment
management, effort regulation, peer learning and help seeking as resource management
strategies (Afshar et al., 2014). Another study divided the strategies into cognitive,
metacognitive and affective strategies (Granescu & Literat, 2013). Gurung et al. (2010)
instead specified the different types a bit more and labelled them as organizational
behaviours (for example writing down important dates and applying a study schedule),
application behaviours (for example creating questions about the content), elaboration
behaviours (for example explaining the content to someone), metacognitive behaviours
(for example studying practice exams) and resource use (for example asking friends for
help). Yet another study labelled the strategies as repetition-based (for example
flashcards used for repetition and mnemonics), cognitive-based (for example studying in
a group), procedural (for example time management and organization) and
metacognitive (for example practice testing) (Gurung, 2005). Finally, one study grouped
the strategies as text-noting strategies (highlight, outlines, copy keywords), mental-
learning strategies (for example imaging, relating to old info and self-testing) and
reading strategies (reading at different paces, including skimming and rereading)
(Wade, Trathen, & Schraw, 1990). Note that this last study differentiated reading into
different strategies (Wade et al., 1990), while other studies have listed reading or
sometimes rereading as a strategy without further differentiation (see for example
Karpicke et al. (2009), Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012) and Gurung (2005)). Interestingly,

15
none of the above studies specified any other strategies than practice testing as
metacognitive strategies. This can be questioned drawing on Flavell’s (1979) statement
that there is not always a clear distinction between cognitive and metacognitive
strategies, and that there may be an overlap. Without knowing if students use the
strategy to achieve a cognitive or metacognitive goal or both types of goals, it is hard to
draw conclusions on what kind of strategy it is used as.

Other interesting findings in two studies using traces were that students did not use
some strategies the authors describe as powerful (Winne & Jamieson-Noel, 2002) and
assigned less utility to the strategies than the researchers’ model did (Winne &
Jamieson-Noel, 2003). Winne and Jamieson-Noel (2002) hypothesised that students did
not use the powerful strategies due to lack of skills or knowledge about when and how
to use them, and possibly also because they are bad at approximating how much time
they spend on different strategies, so that they overestimate their effort. When the result
then does not turn out as good as they desired, they won’t spend time on that seemingly
unproductive cognitive activity. However, this does not mean students are not
metacognitively aware at all. Students can be metacognitively aware in the sense that
they regulate their learning to maximize the outcome, but do so based on
misconceptions on what they have actually done. In other worlds they self-regulate
ineffectively.

Finally, some research has been investigating engineering students learning strategies in
specific STEM-courses, but with slightly different focuses than mapping strategies and
trying to draw conclusions about the students’ awareness. For example, Lawanto and
Santoso (2012) tried to evaluate metacognitive SRL-strategies of engineering students
enrolled in an electric circuit course, but focusing on possible differences between the
beginning and end of the semester. Another study instead focused on strategies and
achievement only, without involving SRL or metacognitive aspects (Grohs et al., 2018).
They found that what strategies students used correlated with their performance on an
exam in a statistical course in mechanical engineering, while the total time spent
preparing for the exam did not correlate with performance. In addition, students who
mainly solved problems by themselves performed better than students who mainly
solved problems together with peers (Grohs et al., 2018). However, we did not find any
research in an engineering education setting similar to Karpicke et al. (2009) or Van
Etten et al. (1997), both mapping strategies and trying to draw conclusions about
students’ metacognitive awareness of the effectiveness of various learning strategies.

To conclude this chapter, there is some ambiguity in previous research regarding what
students actually do and why. Moreover, not much research has been conducted in a
real-world engineering education setting and the few studies that have been have had
slightly different foci. As Winne and Jamieson-Noel (2003) suggested, more research is
also needed on how students study and what they understand about how their choices
of strategies are linked to achievement, in other words the effectiveness of the
strategies.

16
3 Method
In this section, we will describe our method, starting with the setting and participants
before describing the data collection and finally account for how the data was analysed.

3.1 Setting and participants

The participants were 416 engineering students at Chalmers University of Technology in
Gothenburg, Sweden, from two different programs: bioengineering and civil
engineering. However, some students from other programs were also included, as they
were enrolled in the same courses as the civil engineering students and thereby present
when the survey was conducted. In total, students enrolled in four different courses
were included. Two of those were conceptual courses, namely a biology course in the
second year of the bioengineering program and an environmental course in the second
year of the civil engineering program. The other two courses, which focused on
calculations, consisted of a multivariable calculus course in the first year of the
bioengineering program and a course in linear algebra in the first year of civil
engineering. All included courses were compulsory for the participants’ engineering
programs. The exams were in all courses but one taking place at the end of the course,
which meant most students answered the questionnaire two to three weeks before their
exam. In the conceptual course in civil engineering, the students had already had the
exam when completing the survey. They were later having an additional examination of
another type, which suggests the written exam might have included less material than
the exams in the other courses. This could possibly have affected what learning
strategies students used. However, this was not possible to avoid with current resources
and time constraints.

For this study, a manageable number of participants corresponded to about two courses
in two engineering programs, in total four courses. The programs selected should be
quite different but include comparable courses. Another factor considered was that our
backgrounds, as engineering students at bioengineering and civil engineering
respectively, could be utilised to select appropriate courses in those programs.

When the courses were selected, the comparability across programs was the main
criterion. While it was not possible to investigate students from different programs in
the exact same courses, great caution was put into finding courses of similar types that
were studied at the same time in their respective program. Therefore, both calculation
courses are part of the first year of the programs and the conceptual courses part of the
second year. This was based on the hypothesis that students might change strategies
over time as they become more skilled learners.

3.2 Data collection

A questionnaire was designed to collect data about the students’ use and assessment of
learning strategies. When choosing what method to use, the desired quantity of data was
weighted against quality. Large samples of students were needed to make statistical
comparisons between the different groups of learners possible. Solely qualitative
methods were therefore discarded and a questionnaire was evaluated to be the best
approach (Esaiasson et al., 2007). The study by Karpicke et al. (2009) served as a
starting point and partly a framework for choosing method. They conducted a survey in
which the participants answered one open response question, where the students listed

17
all the strategies they used while studying, and one forced report question, where they
had to choose between repeated reading and practice testing. The students also got to
motivate their choice on the forced report question.

As a complement to the questionnaire, focus groups or individual interviews could have

added a deeper insight into the students reasoning (Esaiasson et al., 2007). However,
this was disregarded because it was estimated to take more time than available. Our
study still combined quantitative and qualitative data in the survey, by including both
open response and force report questions, to acquire deeper insight than possible with a
solely quantitative approach (Esaiasson et al., 2007).

3.2.1 Questionnaire design

The study, and thereby the questionnaire, was designed to partly replicate the study by
Karpicke et al. (2009) and to expand it into an engineering education setting, while also
addressing some issues with the original study. We will therefore begin this section by
describing their questionnaire, before moving on to the design of our questionnaire.

Karpicke et al. (2009) investigated what learning strategies students used, students’
metacognitive awareness of the benefits of testing over rereading, and in particular if
students were aware of the testing effect. The questions Karpicke et al. (2009) asked the
students are shown in Figure 1.

K1:
“What kind of strategies do you use when you are studying? List as many strategies as you use and
rank-order them from strategies you use most to strategies you use least often.” (Karpicke et al.,
2009, 474)

K2a, given to about half of the students:

“Imagine you are reading a textbook chapter for an upcoming exam. After you have read the
chapter one time, would you rather:
A: Go back and restudy either the entire chapter or certain parts of the chapter.
B: Try to recall material from the chapter (without the possibility of restudying the material).
C: Use some other study technique.” (Karpicke et al., 2009, p. 475)

K2b, given to the rest of the students:

“Imagine you are reading a textbook chapter for an upcoming exam. After you have read the
chapter one time, would you rather:
A: Go back and restudy either the entire chapter or certain parts of the chapter.
B: Try to recall material from the chapter (with the possibility of restudying afterward).
C: Use some other study technique.” (Karpicke et al., 2009, p. 477)

Figure 1: Karpicke et al.'s (2009) survey design with the difference between K1a and K1b in italics.

As shown in Figure 1, Karpicke et al.’s (2009) questionnaire was given in two different
versions to investigate student awareness of the testing effect and not only the effect of
testing for feedback. Each of the students only answered one of the versions. In addition
to these questions, the students were also asked to give a brief explanation to their
answer to K2a or K2b (Karpicke et al., 2009).

18
Inspired by this questionnaire, we designed a questionnaire to investigate what learning
strategies students use, why they use them and how metacognitively aware they are of
the effectiveness of different learning strategies. As our purpose was not identical to that
of Karpicke et al. (2009), we could not reuse their questionnaire. Our questionnaire was
designed during a period of just over a month and several outlines were discarded along
the way to achieve a questionnaire that fulfilled all our criteria. It had to make it possible
to answer the research questions; it had to be easy to understand for the students and
not possible to misinterpret; it had to make it likely that the students answers could be
understood and analysed by us, and it had to take no more than 15 minutes to complete
to be able to administer the survey during lectures or mandatory occasions in the
selected courses. To make sure the students would not be limited by having to use an L2
language (second language), all questions and instructions were in Swedish, the
language used at both programs at the bachelor level. An important aspect of the design
was also to avoid some of the issues with Karpicke et al.’s (2009) survey.

Karpicke et al. (2009) did themselves point out one issue with their design regarding the
first question: “A clear limitation of the free response question is that our procedure did
not prompt each student to elaborate on potentially ambiguous answers” (p. 474-475).
They argued that in K1, the students’ answers can be ambiguous and that it is therefore
hard to interpret if the students stated strategies can be categorized as rereading or
testing by recall. For example, when students state that they use flash cards as a strategy,
it’s impossible to know how they implement that tool; do they use flashcards to test
themselves by practicing recall or to reread the information without practicing recall?

Regarding K2, K2a focused only on testing without restudying, even though it is even
more effective to test for feedback (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Karpicke et al. (2009) also
criticised a previous study by Kornell and Bjork (2007) for framing the question in a
way that made the students prone to report practice testing more than in their own
study. However, if Kornell and Bjork (2007) made the option to test too attractive,
Karpicke et al. (2009) instead made it too unattractive. Despite the testing effect,
students would probably want to be able to restudy the material if there was something
they did not know about on the test. This highlights the importance of the phrasing of
the questions to avoid ambiguous results.

