Colleges and universities need to help students set realistic goals, engage in instruction, enact effective strategies for success, monitor their progress in course content, and provide help and resources when needed. Providing these initiatives will help create metacognitive processes that play a critical role in self-regulated learning as many students struggle with these skills and awareness.
With the intent to better understand how to facilitate metacognitive skills, new research from Macmillan Learning found that intentional goal-setting and reflection has the potential to significantly improve students' academic performance, motivation, self-efficacy, and engagement.
Incorporated into their digital platform Achieve, Macmillan Learning developed a self-regulated learning tool, Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys (GRS), which includes both support and instruction for three identified phases of metacognition: planning (includes goal setting and planning of strategies), monitoring (includes attention focusing and progress tracking), and evaluating (includes self-evaluation and help-seeking).
Over the course of five semesters from 2019 to 2021, Macmillan Learning funded a series of research studies across 115 institutions to examine the impact of the GRS tool. Key findings of the research are:
- Course performance increased as students completed more of the surveys
- Students found the Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys valuable
- for their learning
- Students who completed the surveys also reported having higher self-efficacy
- and engagement in their courses
“Being a college student is hard,” according to Macmillan Learning Implementation Scientist, Kelly Boden. “You’re juggling multiple important goals at the same time, all while making the hard transition from high school to college. Being more accurate in judging what you do and, even more importantly, what you don’t know is essential for academic success. This ability to plan, monitor, and evaluate your own learning are skills students need to develop to learn and transfer their learning to new contexts.”
The research results suggested that students who complete two or more of the assigned Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys perform higher on their final grades by up to eight percent when compared to students who did not complete surveys. Moreover, not only do students who completed two or more Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys obtain higher marks, but they also perform significantly better in their courses overall when compared to students who only completed one survey or didn’t complete any surveys.
Grades are not the only aspect of learning that is impacted by the GRS tool—self efficacy and engagement are also positively affected. In fact, students who completed the Introductory Survey and at least one Checkpoint Survey indicated significantly higher self-reported self efficacy as well as academic and emotional engagement. Students who completed a checkpoint survey moved closer to feeling “very confident” in their ability to complete their coursework than those who didn’t. Furthermore, students who completed a checkpoint survey moved closer to “often” feeling emotionally engaged in the course than those who didn’t.
“Students only need to commit to about 15-30 minutes a month to reflect on their study skills, strategies and goals to see an impact on their learning and their grades,” said Guido Gatti, Sr. Quantitative Research Analyst. “The students who have used the goal setting and reflection features, thought it was a good use of their time and helped make them a better student, recognizing that the small commitment to their learning can have an oversized impact.”
The Goal Setting and Reflection Surveys give students space to reflect on their own learning progress. Results from the research demonstrate that the opportunity for self-reflection was positively correlated with course performance, as well as motivation related to the course.
Given these findings, instructors should consider implementing the overt goal setting and reflection such as GRS into their course instruction. Using this tool has the potential to give instructors insight into how their students are faring in the course beyond their grade performance. Students benefit from opportunities to reflect on their goals and strategies, and a tool like GRS may further prompt students to plan, monitor, and evaluate their progress toward achieving their academic goals.