The Role of Learning Strategies in Students' Success
S. Ahmad Hashemi
PhD Student, Science & Research Branch, Islamic Azad University (IAU), Tehran, Iran
Hmd_hashemi@yahoo.com
Ezatolah Naderi, Ali Shariatmadari, and Maryam Seif Naraghi
Science & Research Branch, Islamic Azad University (IAU), Tehran, Iran
Abouzar Hemmati
M.S Student, Science & Research Branch, Islamic Azad University (IAU), Fars, Iran
Abstract
This research is aimed at the study of the application of learning strategies in successful and unsuccessful students at the Islamic Azad University, Lamerd branch. It is studied how the above mentioned students have used or not used the following items in education: motivation strategies, point of view, time management, anxiety overcoming, concentration, information processing, main idea selection, study skills, self assessment, and exam participation. To do so I have used LASSI questionnaire among the students of English, business and industrial management, primary education, political sciences, and chemistry engineering. The results are then analyzed by different approaches of descriptive statistics as wall as inferential statistics including T-test, one-way ANOVA, regression, and correlation coefficient. After the above criteria were applied and analyzed it was discovered that there is a significant difference between the successful and unsuccessful students regarding the use of study skills. In other words the application of learning strategies is generally more among the successful students on the average.
Introduction
Weinstein Mayer (cited in Mayo (1993, p. 130-133)) , has divided the cognitive strategies which are used in information processing into three main categories: 1) review or repetition , 2) organization, and 3) expansion or meaning development .The application of these three strategies could be seen as being complementary in a way that one can use the review strategy to keep new information in short-term memory ,organization strategy to relate different complements of new information, and expansion strategy to keep external relationship among new information and old information so that the old information will be stored in long-term memory.
Review or Repetition Strategies
A. Simple Review Strategy. This strategy includes naming or remembering the materials that have been presented to the learner during the learning time. The purpose of this review is to select and understand the information units which are used to be transmitted to short-term memory. As one gets older, he or she uses this strategy more than before.
B. Complex Review Strategy. This strategy includes copying materials, underlining the topics which are presented in the class, and word by word note taking. The purpose is to make sure that the information is entered into the short-term memory to make the procening possible. Michele et. al. (1994, p. 210-214) in a study titled as: extensive verbal review of students cognitive behaviour showed that extensive verbal review learning strategy improves the information of those students who are near to fail in their examination therefore it may be taught to this type of students.
Organization Strategy
A. Simple Organization Strategy. It includes grouping and arranging the learned materials. This grouping could be based on the pronunciation of word with regard to time, meaning, and other things.
B. Complex Strategy. It is one of the most important cognitive strategies which has a substantial role in learning and recalling the teaching materials.
We organize the materials in older to connect different parts of information and then learn the whole of it instead of learning bit by bit (Armored, cited in Seif 2006, p. 73). According to this strategy we can say that teaching is a deliberate attempt to make suitable cognitive constructions in older to make the materials meaningful and to help learn the materials better (Seif, 2002, p 281) and one of the most important methods that we humans use to get meaning out of different experiences is to find the common elements of different experiences.
C. Self–Regulation Strategies. These strategies include activities done to revision and regulate thoughts, behaviours, and individual and environmental resources and one generally affected by cognitive strategies of students.
Expansion or Developing Strategies
A. Simple Expansion Strategies. It helps the learner to store new information in his long-term memory by creating meaningful relationship among them. For example to learn a verse of poem better, he makes a mental picture of it or makes some important sentences by the first words to facilitate learning and remembering.
B. Complex Expansion Strategies. This strategy includes comparison, reason collection, summarizing, note-taking from his words, explanation and asking and answering. Note-taking and summarizing, which is a kind of complex expansion strategy, is one stage of some study styles for example s-rum-r method. Different stages of this study style are as follow: performance study, reading, underlining the materials, note taking, and review.
Literature Review
In a study by Wilson, a contemporary American psychologist (1992), cited by Abdullahi (2007, p. 85) it has been reported that metacognition is one of one hundred topics that has been studied in cognitive psychology and transformation field.
It has also analyzed the role of metacognition in different fields such as memory learning and problem solving thought. Metacognition judgment about learning and memory (that is known as meta-memory) is divided into four categories: the first judgment is the prediction of easiness or difficulty of the lesson.
The second judgment happens during or after the learning and includes prediction of performance in future exams and this prediction is done by surveying the parts which have been studied recently.
The third judgment which happens during or after the learning and includes judgment about those parts of learning which is not remembered now, but the person thinks that he knows them and also the prediction about whether they would be remembered after a mental review or a test or not. The fourth judgment is related to the certainty about recalling the answers which have come during the exams.
The first judgment maybe called prediction, but the last one is result-based, since this analysis happens after learning. Studies show that these four categories of judgment do not have a high correlation to each other. In order to find out that how much the learner is realistic in his meta-cognition judgment and if it is possible that the learners have unrealistic judgment in their metacognition judgment, some studies have been done and many of them (Pitz 1997, Brono 1973, Dirkzwager 1993, Vanlenthe 1992, Fabre 1993, Leclercq cited in Abdollahi 2007, p. 85) concluded that when subjects are tested about their own assessment they score their performance higher than its real amount.
Pentrich 1989, Pentrich and Diegroth 1990, Pentrich and Garcia 1991, Skephle 1994 cited in Braten (1999, p. 309-327) state that many problems that students have in their learning process are related to their weak cognitive and mate-cognitive skills. Students who show weak and passive performance in learning are those who are unaware of their mind activity, and they are not only unaware of suitable and useful cognitive strategies to facilitate their performance, but also unable to start effectively the self-adjustment process and evaluate the use of these strategies.