To assure all requirements were met, a pilot survey was conducted with five students
studying their fourth and fifth year at bioengineering and civil engineering respectively.
After completing the pilot survey, the students participated in a focus group to help us
identify possible flaws in the questionnaire design (Esaiasson et al., 2007). We had
limited experience in designing questionnaires, which made this step in the process very
helpful. For example, questions might be misunderstood by the participants, and if so,
there was a risk of gathering data that was hard to understand or not useful to answer
the research questions (Esaiasson et al., 2007). The questionnaire finally ended up
consisting of some background questions, one open response question on learning
strategies, Q1a, with an open response follow-up question on motivation, Q1b, and a
forced report question, Q2, focusing on how effective students think their strategies are.
After the pilot, minor changes were made to Q1b and a clarification was made in Q1a, as
the participants in the pilot survey thought our initial phrasings of these questions were
ambiguous. Q2 was completely discarded and a new Q2 was designed. Two versions of
Q2 were included in the pilot survey. The final version of Q2 was however none of those,

19
as one of the versions did not target the research questions in a satisfying way and the
second one was found to be easily misinterpreted.

The final questionnaire also included an introduction to why the survey was conducted
and a few forced report background questions. In the introduction, it was described that
we aimed to investigate what learning strategies students at Chalmers used, what course
the survey regarded, and a brief description on what to expect regarding type of
questions and expenditure of time. The students were also asked to read the questions
carefully and answer as honestly as possible. Finally, it was made clear that all answers
were anonymous and that the students by answering the questionnaire consented to the
answers being used for both this thesis and research. The background questions
included gender, program, number of years at university and if they had been studying a
technical introduction year before their program. The programs listed in the background
questions and what course was named in the text were adapted to the different courses.
This part was designed to include all general information necessary for the students to
complete the survey and to make it possible for us to identify which program the
students were enrolled in.

The remaining questions are shown in Figure 2. This example is from the questionnaire
given to students in the conceptual course in the bioengineering program.

20
Question 1a
What strategies do you use when you study for the exam in KMG050 - Cell and molecular biology 2? List
all strategies you use and rank-order them from the ones you use the most often to the ones you use
the least often.

Question 1b
Motivate for each one of your three most used strategies why you use them?
(If you listed fewer than three strategies, motivate for the ones you listed.)

Question 2
Answer the question by following the two steps below. If you have any comments, there is space to
write them at the bottom of the page.
1) Read the strategies carefully and check the ones you use in the course KMG050 - Cell and molecular
biology 2.
2) How effective do you think the strategies you checked are to learn what comes on the exam in the
course KMG050 - Cell and molecular biology 2? Circle one number for each of the strategies you use.
I use this
strategy

Identify/come up with
keywords and create mental
images of those to Low High
1 2 3 4 5 6
remember/learn the effectiveness effectiveness
information linked to the
keywords

Low High
Write summaries 1 2 3 4 5 6
effectiveness effectiveness

Check what you know of the

Low High
course content by testing 1 2 3 4 5 6
effectiveness effectiveness
yourself on it

Read course material and/or

Low High
your own notes more than 1 2 3 4 5 6
effectiveness effectiveness
once

Highlight or underline in Low High

1 2 3 4 5 6
books or notes effectiveness effectiveness

Try to explain to oneself why

Low High
facts or concepts are 1 2 3 4 5 6
effectiveness effectiveness
true/correct

Try to explain to oneself how

new information is related to
Low High
old, or explain the different 1 2 3 4 5 6
effectiveness effectiveness
steps taken when solving a
problem/a task
Additional comments:

Figure 2: Questionnaire design

21
As shown in Figure 2, the first part of the first question, Q1a, replicated K1 in Karpicke et
al. (2009). Q1a was, as well as the rest of the survey, adapted for each course by
including the name of the course. In a follow-up question to Q1a, called Q1b, students
were asked to motivate why they used their three most used strategies or motivate for
all they listed if they listed fewer than three. The last question, Q2, aimed to investigate
how aware the students were of the effectiveness of their strategies. They were asked to
rank the effectiveness of seven learning strategies. The learning strategies were chosen
from Dunlosky et al. (2013), which will be described later in this section. Finally, the
questionnaire included the opportunity for the students to write a comment if they
wanted to. The questionnaire was in Swedish but is presented in English in this report. It
can also be seen in Swedish in Attachment A since it is hard to capture the small nuances
in the English translations.

The design was somewhat similar to Karpicke et al. (2009), but also quite different. This
is summarised in Table 4.

Table 4: Comparison of our study to Karpicke et al.’s (2009) study.

Karpicke et al. (2009) Current study

Purpose Map what learning strategies Map what learning strategies students
students use and investigate their use and why and compare this across
metacognitive awareness of the context. Investigate their metacognitive
testing effect. awareness of seven different learning
strategies.
Students Undergraduates, unspecified Engineering students (undergraduates)
major. from two different programs.
Learning content Unspecified, preparing for exams. Calculation and conceptual courses that
were part of their programs, preparing
for written exams.
Our RQ1: What is the Students were asked to list Students were asked to list strategies in
distribution of strategies in question K1. No question Q1a. The results were
reported learning comparison was made across compared across programs and types of
strategies across context. courses.
engineering programs
and types of courses?
Our RQ2: What Not considered. Students were asked to motivate their
motivates the three most used strategies in question
students' choice of Q1b.
strategies?
Our RQ3: How aware Students were asked to choose Students were asked to rate the
are the students of the between rereading and practicing effectiveness of up to seven strategies
effectiveness of their recall (with or without the chosen from Dunlosky et al. (2013), but
strategies? possibility to restudy) in question only the strategies they used in their
K2a or K2b. course, in question Q2. No motivation
Students were asked to motivate was included, except for the possibility
their choice. to write a comment. However, students’
reflections upon the effectiveness of
their strategies was also addressed by
question Q1b.

22
As shown in Table 4, there are some differences regarding both the actual design and the
context. The first question was very similar, but we also asked the students to motivate
their choice of strategies. In the second question, Karpicke et al. (2009) focused on two
strategies while we included seven strategies. Note that Karpicke et al. (2009) had a
different purpose than us, and investigated what learning strategies students used,
students’ metacognitive awareness of the benefits of testing over rereading, and in
particular if students were aware of the testing effect.

Several considerations motivated the design of Q1a and Q1b. As Lawanto and Santoso
(2012) stated when criticising their own study, open response questions can be used to
obtain more in-depth perspectives than would be obtained with forced-report
questions. The open question format gives the student the opportunity to freely answer
the question without being limited by the questionnaire and our imagination (Esaiasson
et al., 2007). Possible negative aspects of an open questions format are that the
answering frequency might be lower than with forced questions due to higher effort in
answering, seen that not all students are keen on writing, lowering the
representativeness (Esaiasson et al., 2007). This gives arguments for forced report
questions if possible. However, due to the character of the research questions, it is hard
to formulate forced report questions that measure what is intended without affecting
and limiting the students’ answers. It would have been hard both to address the issue
with ambiguous answers and to answer what motivates students’ choice of strategies
(RQ2), without an open response follow-up question about why the students use their
strategies. In addition, this question could help in answering how aware students are of
the effectiveness of their strategies (RQ3). To limit the effort for the students, they were
only asked to motivate their three most often used strategies in Q1b.

The last question, Q2, targets how aware the students are of the effectiveness of their
strategies (RQ3). It was the one demanding the most cautious design to fulfil its purpose.
The two steps of the question were explained carefully and stepwise to make sure the
students understood what they were asked to do. To make it possible to compare the
results with previous research, seven of the ten learning strategies from Dunlosky et al.’s
(2013) meta-analysis of effective learning strategies were included. The included
strategies were the ones considered relevant to the type of student group, level of
education, literature and research questions. The motivations for including or excluding
strategies are shown in Table 5.

23
Table 5: Included and excluded learning strategies in Q2.

Learning strategy Included Motivation for inclusion or exclusion

Keyword mnemonic Yes Relevant for university students that participate in a conceptual
course, trying to remember facts and new words (Dunlosky et
al., 2013).
Summarisation Yes Strongly connected to Karpicke et al. (2009).
Practice testing
Rereading
Highlighting
Self-explanation Yes Relevant for university students and the learning strategy has
broad application within both conceptual and calculation
courses (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Elaborative Yes Relevant for university students, and especially as the strategy
interrogation has been shown effective for undergraduate biology students
(Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Imagery for text No Poor connection to university student group and further
research is needed in order to conclude when the learning
strategy does and does not work (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Distributed practice No Poor connection to our research questions because our study
Interleaved practice focuses on what learning strategies students use rather than
when or the order they do it.

As shown in Table 5, all strategies except for interleaved practice, distributed practice
and imagery for text were included.

To address the question of how metacognitively aware students are of the effectiveness
of their strategies (RQ3), the students were asked to rate only the effectiveness of the
strategies they used, and thereby should have some thoughts about the effectiveness of.
The students rated the effectiveness on a Likert-type scale with six levels, ranging from
low effectiveness to high effectiveness. An even number of levels was chosen because it
forced the students to make a positive or negative evaluation (Gracyalny, 2017). There
was no neutral option or option to say they did not know. When deciding what even
number of categories to use, the number of questions (seven) and the possibility to
differentiate the effectiveness of different strategies were considered (Jamieson, 2008).
In addition, the rating of the effectiveness of different strategies made by Dunlosky et al.
(2013) used three categories. As that meta-analysis was to be used as a reference of the
effectiveness of different strategies, it was suitable to choose a number evenly divisible
by three. Even though the effectiveness is much more complex than a number on a
Likert-type scale converted to low, moderate or high effectiveness, it still made the
comparison of the students’ perceived effectiveness of strategies to the result of the
meta-analysis by Dunlosky et al. (2013) easier than if four or eight categories had been
used.

3.2.2 Survey execution

The questionnaire was administered on paper on mandatory occasions or lectures
which the lecturers thought many students would attend. When collecting data with a
questionnaire there are, according to Brown (2001), three components in the execution
that need to be addressed: (1) retaining a high response rate; (2) ensuring that the
questions are understood by the respondents; (3) knowing and controlling the
conditions when the questionnaire is filled out. An online questionnaire is convenient
for the researchers in terms of time and data analysis, but the three components

24
according to Brown (2001) is harder to meet because: (1) the response rate is usually
low; (2) the questionnaire must be totally self-explanatory; (3) the conditions when the
questionnaire is filled out is unknown. An online questionnaire was disregarded, and a
group-administered questionnaire was chosen, where the participants were gathered in
one location to answer the questionnaire during an event with high or mandatory
attendance with time set apart for answering the questionnaire in paper form. This
generates more work for the researchers but addresses the components described by
Brown (2001) to a higher extent because: (1) the group will have a high attendance due
to the chosen event and the participants will to a higher extent feel obligated to answer
the survey; (2) when one is present during the survey one gets the chance to clarify
questions that are misunderstood by the participants; (3) one knows the conditions as
one is present when the questionnaire is filled out. Furthermore, a paper questionnaire
facilitated control over that everyone completed the questionnaire and by printing
paper and bringing pencils one minimises the chance of technical problems that can
occur with a web-based questionnaire.

