Recent studies suggest that making judgments of learning (JOLs)--self-assessment of current learning status--may not merely be a neutral cognitive process, but can directly improve learning through what is called 'JOL reactivity'. This study investigated whether making JOLs can facilitate the learning of previously studied materials (backward…

The persistence of learning styles as a concept in educational discourse and research is paradoxical, given the overwhelming evidence discrediting the matching hypothesis, the notion that aligning teaching methods with students' preferred learning styles enhances achievement. This paper examines the resurgence of learning styles across…

Critical thinking and strategic processing have become ubiquitous both in the educational research literature as well as practice. However, neither of these constructs has had commonly agreed upon definitions or common agreement on how they relate to each other. This review first lays the conceptual stage for how these constructs have been defined…

The generative learning strategy of learning by drawing has received increased attention in recent years. Although this strategy is regularly used by educators, the literature suggests that the effectiveness of the method depends on several factors. In this review, we highlight recent research trends and methodological progress within the field.…

The literature on cognitive processing and strategic processing is murky with regard to how these types of processing influence learning. One reason for this is that the frameworks used to investigate these relations have separately focused on different aspects related to cognitive processing with little integration between them. To address these…

Recent research has suggested that students prefer restudying over retrieval practice when learning difficult materials, despite the latter being a more effective learning strategy. The current study investigated whether an instructional intervention can improve the use of retrieval practice for both easy and difficult materials. In Experiment 1,…

Efklides and colleagues developed the Metacognitive and Affective model of Self-Regulated Learning (MASRL) to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework of self-regulated learning (SRL). The distinguishing feature of MASRL is that it stresses metacognitive experiences and other subjective experiences (e.g., motivational, affective) as critical…

Learners' attempts to regulate their own motivation for studying in the face of tedious or difficult tasks is an important aspect of self-regulated learning. Therefore, motivation regulation has received increasing attention over the past few years, resulting in numerous publications using different definitions of the construct, samples,…

This study was conducted to meta-analytically investigate the influence of teaching vs. no teaching expectancy on the learning effects of teaching after preparatory learning. A meta-analysis of 39 studies revealed that a weighted mean effect size for the effect of teaching after studying with or without teaching expectancy vs. merely studying…

In higher education, many students make poor learning strategy decisions. This, in part, results from the counterintuitive nature of effective learning strategies: they enhance long-term learning but also cost high initial effort and appear to not improve learning (immediately). This mixed-method study investigated how students make learning…

How do learners make sense of what they are learning? In this article, I present a new framework of sense-making based on research investigating the benefits and boundaries of generative learning activities (GLAs). The generative sense-making framework distinguishes among three primary sense-making modes--explaining, visualizing, and…

Training of self-regulated learning is most effective if it supports learning strategies in combination with metacognitive regulation, and learners can transfer their acquired metacognitive regulation skills to different tasks that require the use of the same learning strategy (near transfer). However, whether learners can transfer metacognitive…

Increasing the playback speed of video lectures is popular amongst students as a time saving strategy, but does this negatively impact test performance? Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effect of increasing video lecture playback speed on content test performance. A meta-regression with robust variance estimation was used to…

Distinguishing easily confusable categories requires learners to detect their predictive differences. Interleaved sequences -- switching between categories -- help learners to detect such differences. Nonetheless, learners prefer to block -- switching within a category -- to detect commonalities. Across two 2 × 2-factorial experiments, we…

Over 100 years of research shows that retrieval practice is highly effective for enhancing student learning. When managing their own study behaviors, however, students tend to avoid using retrieval practice as a way of learning. Understanding and improving students' study decisions is important given the increasingly autonomous nature of…