If the student be active in learning process and feels that he needs to learn and be able to understand the relationship of learning to its related subjects, he will comprehend the materials deeply (Shariatmadiari, 1997, p. 23). Several studies have shown the close relationship between cognitive strategies and educational skills and have introduced the students’ awareness and use of study and learning strategies as necessary condition for their educational achievement. For example, Haught, et al, (1998, p. 25-40) pointed in their study to the effectiveness of the students’ educational performance feedback to improve their educational performance by means of LASSI questionnaire.
Study Questions
1. Is there any significant difference among the students of different fields in the amount of learning strategies application?
2. Is there any significant difference between successful and unsuccessful students in the amount of learning strategies application?
3. What is the portion and the amount of effect of each learning strategies on the students' average?
Study Method
This study is of correlation and comparative type and aims at surveying the amount of learning strategies application by successful and unsuccessful students. In fact, in this study the LASSI questionnaire is given to the students and its results is analyzed in two groups of successful and unsuccessful students.
Subjects
All the successful and unsuccessful students in business and industrial management, English teaching and literature, chemistry engineering, primary education, and political science in the 2007-2008 academic year participated in this study. The successful students are those 16%whose average is higher than other 84% in normal curve, and unsuccessful students are those 16% whose average is lower than other 84% in normal curve. With regard to the fact that the number of all students in the above fields is 1127 (table 1), 32% of this number was chosen as a sample of the study.
Table1: Population
Data Collection
This study used the LASSI learning strategy questionnaire which is Weinsteins’ learning strategy questionnaire and includes 77 items. This questionnaire has ten subunits: attitude, motivation, time management, anxiety overcoming, concentration, information processing, main point selection, study skills, self-assessment, and test taking strategies. Khadivzade, et al, in 2002 translated this questionnaire into Persian and applied it at mashhad medical university on 10 students at two-week intervals by interview and questionnaire methods to understand whether the sentences were understandable by students and if the questionnaire was internally valid. Its Cronbach’s alpha was also determined which was as fallow for different scales: whole 85%, attitude 62% motivation 64% time management 64% , anxiety overcoming 79% concentration 83% , information processing 75% main paint selection 62%study skills 61% self-assessment 67%, and test-taking strategies 77% (Khadivzade, et al , 2002, p. 41).
In this study, the students filled and delivered the questionnaire based on a timed –schedule.
Data analysis
In older to analyze the data, different descriptive statistic methods and inferential statistics (t-test, one-way ANOVA, regression, and correlation coefficient) were used. We have defined the variables Motivation, Attitude, Time management, Anxiety overcoming, Conclusion, Information processing, Study skill, Main point selection, Self-assessment, and Test-taking strategies as X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6, X7, X8, X9, and X10 respectively.
Results
1. Is there any significant difference among the students of different fields in the amount of learning strategies application?
The difference is significant at the 0.05 level, F (6,336) < 2.165 and p = 0.036 < 0.05. So with 95% certainty, we can say that students’ field of study is effective (Table 2). In other words, the amount of learning strategies application, at least in one field is significantly different with others. To analyze more exactly, different post hoc multiple comparisons for observed mean could be applied, such as Scheffe, Tukey, and Bonferroni. Tukey's confidence intervals are presented in table 3.
Table 2. One-way ANOVA to compare the amount of learning strategies application among the students of different fields
According to table 3, the means comparison test for chemistry engineering students and primary education students is significant at the 0.05 level. In other words, the amount of learning strategies application is different in these two groups of students.
Table 3. Tukey’s Confidence Intervals
According to graph 1 that shows the means of learning strategies application in different fields, it could be clearly concluded that primary students have a higher mean in the application of learning strategies than chemistry students, and the means of other fields are not significantly different.
Graph1. The mean of learning Strategies application in different fields
2. Is there any significant difference among the successful and unsuccessful students in the amount of learning strategies application?
The difference is significant at the 0.01 level, p = 0.00 < 0.01. Therefore, it could be said, with 99% of certainty, that the main factor, which is type of student, is effective. In other words, the amount of learning strategies application in successful and unsuccessful students is completely different .With regard to the obtained means in table 4, it is clearly seen that the amount of learning strategies application in successful students is higher than unsuccessful students.
Table 4. T-test to determine the mean difference in the application of learning strategies in successful and unsuccessful students
3. What is the portion and the amount of effect of each learning strategies in students' average?
Table 5 shows the correlation coefficient among learning strategies and also with the average. In all of them p = 0.0 which is less than 0.01, so the test of independence is significant at the level 0.01 and this means that there is a significant relationship among the variables.
Table 5. correlation coefficient among learning strategies and average
Table 6 shows the process of backward regression. According to coefficients of determination and adjusted coefficients of determination (columns 2 and 4), it can be concluded that the effect of variables X4 and X6 are more considerable than other in this regression model. In other words, a large amount of the dependent variable, which is the students’ average, is determined by these two variables: anxiety overcoming and information processing skill. In fact, if we arrange the variables according to their effect on the students' average, the result will be: (1) Anxiety overcoming, (2) Information processing, (3) Motivation, (4) Study skill, (5) Self-assessment, (6) Attitude, (7) Main point selection, (8) Test-taking strategies, (9) Conclusion, and (10) Time management.
Table 6. Backward regression to survey the amount of effect of each learning strategy in the students' average
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