3.3 Data analysis

After completing the data collection, the answers to the forced report question, Q2, were
digitalised and the answers to the open response questions, Q1a and Q1b, were
categorised and digitalised. To increase the validity of the results, measurements were
taken to attain a good intercoder reliability, in other words minimise the risk that we
(the coders) categorised the answers in slightly different ways (Lombard, Snyder-Duch,
& Campanella Bracken, 2017). First, we both individually looked at a minimum of 20
answered questionnaires to identify possible categories. Then the categories were
discussed and a first set of categories decided on, with the possibility to add more
categories later if needed. The first ten answers were categorised by both of us together,
to get a common framework for how to interpret the answers and categories. The
following ten answers were also categorised by us both, but separately. If the intercoder
reliability exceeded 90 percent, which was suggested as an acceptable level by Lombard
et al. (2017), each of us categorised half of the remaining answers. To categorise
students’ answers about motivations for using strategies with an acceptable intercoder
reliability, more answers had to be categorised by both coders separately for this
question (Q1b). To make sure the consistency in the categorisation was maintained
through the categorisation process, about 10 percent of the remaining answers were
also categorised by both of us. In addition, both of us were sitting in the same room
during all categorisation to be able to discuss how to interpret tricky formulations.

When categorising the strategies and motivations, it was decided that two strategies
could get the same placing (for example the one used the most often) and that one
strategy could have many motivations, as this turned out to be necessary based on the
students’ answers.

The categorised answers, as well as the answers to the background questions and forced
report question were digitalised into MS Excel. Descriptive statistics of what strategies
were the most used ones for all students and for different subgroups, as in different
types of courses and by students studying different programs, were performed. The
response rate was also calculated and can be found in section 4 Results. Then, the data
was exported to IBM SPSS Statistics, where tests were performed to check if what
strategies students chose were independent of factors as program, type of course and

25
gender. This was tested by a Chi-square test (Devore, 2012), with a following calculation
of Cramér’s V to see how strong the association was (McHugh, 2018).

The motivations were related to strategies, as this was what was included in the
research questions. Tables were produced to describe what the most common
motivations overall were and what the most common motivations for some of the most
used strategies were.

Finally, the results for Q2 were summarised by counting the number of students who
checked that they used each strategy, describing what the lowest and highest number
circled for each strategy was and calculating the mean and standard deviation for each
strategy.

3.3.1 Categorisation of strategies

The categories for the students’ strategies are described in Table 6.

Table 6: Explanation of students' strategies

Strategies Explanation of strategy

Study old exams In some courses the students were provided with old exams from previous
years. These old exams were used by the students to study for the real exam.
The old exams can provide information about previous structure, type of
questions and a timeframe which can give an indication for the real exam.
Read course Students that read all types of material in the course. It could be course
material/notes literature, PowerPoints, student notes or other provided material. This strategy
did not include when the student read something more than once.
Do practice Students did practice problems. They were usually provided by the course and
problems could be calculation problems, facts and reasoning problems or other types of
problems to solve.
Summarise Student that extracted the main points from something and then constructed a
summary with it.
Search for Students that stated they were actively trying to find information from other
information through sources than the ones provided in the course. Examples of alternative sources
alternative were articles, YouTube, online lectures, Wikipedia or books not included in the
resources course.
Discuss with others Student that actively sought out other people to discuss the course content.
Study in a group Students that studied together without clearly describing something that could
be considered another strategy. If they stated that they discussed with other
students, it was instead considered to be the strategy discuss with others.
Flashcards/quiz Students that created a cue/question and an explanation for the information
they wanted to learn and used them it to study. The questions could also be
made by someone else. These questions could be used for quizzing oneself.
Study things one Students that specifically stated that they studied the things they found hard or
finds hard/don’t did not know.
know
Restudy/repetition Student that studied the same things more than one time.
Highlighting/ Students that used techniques to highlight or underline.
underlining
Reread Students that clearly stated they read the same material more than once.
Practice testing Students that clearly stated they tested their knowledge, without the
opportunity to look at the answer or solution during the test.
Interrogate Students that received questions to answer from oneself or others. This could be
yourself/get a way of testing one’s knowledge.
interrogated

26
 Explain to oneself or This strategy was similar to the strategy self-explanation with the exception that
others this strategy included explaining to others as well. Self-explanation is described
in Table 1 in section 2.2 Overview of research on utility and effectiveness of
various learning strategies.
Keyword Students that used keywords for learning. It could be that they identify
keywords and then used them for organising or to learn information.
Memorise Students that used techniques for memorising information.
Mnemonic and Students that encoded the information into smaller components which was later
acronyms used as a cue for retrieving the information such as rules for remembering,
acronyms and mnemonics.
Find out what one is Students that actively sought out and identified information that they were
supposed to know supposed to know in this course.
Create a good work Students that used methods for creating an environment that enabled studying
environment for or made it easier to study. Examples of this included making sure they would not
studying be disturbed or listening to music in order to make it easier to focus.
Mental imagery Students that used mental pictures to understand, remember or connect
information to each other.
Distributed practice This strategy is described in Table 1 in section 2.2 Overview of research on
utility and effectiveness of various learning strategies.
Mind maps Students that created “maps” with information that was connected to each
other, which could help the students understand the relationship between
different information.
Write down Students that wrote down something that was already written before. This could
something already be students copying their own notes or summaries.
written
Focus on one type of Students that selected one type of problem and only practiced this for a long
problem at the time period of time before moving on to other types of problems. One can also say
that this is the opposite of interleaving practice, which is described in Table 1 in
section 2.2 Overview of research on utility and effectiveness of various learning
strategies.
Do practice problem Student that solved the same problems more than one time. For example, did the
more than one time same practice problems more than once.
Go to schedule Students that attended course occasions. For example, attended lectures, labs or
course occasions another scheduled occasion in the course. This strategy was outside the scope
since the focus of our study was learning strategies used outside of class.
Missing strategy The student’s strategy could not be interpreted or was not considered a
strategy.

As show in Table 6, 28 strategies were identified when categorising students’ answers to

Q1a. For the students’ response to be assigned a strategy, the student had to clearly state
the name of the strategy or describe it in a way that could be clearly interpreted. If the
strategy could not be interpreted it was categorised as missing strategy.

3.3.2 Categorisation of motivation

In total, 22 categories of motivation were identified. In this section each motivation is
presented. First, student examples of motivations are shown in Table 7, see below, and
then further descriptions of some motivations are given.

27
Table 7: Student examples for each category of motivations.

Motivation Illustrative quote

It is easy (easy to ”Easy way to learn various concepts”
implement, not very “Often feels the easiest to read”
demanding) “Good … because it goes fast to restudy a lot”
Time efficient ”To study old exams is the most time efficient”
Lack of time/poor ”Lack of time”
planning ”I often finishing the assignments and prepare for the exam at the last
minute”
Because it’s fun “A fun way to study theory”
“… it becomes more fun”
Easier to focus/spend ”I am bad at starting doing things in time at home, there are a lot of things
time on that distracts me. Therefore, easier to promise yourself to go to school”
“Then I do not need to carry all my books around and I can study wherever I
want”
To learn about the exam “To see how it is structured, what type of questions will come. To see if some
questions are recurring …”
“Old exams give me an approximation in how the exam will be”
To identify/test what ”Good way to test where I am now and compare to the level of difficulty
one previous years”
knows/comprehends “To test one’s knowledge and detect what one needs to study more”
and not
To avoiding missing ”Make sure that one has not missed any topics”
something/to include “Get knowledge about the things that were not included in the old practice
everything important exams”
To identify what one is ”Give a good picture of what I need to know for the exam”
supposed to “To understand what the examiner puts the most focus on”
know/what is
important
It includes the most ”It includes the most important in the course”
important/most “Is often the practice problems that is good to go through before the exams”
relevant information
To learn it “Solve practice problems to learn every chapter”
To get an overview ”To get an overview of the course content”
To increase “To gain a deeper understanding of concepts / theory”
comprehension “To get new perspectives or increased understanding”
“To create an understanding of how everything is connected”
I learn well/better that ”I learn best when I get to think about the practice problems”
way “Good for learning how to solve problems”
It gives good/the best ”Because it has worked the best for me”
result, it works well/the
best
Good to memorise ”Good way to … memorise multiple choice questions that often is recurrent”
and/or remember “To get it stuck in my memory so that it is there for the exam”
To restudy/good ”Good repetition of the things we went through/learned”
repetition “Repetition is the mother for success they say”
To practice ”In order to practice questions that might be similar to those we get on the
exam”
I learn well by writing ”I learn very well by writing”
It feels good ”It makes me calmer before the exam”
“It increases … my self confidence in that I can do it”
Regulate level of ”The exam questions are more advanced therefore it is better to do this in
difficulty the end”
“Because it is usually best to take practice problems out of the math book, it
offers different levels of difficulties”
To increase motivation ”I have poor motivation then I study alone and therefore choose to study
with someone”

28
The students’ responses to Q1b were categorised into the motivations shown in Table 7.
For a response to be assigned a motivation it had to be clear to us what it meant. We
interpreted the motivations with key words together with the meaning of the student’s
response.

Some motivations need further explanation since some student examples in Table 7 do
not describe all aspects of those motivations. The motivation to learn about the exam, in
addition to the student examples, includes getting information about available time and
what information is tested on the exam. There is a difference between I learn well/better
that way and to learn it. In the motivation I learn well/better that way the student
evaluates the strategy to be good which is not the case in the motivation to learn it. Also,
there is a difference between to restudy/good repetition and to practice. To restudy
means study something that has already been studied while practice is doing similar
types of problems but not the exact same.

Not all motivations could be categorised. This was the case when the motivation was
missing, not considered to be a motivation or we could not interpret what the student
meant. If so, the motivation was categorised as motivation missing.

29
4 Results
In this section, the results of our study will be presented. First, the response rate and
gender distribution will be presented. This is followed by the results connected to each
research question. The research questions are restated below.

RQ1: What is the distribution of reported learning strategies across engineering

programs and types of courses?
RQ2: What motivates the students' choice of strategies?
RQ3: How aware are the students of the effectiveness of their strategies?

