The Impact of a Metacognitive Intervention on Student Experiences and Success in an Academic Probation Program for First-Year Students
By Holly J. Swanson, Bryan Dewsbury
One of the limitations of the first implementation of the Ace Your Course Challenge (AYCC) was the confounding effect of the different initial motivations of students who completed the intervention. Without being able to control for initial motivation, it was difficult in the first study to determine if the intervention could indeed help students who have had limited exposure to metacognition and a lack of previously positively reinforced motivation.
For this follow-up study, I reached out to the coordinators for Academic Support Services at the University of Rhode Island, to see if there was a way that AYCC could be integrated into their academic probation program. The Program for Academic Skills and Success (PASS) is for students who have been dismissed from the college due to low academic performance during their first semester. PASS allows these students to remain enrolled at the university in the spring semester, as long as they complete the requirements of the program. One of the requirements was to enroll in a one-credit study skills course. This course was made an optional requirement prior to the integration of the AYCC intervention. It was my hope that the implementation of the AYCC would provide an alternative in lieu of this optional course.
Through the AYCC workshop, the goal was to provide students with immediate exposure to multiple effective study strategies and reflective opportunities at the start of the semester, as opposed to the gradual exposure through a semester-long course. While the several study strategies and outcomes reported in this implementation of the AYCC were identical to those in the first study, there were differences that point to elements of student motivation. In my current academic position, I hope to take the results from this study and continue to test ways to increase the impact of the AYCC.
Read the TLI article here.
Photo credit: Holly Swanson, 2024
