Margaret Usdansky (HDFS) PI, Rachel Razza(HDFS) co-PI, Leonard Lopoo (MAX) co-PI, and John Tillotson (A&S – Science Teaching) co-PI, Collaborative Research: Coaching to Learn: A Peer-to-Peer Intervention to Help College Students Apply and Transfer Effective Learning Strategies across STEM Courses, NSF. 10/1/22-9/30/25
Coaching to Learn is a unique intervention that compares outcomes for students randomly assigned to eight hours of in-person peer coaching or online resources introducing them to cognitive-science based study strategies. The intervention is designed to help students make modest but high-impact changes that better align their study habits with strategies research has shown to be effective. Research shows that strategies that require mental effort, such as putting away your textbook and testing yourself, are more effective than popular ones that feel easier, such as re-reading, highlighting, or reviewing a problem with the solution already provided. But little research has explored why some students adopt more effective learning strategies than others. Coaching to Learn tests an intervention designed to convince students to use some highly effective strategies some of the time they study. Coaching to Learn is embedded in Calculus 1 and counts for four percent of the final course grade. The study follows students for multiple semesters and uses quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the intervention and its impact on students’ use of effective study strategies not only in calculus but in other courses.