In total, 416 responses were collected. Students from three other programs beside bio-
and civil engineering participated, as described in sections 1.2 Scope and delimitations,
and 3.1 Setting and participants. The overall response rate was 65.0 percent among all
programs that participated in the survey. When comparing the different programs and
courses, only bio- and civil engineering students were included. The response rate for
these two programs in each course was as follows: bioengineering conceptual 49.3
percent, bioengineering calculation 73.9 percent, civil engineering conceptual 95.4
percent and civil engineering calculation 39.5 percent. The gender distribution was even
in civil engineering but uneven in bioengineering, where two-third of the students were
females.

4.1 Learning strategies (RQ1)

In this section, the result for RQ1 is presented. RQ1 stated: What is the distribution of
reported learning strategies across engineering programs and types of courses?

4.1.1 Distribution of learning strategies for all students

Students listed a wide range of strategies, whereof a small number were more
frequently used than the other ones. Among all 416 responses, 28 strategies were
identified. The average number of strategies listed was 3.18 with a standard deviation of
0.96. The overall distribution of learning strategies for students in all courses is
presented Table 8.

Table 8: The ten most used strategies overall and the students’ number one strategy.

Percent who
Percent who rank as #1
Strategy list strategy N strategy n
Study old exams 83.2 (346) 38.5 (160)
Read course material/notes 63.0 (262) 22.1 (92)
Do practice problems 46.6 (194) 20.0 (83)
Summarise 31.3 (130) 11.8 (49)
Search for information through alternative 19.5 (81) 1.4 (6)
resources
Discuss with others 17.5 (73) 3.1 (13)
Flashcards/quiz 11.8 (49) 1.4 (6)
Study things one finds hard/don’t know 11.1 (46) 1.2 (5)
Restudy/repetition 9.4 (39) 1.0 (4)
Study in a group 8.2 (34) 2.2 (9)
Total number of students in parenthesis.

30
In Table 8, all strategies listed by more than six percent of the students are
included. The most common strategy was to study old exams, with 83.2 percent using it
and 38.5 percent listing it as their first strategy. To read course material/notes was also
widely used by the students, with 63.0 percent listing it. Other common learning
strategies were to do practice problem and summarise. The four most used strategies,
study old exams, read course material/notes, practice problem and summarise, were also
most common as the student's first strategy. In our experience, it is common that the
teacher provides problems to solve, pages to read and old exams to practice on.
Therefore, it is not surprising that these strategies were common. To conclude, the
students used a wide range of strategies. Some strategies were however used more often
than others.

Some learning strategies were more common among female than male students. Among
all 416 students, there was a significant difference in their choices of strategies when
conducting a Chi-square test (p<0.001). Also, the Cramer’s V test showed a weak
association between strategy and gender (V=0.216). For example, female students used
flashcards/quiz and discussing with others about twice as often as male students, and
summarising about three times as often.

4.1.2 Distribution of learning strategies between programs and type of course

The distribution of learning strategies in each course is presented below in Table 9 to
enable a comparison between the programs and different types of courses.

Table 9: Students’ most used strategies (used by at least 20 percent) in different programs and courses

Program and Strategy Percent who Percent who

type of course list strategy rank as #1
strategy
Bioengineering Do practice problems 83.1 (54) 33.8 (22)
students in calculation Study old exams 80.0 (52) 36.9 (24)
course (65)
Read course material/notes 58.5 (38) 15.4 (10)
Search for information through 38.5 (25) 4.6 (3)
alternative resources
Summarise 30.8 (20) 4.6 (3)
Bioengineering Read course material/notes 90.9 (30) 60.6 (20)
students in contextual Study old exams 60.6 (20) 18.2 (6)
course (33) Summarise 57.6 (19) 33.3 (11)
Discuss in a group 48.5 (16) 6.1 (2)
Civil engineering Do practice problems 90.2 (46) 52.9 (27)
students in calculation Study old exams 86.3 (44) 31.4 (16)
course (51) Read course material/notes 45.1 (23) 9.8 (5)
Search for information through 23.5 (12) 2.0 (1)
alternative resources
Civil engineering Study old exams 84.6 (88) 46.2 (48)
students in contextual Read course material/notes 64.4 (67) 19.2 (20)
course (104) Summarise 43.3 (45) 21.2 (22)
Flashcards/quiz 27.9 (29) 1.9 (2)
Total number of students in parenthesis.

31
As shown in Table 9, when comparing programs and type of courses, some similarities
and differences emerge about students’ choice of learning strategies. The conceptual
courses had the same top three strategies, only in different orders. The calculation
courses had the same top four strategies in the same order. One strategy common in all
courses and programs was to study old exams with 60.6 to 86.3 percent. However, it was
only the most common one in the conceptual course for civil engineering with 84.6
percent that used it. Another strategy common in all courses and programs was to read
course material/notes, ranging from 45.1 to 90.9 percent. However, it was more common
in the conceptual courses. The most often used strategy in the calculation courses was to
do practice problems, with as high as 83.1 and 90.2 percent of the students listing it. This
can be compared to the conceptual courses, where to do practice problems was almost
not used at all. The strategy summarise was common in conceptual courses with slightly
higher usage bioengineering program. To conclude, we could observe a difference in
learning strategies between different types of courses, but no major differences between
programs. However, there were some minor differences between programs. This could
be explained by the fact that the two conceptual courses have more differences between
each other and were harder to compare than the calculation courses.

In the conceptual course for civil engineering flashcards/quizzes was far more used than
in other courses as shown in Table 9. The students’ comments in the questionnaire show
that there were already existing flashcards on the internet available to everyone in this
course, which is shown in comments (1, 2).

(1) “It was fun and there was already made flashcards that felt
summarising”

(2) “Found flashcards on the internet”

This suggests that if flashcards/quizzes are more accessible it will be more used by the
students.

4.1.3 Significance test between programs and types of courses

The difference in learning strategies were tested between programs and types of
courses. Three Chi-square tests for significance and one Cramer’s V test for association
was done which is shown in Table 10.
Table 10: Test for significance for learning strategies in different types of courses and across programs.

Test for significance between Chi-square test for Cramer’s V test for
significance association
Learning strategies and type of courses p<0.001 V=0.436
Learning strategies and calculation courses p=0.152 -
in each program
Learning strategies and conceptual courses p=0.052 -
in each program

Students learning strategies were compared in different types of courses which is shown
in Table 10. A significant difference in what learning strategies students used was found
between types of courses (p<0.001). The association was found to be moderate

32
(Cramer’s V=0.436). This clearly shows that students used different learning strategies
in the calculation courses compared to the conceptual courses in this study.

Students’ learning strategies were also compared across programs which is shown in
Table 10. The calculation and conceptual courses were then tested separately. The test
showed no significant difference in learning strategies when comparing the two
calculation courses in each program (p=0.152). The same result was shown when
comparing the two conceptual courses in each program (p=0.052). This clearly shows
that in this study the students used similar learning strategies for the same type of
course regardless of the program.

4.2 Motivation for learning strategies (RQ2)

In this section, the result for RQ2 is presented. RQ2 stated: What motivates the students'
choice of strategies?

Students listed many different motivations for their strategies. In total, 22 different
kinds of motivations were identified. Also, a single student sometimes listed more than
one motivation for a strategy. This suggests that students can have more than one
reason for using a strategy. The students’ motivations are shown in Table 11.

Table 11: The 12 most listed motivations in all courses

Motivation Percent who list

motivation
To learn about the exam 55.5 (231)
To increase comprehension 48.1 (200)
It includes the most important/most relevant information 34.9 (145)
To identify what one is supposed to know/what is important 31.0 (129)
I learn good/better that way 30.0 (125)
To restudy/good repetition 30.0 (125)
It gives good/the best result, it works good/the best 26.0 (108)
To get an overview 20.0 (83)
To identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not 19.2 (80)
To learn it 16.1 (67)
To avoiding missing something/to include everything 12.5 (52)
important
Good to memorise and/or remember 12.5 (52)
Total number of students in parenthesis.

As shown in Table 11, the students had different motivations for using their learning
strategies. The 12 most common motivations for all 416 participants are shown in Table
11. The table shows a wide range of motivations. Some students focus on getting a good
result on the exam, others focus on how the strategy helps them to study/learn, and still
others want to identify relevant information or to learn about the task itself. The most
common motivation is to learn about the exam (55.5 percent), followed by to increase
comprehension (48.1 percent). To conclude, students had a lot of different motivations
for engaging in a strategy and the most common ones were learn about the exam and to
increase comprehension that were both listed by approximately half the students.

As can be seen in Table 11, some motivations indicate that the students want to increase
their knowledge. These motivations are to learn, restudy/good repetition and I learn
well/better that way.

33
Not all motivations by the students could be categorised, and some were therefore
categorised as missing. In total 37.0 percent of the students had a missing motivation for
a listed strategy. This results in some uncertainty about why these students use their
strategies. This also indicates that some students have not reflected on why they use
their strategies and therefore might lack awareness about their strategies.

The motivations shown in Table 11 are disconnected from the strategies they are
connected to. To make a more in-depth analysis of the motivations, they are be
presented with their connected strategies in Table 12 below.

Table 12: The most listed motivation for each strategy

Percent
Strategy Motivation who listed
Study old exams To learn about the exam 63.3 (219)
To identify what one is supposed to know/what is important 20.5 (71)
To identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not 10.7 (37)
It gives good/the best result, it works good/the best 8.7 (30)
Read course It includes the most important/most relevant 23.7 (62)
material/notes To increase comprehension 18.3 (48)
To restudy/Good repetition 13.7 (36)
To avoiding missing something/to include everything 11.8 (31)
important
To get an overview 11.5 (30)
To identify what one is supposed to know/what is important 8.8 (23)
Do practice problems It includes the most important/most relevant 23.2 (45)
To learn it 13.4 (26)
To increase comprehension 12.9 (25)
It gives good/the best result, it works good/the best 12.4 (24)
To practice 11.3 (22)
To restudy/Good repetition 10.3 (20)
Summarise To get an overview 23.8 (31)
I learn good/better that way 17.7 (23)
To restudy/Good repetition 12.3 (16)
Discuss with others To increase comprehension 41.1 (30)
I learn good/better that way 19.2 (14)
To avoiding missing something/to include everything 8.2 (6)
important
Flashcards/quiz Good to memorise and/or remember 24.5 (12)
I learn good/better that way 18.4 (9)
To restudy/Good repetition 14.3 (7)
It is easy (easy to implement, not very demanding) 14.3 (7)
Study in a group To increase comprehension 23.5 (8)
I learn good/better that way 14.7 (5)
Total number of students in parenthesis.

