Investigating the Learning Strategies Used by Undergraduate Educational Psychology Students: A Mixed Methods Approach
Open Access
- Author:
- Cravener, Cheyenne
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Psychology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- March 06, 2025
- Committee Members:
- Matthew T Mc Crudden, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jennifer L Frank, Committee Member
Pui-Wa Lei, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies - Keywords:
- Learning Strategies
Undergraduate Students
Mixed Methods
Educational Psychology
Self-Regulated Learning
Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire
Cognitive Strategies
Metacognitive Strategies
Resource Management Strategies - Abstract:
- Undergraduate students are largely responsible for directing their own learning, setting their own goals for their course performance, and selecting appropriate learning strategies. Self-regulated learning is one area of educational research that investigates a learner’s ability to understand and control their learning environment. Very few undergraduate students have reached the level of self-regulation to where they can select and adjust strategies to meet the needs of various learning tasks to maximize their learning in higher education contexts. Mixed methods research on learning strategies allows for a deeper and more comprehensive investigation of the trends that have emerged from existing self-report questionnaires. The current study uses a mixed methods design to better understand the learning strategies used by undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory educational psychology course. Following a convergent design, 197 participants completed the learning strategies subscales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). In addition, eight participants were selected from the quantitative sample to participate in follow-up interviews to gain more information about participants' cognitive and metacognitive strategy usage. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze MSLQ data and thematic analyses were used to analyze the interview transcripts. The quantitative and qualitative findings were evaluated to identify instances of convergence or divergence among the two data sets. The study discusses possible explanations for the main findings, potential concerns with the MSLQ, and suggests modifications to the existing conceptualization of learning strategies in the literature.