34
As Table 12 shows, students had different motivations for using a strategy. Some
strategies had a wide range of motivations like read course material/notes with five
motivations above ten percent while others like discuss with others that only have two
motivations above ten percent. The most common motivation for read course
material/notes was it includes the most important/most relevant information (23.7
percent), followed by to increase comprehension (18.3 percent). Examples of motivations
that were different from to increase comprehension were to get an overview (11.5
percent) and to avoiding missing something/to include everything important (11.8
percent). These different motivations may affect the interpretation of the used strategy
itself. For example, the strategy to read course material/notes might be interpreted
differently depending on the motivation, as shown in comments (3, 4).

(3) “Read through in order to understand the entirety of the course”

(4) “To get a quick overview of the course content”

In comment (3) the student read in order to increase comprehension while in comment
(4) the student read in order to get an overview. This indicates that it is hard to
determine what the students do by only asking them to list their strategies.

To illustrate, the most used strategy, study old exams, was more frequently motivated as
to learn about the exam with 63.3 percent of the students listed it, as shown in Table 12.
This was the motivation with the highest percentage in all strategies. Examples of this
motivation are shown in comments (5, 6).

(5) “In other courses I have learned that often the exams are similar to each
other and therefore this strategy is the most profitable”

(6) “To see how it is structured, what type of questions will come. To see if some
questions are recurring and if so, maybe put down more time on that topic”

These results indicate that the students wanted to learn the structure and content of the
exams to be more prepared for it. Other motivations that were listed are to identify what
one is supposed to know/what is important with 20.5 percent and to identify/test what
one knows/comprehends and not with 10.7 percent. In general, it seems that study old
exams was used to identify what was important to know and how they would be tested
on this, which could be used for planning and goal setting. The strategy also seems to be
used to evaluate one’s knowledge by testing it in some way.

The third most used strategy, do practice problems, was instead motivated by a variety of
reasons, as seen in Table 12. The most common motivation was it includes the most
important/most relevant information with 23.2 percent listing it. Other used motivations
for practice problem was to learn it, to increase comprehension, to practice, restudy/good
repetition and it gives good/the best result, it works well/the best. The motivations for do
practice problems had similarities to those for read course material/notes but not those
for study old exams.

35
Two strategies similar to each other were study old exams and practice problems. They
both consist of problems to solve. However, the motivations for using the strategies
were different which is shown in Table 12. The strategy study old exams’ three most used
motivations were to learn about the exam, to identify what one is supposed to know/what
is important and to identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not. While in the
strategy practice problems the three most used motivations were it includes the most
important/most relevant information, to learn it and to increase comprehension. In study
old exams the students try to identify and gain information about the task while in
practice problems they try to learn and understand something. The reason for this
difference might be that the old exams give the students more information than practice
problems. The old exams also provide valuable information about the examination itself
like structure and available time.

Students also listed other interesting motivations. In the strategy do practice problems
6.2 percent listed that they use the strategy to regulate level of difficulty. Summarise was
used to identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not by 5.4 percent (seven
students). Flashcards/quiz was used because it is fun by 8.2 percent and only 3.6 percent
used it to identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not. The strategy to study in a
group had motivations like easier to focus/spend time on 8.8 percent, because it is fun 5.9
percent and it feels good 5.9 percent. Two examples for easier to focus/spend time on are
shown in comments (7, 8).

(7) “Together because I find it hard to study by myself”

(8) “I have a hard time putting down enough time and to focus when I study
by myself, to study with 3 classmates makes it easier”

This illustrates that some strategies were used to make it easier to put down time on
studying. These motivations above further strengthen the claim that the students’ used
strategies for different reasons. It was surprising that to identify/test what one
knows/comprehends and not was barely used in flashcards/quiz and that is was used
more in summarise.

For each strategy, there were missing motivations. The number of missing motivations
ranged between five to ten percent for most strategies. However, restudy/repetition and
study in a group had a higher percentage of missing motivations with 23.6 and 17.6
percent respectively. This could indicate that the students had a harder time formulating
a motivation for these strategies.

Finally, the motivations for the three most used strategies in each type of course were
quite similar across programs. The most interesting difference was that bioengineering
students motivated read course material/notes with to increase comprehension to a
higher extent (36.7 percent) than civil engineering students (10.4 percent).

After Q2 in the questionnaire, which was the last question, the student was given the
opportunity to write a comment. Out of all students, 17 percent (71 students) wrote a
comment. The student comments were different from each other. Some helped gain an

36
insight into the students reasoning while some did not. Some were also amusing. Some
of the helpful comments are presented in the comments (9, 10, 11, 12).

(9) “I think that my own strategies in general can improve, how I study varies
to some extent for different courses”

(10) “I would like to get suggestions on study techniques from the teachers, for
every course”

(11) “This gave me some new suggestions, but also made me realise some things
I use”

(12) “It is easy, and one can do it everywhere, it does not take as much energy,
but it does not help as much ether”

In comment (9), the student stated that his/her strategies could be improved and that
what strategies he/she used depended on the course. This shows that some students
were aware that their strategies could be improved. In comment (10), the student
expressed that he/she would like help on how to study in the different courses. This
suggests that some students want to learn how to study more effectively and that the
teacher could have an important role in this process. In comment (11), the student
expressed that he/she learned something by completing the questionnaire. This is
interesting because this suggests that the student started to reflect on why he/she used
his/her strategies, which might increase the student’s awareness of what strategies they
use, by filling out the questionnaire. In comment (12), the student used a strategy
because it was convenient and easily accessible even though he/she did not find it that
helpful. This indicates that some students did not chose strategies based only on
effectiveness but also for other reasons like the convenience and the situation. For other
interesting or amusing comments see Attachment B.

4.3 Rating of effectiveness of learning strategies (RQ3)

In this section, the result for RQ3 is presented. RQ3 stated: How aware are the students
of the effectiveness of their strategies?

All 416 students were asked to rate the effectiveness of seven learning strategies, chosen
based on Dunlosky et al. (2013). They only rated the strategies they used and did so on a
scale from one to six, where one represented low effectiveness and six high
effectiveness. The result is shown in Table 13, where also Dunlosky et al.’s (2013) rating
is included.

37
Table 13: Students' rating of the effectiveness of their learning strategies in comparison to Dunlosky et al.’s (2013) rating

Rating by
Dunlosky et al. Mean. Student Std. Number of
Strategy (2013) rating Deviation students
Practice testing High 5.12 0.950 303
Self-explanation Moderate 4.96 0.978 217
Elaborative interrogation Moderate 4.90 1.013 196
Summarisation Low 4.84 1.113 235
Keyword mnemonic Low 4.60 1.114 171
Rereading Low 4.26 1.181 318
Highlighting/underlining Low 3.66 1.269 118

As shown in Table 13, all strategies were rated higher than 3.5 on average, which is
above the mean value on the scale. The students rated the effectiveness of the strategies
in the same order as Dunlosky et al. (2013) with practice testing as the most effective to
highlighting/underlining as least effective. However, note that Dunlosky et al. (2013)
only had three levels of ratings. To conclude, the students consider the strategies to have
different effectiveness. The average rating of each strategy was higher than 3.5 which
suggests that they in average find all strategies they use to be effective to some extent.
They rated the strategies in the same order as Dunlosky et al. (2013) in regards to
effectiveness.

Some strategies shown in Table 13 were used by more students than others. The most
used strategies were rereading with 318 and practice testing with 303 students who
used and rated the strategies. The least used strategy was highlighting/underlining with
118 students who rated it.

By comparing students’ rating of one strategy with their rating of another strategy one
can see which strategy they believed to be the most effective of the two. This
comparison was done with the students that used both practice testing and rereading to
see which one the individual student on average consider to be the most effective. 255
students out of 416 reported using both strategies. Of these students, 63 percent rated
practice testing as more effective than rereading, 15 percent rated rereading as more
effective and 22 percent rated both equally effective. This shows that most students that
used both strategies considered practice testing more effective than rereading.

Within each strategy in Table 13 above, there is a distribution of students rating of

effectiveness from one to six. How many students that rated each level is shown in Table
14 below.

Table 14: Distribution of students’ rating of effectiveness within each strategy

Number of students that rated the effectiveness of a strategy to be

Strategy either (1), (2), (3), (4), (5) or (6)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Practice testing 1 3 13 53 104 129
Self-explanation 0 2 20 36 86 73
Elaborative interrogation 1 1 15 50 62 67
Summarisation 2 6 22 45 83 77
Keyword mnemonic 2 4 22 44 60 39
Rereading 4 16 65 93 87 53
Highlighting/underlining 3 21 28 39 15 12

38
As shown in Table 14, some students used strategies that they rated as having low
effectiveness. In total, 66 students mentioned using a strategy that they rated as having
an effectiveness of one or two which can be considered low effectiveness. Most of the
low effectiveness ratings belonged to rereading and highlighting/underlining. One
student comment on using highlighting as shown in comment (13).

(13) “highlighting helps only to find back to the things I considered to be

important in order to write it down”

In comment (13), the student suggested that highlighting/underlining is used to

identify/find the information again rather than a way of learning the information. This
shows that some students used strategies they consider to not to be effective for
learning. However, they might still benefit from the strategy by identifying what to learn
or finding back to the highlighted information quicker than if it had not been highlighted.

39
5 Discussion
This thesis aimed to (1) map what learning strategies engineering students use in a real-
world setting, in real courses; (2) investigate the students’ motivation for choosing
certain learning strategies and (3) probe their metacognitive awareness of the
effectiveness of different learning strategies. It also aimed to investigate if differences
could be seen across engineering programs or across two types of courses (calculation
courses and conceptual courses). The participants, 416 engineering students, answered
a questionnaire where they listed the learning strategies they used in a specific course,
motivated why they used them and rated the effectiveness of some of the strategies they
used. Then, all the answers to the open response questions were categorised before the
data was analysed. The learning strategies were compared across programs and types of
courses both descriptively and with statistical tests. The motivations were analysed by
comparing the categories with previous research on students’ use of learning strategies,
research on the effectiveness of some learning strategies and theories on SRL and
metacognition. Students’ rating of the effectiveness of their learning strategies was also
compared to theories and previous research.

Our results revealed a complex picture of what learning strategies students use and why.
It also revealed that what learning strategies students used varied across courses but
not across programs. Overall, to study old exams was the most used strategy. It was used
mostly to obtain knowledge about the exam, but also to identify what was important and
to test oneself. The second most used strategy was to read course material or notes, the
third was to do practice problems and the fourth summarising. These strategies were
motivated in quite different ways by the students. Even when investigating students’ use
of only a single strategy, a wide range of motivations was listed. This was true for
several strategies and suggests that many strategies might not be single strategies but
many different. Regarding students’ awareness of the effectiveness of strategies they
used, the results show that students in average are quite aware. However, some students
rated strategies they used as having low effectiveness. As an example of the students’
awareness in average, highlighting/underlining and rereading, which was rated as
having low effectiveness by Dunlosky et al. (2013), were rated the lowest. Practice
testing on the other hand was rated the highest and has also been shown effective in
previous research (Dunlosky et al., 2013; Karpicke et al., 2009). Thus, this study
confirms the results of prior research on learning strategies to a large extent. In the
following sub-sections, the results presented above are discussed in the light of the three
research questions.

5.1 RQ1: What is the distribution of reported learning strategies across engineering
programs and types of courses?
In general, to study old exams, read course material/notes, do practice problems and
summarising were the four most used strategies. In previous research, to study old exams
has rarely been included or identified, even though Gurung et al. (2010) did so. Read
course material/notes on the other hand has been found to be a common strategy in
several studies (see for example Carrier, 2003; Gurung, 2005; Karpicke et al., 2009). This
is in line with our result, even though for example Karpicke et al. (2009) reported
rereading as a strategy rather than to read course material/notes. Some of the
participants did state that they reread, but these were very few. Note that this previous
research is in line with what we found in conceptual courses mostly, which could be

40
expected as it has been done on students enrolled in conceptual courses rather than
calculation courses. However, these similarities and differences compared to previous
research depending on type of course also points out that context might be an important
factor for students’ choice of strategies.

No statistically significant difference was found between the two programs. This might
be because the programs are after all both engineering programs. They, as typical
engineering programs, start with general engineering coursework before they then
become more specific over time (Grohs et al., 2018). As our participants were first- and
second-year students, their education so far could therefore be quite similar despite the
different specialisations. The context was in other words possibly not different enough
to affect what learning strategies students used. In addition, all students would have had
to have quite high grades to be admitted to the university and were therefore similar in
that sense too.

There was on the other hand a difference across types of courses in what learning
strategies students listed. The most common strategy, to study old exams, was widely
used in all courses, while to do practice problems was used mostly in the calculation
courses and both to read course material/notes and summarising were mostly used in
the conceptual courses. However, the difference across types of courses was not very
surprising, as the content is very different and students in calculation courses usually
get a list of problems to solve while those in conceptual courses get a list of pages to
read. In both types of courses, it is in our experience very common that the teacher
provides students with old exams. While engineering education has some common
features in the beginning of the education, the courses within a program can still be very
different (Grohs et al., 2018). The difference in context could therefore be considered
larger across types of courses than across programs in at least the first year. This could
explain why type of course but not program made a difference to what learning
strategies our participants used. Our findings that context matters is in line with
previous research were students have been shown to adapt their learning strategies
depending on the learning situation (Schmeck & Geisler-Brenstein, 1989) and suggested
to do the same depending on context (A. F. Hadwin et al., 2001; Van Etten et al., 1997).

A few things in our results indicate that some strategies may be more common or
unusual in specific courses depending on the material available. In the conceptual course
for the bioengineering students, the teacher did not provide students with old exams,
according to the teacher himself, and indeed this was also the course where the fewest
students listed that strategy. Flashcards/quizzes, on the other hand, were very popular in
the conceptual course in the civil engineering program, where already made flashcards
for that specific course were available online. This made the strategy much easier to use
than if students would have had to make their own flashcards, and that is probably why
so many students in that course listed this strategy. As is exemplified by student
comment (1) and (2), which are both from the civil engineering conceptual course, this
was also how the students themselves motivated their use of flashcards. This result
shows that not only the type of course matters, but many other factors may also
influence students’ choice of learning strategies.

41
The civil engineering conceptual course was also the only course where study old exams
was the most used strategy. This might be explained by the demands of the exam. All
courses except for this one entailed one big exam at the end of the course, including all
course content. Instead, this course had a slightly smaller exam earlier in the course,
including only part of the total content of the course, and then an essay at the end of the
course. As Gurung et al. (2010) suggested, how advanced both the course and the exam
are might affect what strategies students use. They exemplified studying practice exams
as a basic strategy that could be enough for a not very demanding exam. This is in line
with our findings, and also with Abd-El-Fattah’s (2011) findings that students adapt
their strategies to the cognitive processing demands of the exam. It is however difficult
for us to conclude the level of this exam, even though some students suggested it was
not very demanding.

In conclusion, the students did adapt their strategies to context, both regarding which
type of course they were enrolled in and what tools were available. The lack of
difference across programs may be explained by context and students’ being quite
similar in both programs.

5.2 RQ2: What motivates the students' choice of strategies?

Students listed a broad range of motivations to why they use their strategies. The
motivations were quite similar across programs. Some strategies, for example to
increase comprehension, were common for several strategies while some were very
specific for certain strategies. The most common motivation, to learn about the exam,
was very specific for the strategy to study old exams. When comparing the students’
motivations to research on learning strategies, it was clear the strategies were used for
different purposes. For example, some motivations suggested a strategy was used to
increase knowledge - in other words as a cognitive strategy (Flavell, 1979), while some
were rather used to plan, monitor or evaluate knowledge - in other words as
metacognitive strategies (Flavell, 1979). We will in this section discuss the motivations
for some of the most common strategies and what the motivations may tell us about
how students use their listed strategies.

Many strategies were motivated in different ways by different students, suggesting they
should not be considered one but several strategies. It is also important to note that one
strategy could have several motivations for the same student. One example that shows
that strategies can be used in very different ways by different students is that the
students who used read course material/notes and motivated it by to increase
comprehension might read in a completely different way than students who use it to get
an overview. In the first case, students might read thoroughly and really try to ask
themselves what the text means and try to make sense out of it by trying to connect it to
their previous knowledge. In contrast, students who read course material/notes to get an
overview might skim through pages, and maybe only read headings and look at figures.
This suggests reading cannot be considered one strategy but should rather be
considered several different strategies, as in Wade et al.’s (1990) study.

The most often used strategy, to study old exams, was also used in several different ways,
whereof many could be considered metacognitive strategies. Students used study old
exams mostly to learn about the exam, to identify what is important and to identify/test
what one knows/comprehends and not. The motivation to learn about the exam implies

42
students used the strategy to gain knowledge about the task (the exam) and what is
expected of them. Therefore, it suggests these students used study old exams as a
metacognitive strategy (Flavell, 1979) and as a part of the forethought phase of SRL,
where students plan and set goals for their learning (Zimmerman, 2008). Students who
studied old exams to identify what one is supposed to know/what is important can also be
considered to use it as metacognitive strategy, as it provides students with knowledge
about what they need to study (Flavell, 1979). It is quite similar to the motivation to
identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not, only that testing aims at evaluating
what you have learned while to identify what one is supposed to know/what is important
is probably used in the initial phase of the learning process to identify the most
important things to learn. Both provide students with knowledge that can guide further
studying and are therefore important parts in monitoring and regulating their own
learning (Flavell, 1979; Zimmerman, 2008). To identify what one is supposed to
know/what is important could be part of the forethought phase of SRL, where students
plan and set goals, while to identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not is instead
part of the self-evaluation phase (Zimmerman, 2008). The students who study old exams
for these purposes show metacognitive awareness of the importance of directing their
learning. Whether students who motivated the strategy with the fourth most common
motivation, it gives good results, were correct is unclear as we did not investigate
achievement, but a previous study suggested it gave good results for engineering
students in another type of course (Gurung et al., 2010) so they might as well be. To
conclude, students used study old exams mostly as a metacognitive strategy and mainly
as part of the forethought and self-evaluation phases of SRL. This highlights the
importance of asking students why they study as they do and not only what they do, as
these differences was revealed only when combining the strategy with the students’
motivations.

As opposed to study old exams, do practice problems was used mostly as a cognitive
strategy to increase knowledge (Flavell, 1979), even though some students used it as a
metacognitive strategy as they motivated it to increase comprehension. Examples of one
kind of motivation common for this strategy, that indicates students used the strategy to
increase their knowledge, include I learn well/better that way, to restudy/good
repetition, to learn it and good to memorise and /or remember. The strategies motivated
with this kind of motivation, including the strategy to do practice problems, could have
been selected by the students in the forethought phase of SRL, and thereby be part of the
performance phase (Zimmerman, 2008). As we did not ask how they used strategies in
combination, this is hard to know. Another common motivation for do practice problems
was to increase comprehension. This motivation is less straightforward to interpret than
many of the other motivations. When students not only try to learn content but also try
to understand it, this process inevitably includes some sort of metacognitive monitoring
of their own comprehension of the material, in this case practice problems. They first
have to be aware that they need to increase their comprehension to initiate the activity,
and then monitor their comprehension when they do the practice problems. As part of
increasing their comprehension, they are probably also increasing their knowledge,
which suggests the strategy is also cognitive (Flavell, 1979). In other words, they
metacognitively monitor their comprehension while increasing their knowledge by
performing cognitive strategies in the performance phase of SRL (Flavell, 1979;
Zimmerman, 2008). This is very much in line with Flavell’s (1979) definition that one

43
strategy might be used in order to achieve a cognitive or metacognitive goal or both
types of goals, whereof the later seems to be the case here.

When comparing to do practice problems to study old exams, which could be at first sight
be considered as similar strategies in the calculation courses, it is also important to
notice that these strategies are not only used in several different ways within
themselves. Even though some students may use them in similar ways, the overall
conclusion is still that students use these strategies for quite different purposes, despite
their similarities.

Some strategies were used not only for as cognitive or metacognitive strategies, but
rather as strategies aiming to self-regulate behaviour and motivation. One strategy that
highlights this was to study in a group. As discuss with others, it was used to increase
comprehension, for example by getting new perspectives from other students, which is
similar to what Van Etten et al. (1997) found about students’ perceptions of the benefits
of studying in a group. A previous study on engineering students in a statistical course
however found that students who mainly solved problems by themselves performed
better than students who mainly solved problems together with peers (Grohs et al.,
2018). This could suggest students in our study used a strategy they thought was
effective, but that was in fact not. We did not investigate this, but if it was to be true for
our participants, their judgement may stem from metacognitive illusions that make
them misjudge their learning (Serra & Metcalfe, 2009).

However, study in a group had one kind of motivation, that was also listed for some
other strategies, that discuss with others did not. Some students used this strategy to
actually do something instead of not doing anything, as they wrote that it is easier to
focus/spend time on or it feels good, as indicated by student comment (7) and (8). In
other words, they used this strategy to regulate their behaviour and motivation, which
makes it an SRL-strategy for those students (Pintrich, 2000). Another example of a
motivation that indicates a strategy was used to regulate behaviour is it includes the
most important/most relevant information, which may limit the time students have to
spend studying and thereby suggests regulation of behaviour. A final example is student
comment (13), where the student says he/she does not use highlighting as a strategy on
its own, but rather to make it easier to find back to the important things, in other words
to minimise the time that takes. The two last examples also show that students used
strategies that they thought were effective not in the sense that they learned much
content per time unit, but in order to minimise the amount of time certain strategies
take. To conclude, students did not only use strategies for cognitive or metacognitive
purposes but also to self-regulate behaviour and motivation. This is important to have in
mind when trying to draw conclusions on students’ metacognitive awareness of the
effectiveness of different learning strategies, as their use of strategies might be
misleading without follow-up questions on why they use them.

To connect to Karpicke et al.’s (2009) focus on testing it is interesting to look at the

motivation to identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not. While flashcards/quiz
was mostly used to memorise, not to identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not,
testing was a relatively common motivation overall. The fact that flashcards/quiz was
not used to practice testing is in line with what Wissman et al. (2012) found and what
Karpicke et al. (2009) suggested. However, about 19 percent of our participants

44
motivated a strategy (in most cases not flashcards/quiz) with to identify/test what one
knows/comprehends and not, in other world used their strategy for self-evaluation. For
example, seven students in our study used summarising to test themselves, a use of
summarising highlighted also by Dunlosky et al. (2013). Similarly, Granescu and Literat
(2013) found that 20 percent of their participants used self-evaluation of some sort. On
the contrary, Gurung (2005) found testing knowledge to be one of the least used
strategies. This was true in our study as well, regarding the strategy practice testing.
Nevertheless, the motivations revealed that students either used strategies they did not
list as practice testing to actually practice testing or that they did not list all of their
strategies. For example, to study old exams, to do practice problems and summarising
were all motivated with to identify/test what one knows/comprehends and not by some
students.

To summarise, there is a broad range as to how students motivate why the use their
strategies. This is also true within strategies. Based on the students’ motivations, we
found examples of strategies from all three phases of SRL and aiming at both cognitive
and metacognitive goals. In addition, some students motivated certain strategies in a
way that indicated that they regulated their behaviour or motivation by using these
strategies. Some students also used strategies for several purposes at once. These
results further emphasise the importance of not only asking students what they do, but
also why they do it.

5.3 RQ3: How aware are the students of the effectiveness of their strategies?
As shown in Table 13 in section 4.3 Rating of effectiveness of learning strategies (RQ3),
the strategy rated as being highly effective by Dunlosky et al. (2013) got the highest
average rating by the students and the ones rated as having moderate effectiveness got a
little lower rating. Finally the ones rated as having low utility by Dunlosky et al. (2013)
got the lowest average rating by the students. Summarisation was rated higher by the
students than the rest of the strategies rated as having low effectiveness by Dunlosky et
al. (2013), and almost as high as elaborative interrogation. This was also in line with
Dunlosky et al. (2013), as they suggested summarising might deserve a higher rating for
undergraduates that are skilled at summarising. The average ratings were all above 3.5,
which suggests students in average thought all strategies were at least moderately
effective. This is not in line with Dunlosky et al.’s (2013) rating, but it is important to
note that students only rated the strategies they used, which suggests they should find
the strategies useful in some way. Students who did not report using the strategies
might have rated them lower than the students who used them, which would have
lowered the average rating.

However, some students reported to use strategies they themselves rated as having low
effectiveness. This suggests student awareness might not always be consistent with
what they do. For example, 318 students reported that they used rereading as a strategy,
which made it the most used strategy of the ones listed, but still they rated it quite low.
One explanation for this is the reason stated in student comment (12), that he/she found
the strategy easy to use everywhere and not very demanding but was aware it was not
that effective. Possibly, the alternative to use this strategy would in some situations be to
do nothing. This suggests students do not only choose strategies based on how effective
they think the strategies are, but also based on the situation. This is in line with Van
Etten et al.’s (1997) conclusion that students sometimes are aware of the benefits of

45
certain strategies but still do not always use that knowledge. It is also in line with our
conclusions in section 5.2 RQ2: What motivates the students' choice of strategies?, that
students not only use strategies for cognitive or metacognitive purposes but also to self-
regulate behaviour and motivation and that effectiveness also may mean to actually
make oneself spend time studying or minimise the time needed for certain learning
activities.

As the strategy practice testing in this part of our study not only include the testing effect
but also to test for feedback, it is hard to compare it directly to Karpicke et al. (2009).
However, while Karpicke et al. (2009) suggested that students lack metacognitive
awareness of the testing effect, our study suggests students are metacognitively aware
of the effectiveness of testing. This should be of greater importance as testing for
feedback is even more effective than testing without the possibility to restudy (Dunlosky
et al., 2013). In addition, our results suggest that a majority of the students who use both
practice testing and rereading think testing is more effective. Karpicke et al. (2009) made
testing an unattractive alternative, when students could not choose to both test and
restudy. As we instead asked students to rate their strategies, we might have caught
their awareness more accurately. On the other hand, we also found examples in line with
Karpicke et al.’s (2009) suggestion that students are not aware of what learning
strategies are effective. Even though the average result on Q2 suggested students are
aware of the effectiveness of their learning strategies, there were students that found
practice testing to be ineffective but rereading to be highly effective. In conclusion, our
results speak in favour of our participants’ metacognitive awareness of the effectiveness
of their strategies, even if this is not true for every single student.

5.4 Limitations
Even though the preliminary design of the questionnaire was evaluated by conducting a
pilot survey with a focus group to make sure students would interpret the questions the
same way as us, it is possible that not all 416 participants did so. In addition, the last
question, Q2, was changed drastically after the pilot survey and not evaluated in the
same organised way as the first questions. However, we obtained almost no indications
from the students’ answers suggesting they had misunderstood the questions. Still, some
students might have misinterpreted the first question, Q1, and listed the strategies in the
order they use them or from the ones they think are the most important to the ones they
think are the least important instead of listing them from the most often used to the
least often used. This risk was minimised by explaining this part of the question both in
text and orally when introducing the survey to them. In addition, at least one of us, or in
one case an assistant with good knowledge of the survey, was available in the room in
case any questions would arise.

The survey was executed during mandatory occasions in the calculation course in
bioengineering and the conceptual course in civil engineering. In the remaining two
courses, it was conducted during lectures that were not mandatory. This clearly affected
the response rate in these courses negatively. Possibly, students who chose not to go to
these lectures might have used somewhat different learning strategies, if they had
actively chosen not to attend the lectures.

The students were only asked to rate the effectiveness for strategies they used in the
course they answered the questionnaire for. Even though it is not a limitation to the

46
current design, it could have added further value to this thesis to see what the students
thought of the effectiveness of the strategies they did not use. It could have provided
additional input on students’ metacognitive awareness and reasons for choosing to use
or not use certain strategies. Students’ might have chosen not to use strategies they do
not find effective, but we do not know that.

As two of the survey questions were open response questions, there is a chance that
some answers were misinterpreted. However, the intercoder reliability was very high
which suggests this was not a big issue.

Regarding context, there are a few obvious limitations. First, the two conceptual courses
were not identical, as were not the calculation courses. This might have affected the
comparison across programs, as courses were assumed to be comparable. Second, the
conceptual courses were part of the second year of each program respectively, while the
calculation courses were part of the first year. As was suggested by the students in the
pilot survey, students might change their strategies over time and with increased
experience, meaning this difference could have affected the result so that the difference
between courses became larger. Finally, the teachers were not the same in the courses of
the same type. As Bielaczyc et al. (1995) stated, teachers may change students’ choice of
strategies with deliberate teaching. Whether the teachers in these courses actively tried
to affect students’ strategies and to which extend was not investigated in this study but
might have affected the results.

Regarding generalisability, the small number of courses and programs makes it difficult
to draw any general conclusions on students learning strategies in engineering
education in general. All participants were also students in the same university and in
their first or second year at their program. However, our results and conclusions may
still give teachers and researchers a suggestion for how engineering students might
study in these particular types of courses, especially the first- and second-year students.
More research is needed in different contexts to further increase the comprehension of
engineering students’ use of learning strategies.

Finally, this study has the same limitation regarding method as other studies using self-
report questionnaires. As Winne and Jamieson-Noel (2002) and Winne and Jamieson-
Noel (2003) concluded, self-report data might not be completely accurate as it is based
on the students’ perception of what they do. Students may for example inaccurately
approximate the time they spend on each strategy (Winne & Jamieson-Noel, 2002) or
how often they use them, which would affect our result.

5.5 Conclusion
To conclude this thesis, in this section we will answer the three research questions
shortly, discuss some further implications of our findings, state our contribution and
finally give some suggestions for future research.

Regarding the distribution of reported learning strategies across engineering programs

and types of courses (RQ1), a difference was found across types of courses but not
programs. This means students adapt their strategies based on the context and the
material to be learned. To do practice problems was for example common in the
calculation courses while to read course material/notes was common in the conceptual

47
courses. The students’ motivations for their choice of strategies (RQ2), showed that
students motivated their strategies in a number of different ways. The motivations did
not only explain why they used their strategies but also how. Some motivations
suggested students used a strategy to reach a cognitive goal, while other motivations for
the same strategy suggested it was used to reach a metacognitive goal. This suggests
that some strategies are not only one but several strategies. The most common
motivation was to learn about the exam, which suggests that students find it important
to learn about the task at hand to be able to plan and set goals for their learning and
thereby engage in self-regulation. Our findings also suggest that students not only adapt
their strategies to the type of course, but also to the situation and therefore sometimes
use strategies they believe to be less effective in some senses. Additionally, some
students use strategies to actively regulate their behaviour and motivation. Finally, the
students in general were shown to be aware of the effectiveness of different strategies
(RQ3), while some students instead showed a lack of awareness regarding certain
strategies.

An interesting remark is that students by simply completing the questionnaire may have
started to reflect more upon their own learning, as exemplified in student comments (9)
and (11). Note that the questionnaire did not suggest anything about what strategies
may be considered effective and which may not, and that two out of three questions
were open response questions designed to capture what students do and why without
affecting their answers too much. Previous research has pointed out that there are many
benefits for engineering students to engage in metacognitive activities, which reflecting
upon their own learning indeed is (Grohs et al., 2018). Our questionnaire takes almost
no time to complete, only 10 to 15 minutes, but still may start a process.

As suggested by student comment (11), students may use strategies they have not really
thought about. This was also something we suspected when conducting the survey, as
many students seemed to find it really hard to answer the questions when we observed
them writing their answers, but still many students motivated their choices in ways that
showed both metacognitive awareness and suggested that they at least partly self-
regulated their learning. Perhaps they regulate their learning and engage in
metacognitive strategies unconsciously, as Flavell (1979) suggested. That does not have
to mean that they are not good at it, but they could probably benefit from doing it more
consciously and being more aware of how they make their choices. What they do might
also be partly regulated by their social environment Hadwin, Järvelä, & Miller (Hadwin,
Järvelä, & Miller, 2018), as students learn from each other and older students what
learning strategies are effective to use. This could be of even greater importance at
Chalmers University of Technology, where traditions promote this transfer of
knowledge between old and new students. In one previous study, many teachers in
engineering education pointed out that they thought the social context was important
for engineering students to succeed (Ferrare & Miller, 2019). These aspects, both the
social aspect and how consciously students regulate their learning, could be interesting
for future research to look into, as suggested at the end of this section.

Another important aspect of students’ learning strategies outside class is what happens
in class, in other words the teachers’ role in what learning strategies students use
(Bielaczyc et al., 1995). To connect to the engineering education context, it is worth
noticing that teacher’s views on learning and teaching have been shown important for

48
students’ persistence in STEM-courses (Ferrare & Miller, 2019). The teacher’s role was
also highlighted by a student in our study, who commented that he/she would have
liked to get support from the teacher on which learning strategies to use, in every course
(see student comment 10). The student seems to have been aware of the importance of
context but wanted help. It could be argued that students get this help to some extent
already, if teachers provide them with pages to read, problems to solve or old exams to
study. These materials could however be used in a number of different ways, which
hardly makes them strategies in themselves. It is possible that teachers try to affect what
students do also in how they design their lectures, what tasks they choose to be part of
the course and at what time and so on, but if so, this might be something they do not
explain to the students. Therefore, the students might not notice it. To be able to affect
what strategies students use, teachers would also have to have an idea of how they want
students to study, which suggests that teachers themselves for example have to have
knowledge about the effectiveness of different strategies. In other words, the teachers
have to self-regulate their own teaching and learning to support students learning
(Kramarski, 2018). This regulation and support is probably easier to achieve if they
actually know what learning strategies their typical students use and how. Possibly they
could guess this, but they might as well be incorrect. To resolve this, they could use our
questionnaire to get knowledge of what their students do outside class to learn the
content of their specific course and use this knowledge to design their teaching to better
support students’ learning. If the teachers succeed in supporting engineering students’
use of metacognitive strategies they may also give more metacognitive feedback, which
has been shown to be beneficial for engineering students (Grohs et al., 2018).

This thesis contributes to the research on learning strategies in general and engineering
students’ strategies in particular by increasing our understanding of both what students
do and why they do so. We have not only mapped what strategies engineering students
use, but also investigated how and why they use them, how aware they are of the
effectiveness of their strategies, and if they adapt their strategies to the type of course.
By doing so, we have acquired a complex picture of students’ choice and use of learning
strategies. In addition, the questionnaire developed is a contribution in itself, as it
constitutes a theory and research-based tool which, as advocated by Hadwin et al.
(2001), takes into account the context of learning (both type of course and program).
Furthermore, as students are also asked why they use their strategies and to rate the
effectiveness of some of their strategies, the questionnaire makes it possible to dig
deeper into students’ learning strategies outside class and the presumably sometimes
complex reasons why they do so. The questionnaire also forces the students to reflect
upon their own learning, which might in itself be beneficial.

In conclusion, this study increases our understanding of engineering students’ learning

strategies and thereby provides important knowledge both for teachers to regulate their
teaching and for researchers to design effective interventions. The questionnaire could
be used to further increase this knowledge and thereby help providing an even better
base for improving teaching to better support students learning and for designing
effective interventions.

Future research could expand the complex mapping of students’ learning strategies
outside class to other types of courses in engineering education, to compare it across
years and also expand it into other types of education, both higher education and for

49
example high school and adult education. In addition to mapping strategies one by one,
it would be interesting to map the whole process of what strategies students use in
which order and why, even though some more recent research has done this to some
extent (Molenaar & Järvelä, 2014). Future research could also investigate the teachers’
role in relation to which learning strategies students use, and design interventions
aiming to improve students’ learning by either making the teachers support the
students’ choice of strategies or making the students themselves reflect more upon their
learning. Finally, future research could combine our questionnaire with focus groups or
individual interviews to further increase the understanding of what students actually do
and why. This could also give insight into how conscious the students’ choices are and
what role their social environment play.

50
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54
Attachment A
Enkät om lärandestrategier
Vi är två studenter på mastersprogrammet Lärande och ledarskap som gör mastersarbete
(exjobb) på institutionen för vetenskapens kommunikation och lärande och undersöker vilka
strategier studenter på Chalmers använder när de pluggar. Vi skulle därför behöva din hjälp
genom att du svarar på frågorna nedan om hur just du pluggar i kursen KMG050 - Cell- och
molekylärbiologi 2. Enkäten består av några bakgrundsfrågor samt två större frågor och tar
ungefär 10 minuter att fylla i. Läs igenom frågorna ordentligt och svara så uppriktigt du kan.

Enkäten besvaras anonymt. Inga uppgifter som möjliggör identifiering av dig som besvarar
enkäten kommer samlas in och din föreläsare eller examinator kommer inte ha tillgång till
dina enkätsvar. Genom att besvara enkäten godkänner du att dina svar används i vårt
mastersarbete samt för forskning.

Bakgrundsfrågor:

Kvinna Man Annan könsidentitet

Vilket program läser du?

Bioteknik, civilingenjör

Annat (ange detta):__________________________________

Hur många år har du studerat på universitet, detta läsår inräknat?

Tekniskt basår räknas inte in i denna fråga.

1 år 2 år Mer än 2 år

Har du läst tekniskt basår?

Ja Nej

A-1
Fråga 1a:
Vilka strategier använder du när du pluggar inför tentan i kursen KMG050 - Cell- och
molekylärbiologi 2? Lista alla strategier du använder och rangordna dem från de du
använder oftast till de du använder minst ofta.

Fråga 1b:
Motivera för var och en av dina tre oftast använda strategier varför du använder just dem?
(Har du listat färre än tre strategier, motivera då för de du listat.)

A-2
Fråga 2:
Besvara frågan genom att följa de två stegen nedan. Har du kommentarer finns det
möjlighet att skriva dem längst ner på sidan.
1) Läs strategierna noga och kryssa i vilka av dem du använder i kursen
KMG050 - Cell- och molekylärbiologi 2.
2) Hur effektiva tror du att strategierna du kryssat i är för att lära sig det som kommer på
tentan I kursen KMG050 - Cell- och molekylärbiologi 2? Ringa in en siffra för var och en
av strategierna du använder.
Jag använder den
här strategin

Identifiera/komma på
nyckelord och skapa mentala
Låg Hög
bilder av dessa för att komma 1 2 3 4 5 6
effektivitet effektivitet
ihåg/lära sig informationen
nyckelorden kopplar till

Låg Hög
Skriva sammanfattningar 1 2 3 4 5 6
effektivitet effektivitet

Kontrollera vad man kan av

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kursinnehållet genom att testa 1 2 3 4 5 6
effektivitet effektivitet
sig själv på det

Läsa igenom kursmaterial

Låg Hög
och/eller egna anteckningar 1 2 3 4 5 6
effektivitet effektivitet
mer än en gång

Stryka under eller över

Låg Hög
(highlighta) i böcker eller 1 2 3 4 5 6
effektivitet effektivitet
anteckningar

Försöka förklara för sig själv

Låg Hög
varför fakta eller koncept är 1 2 3 4 5 6
effektivitet effektivitet
sanna/stämmer

Förklara för sig själv hur ny

information hänger ihop med
Låg Hög
gammal eller förklara de olika 1 2 3 4 5 6
effektivitet effektivitet
steg man tagit när man löst ett
problem/en uppgift

Eventuell kommentar (fortsätt på nästa sida om du behöver mer plats):

A-3
(Fortsättning på eventuell kommentar)

A-4
Attachment B
Below, examples of students’ comments and motivations are presented. Some are
insightful while others are interesting or amusing.

'“I went deeper where I thought the lectures did not cover all the content and where I
wanted to learn more”

“If something is hard or when one has not taken notes of something it can be good to hear it
in another way”

“When discussing with classmates one explains to each other or provide insights into things
that may not be previously understood”

“Watched Khan academy to understand the things I missed in the old exams”

”Good to go back to notes and so on in order to see what one needs to know”

”In order to restudy everything that the teacher have presented”

“One gets an overview of what the exam will be about. Has worked on other exam”

“The book is in English and it is harder to understand examples and theories. Therefore, I
use notes instead”

“Examples from the lectures are what the teacher think is important and therefore it is
likelier to appear on the exam”

”Extra motivation to actually study when you are with your classmates”

“Study in a group – creates peer pressure to work and it is more fun”

“We usually discuss the more extensive problems and solve it together if we do not get it”

”I like small digitalised test, because then I do not need to bring all the books in order to
study and can do it whenever I want”

“do not like diagnostic exams, do not suit my learning style, creates stress”

“there are a lot of facts in lectures and literature that you do not need for the exam.
Therefore, it is unnecessary to study on that, you do not have time. Usually the type of exam
is similar”

“One does not remember everything you write the first time. “Repetition is the mother of
knowledge.” Statement from a high school teacher that cited someone else”

B-1
“It sticks better to my memory when I visualise the information”

”The most effective according to me is to test yourself in different ways in order to find out
what you know/need to practice more on”

”One does not test oneself do to learn and it is only for checking what one knows”

”I read through notes, but rarely more than one time”

“To read course literature is a strategy for those who have not adapted to university, totally
unnecessary, expensive but sometimes also important”

“video lectures because I learn much. Same knowledge in 10 minutes as in a 1 hour and 30
minutes lecture”

“Work 45 minutes and rest 15 minutes because research indicates that we cannot work
actively for longer periods of time”

”Focus on other things, many balls in the air and a lack of interest for the subject”

Procrastination:
“I often finishing the assignments and prepare for the exam at the last minute. But I study
effective for a few hours before exam, has worked in the past”

“It will lead me onto the right path”

“The way of university is that you have to study old exams. It does not matter how much you
understood on the lectures”

“I have 3 children and a messy apartment”

“In the beginning you try to follow everything in the course but then you give up and take
everything in the end”

“I learn the most by doing mistakes”

“If I am at home, I will not get anything done”

“Everyone helps to drag everyone forward, like in cross country skiing. Ten kilometres are
easier to do in a group”

“Rest body and brain → increase focus”

B-2