self-regulated learning

Self-regulated Learning and Graduate Education: What Graduate Programs Should do Part 2

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Please find this post at: https://clairekampdush.com/2014/09/26/self-regulated-learning-and-graduate-education-what-graduate-programs-should-do-part-2/

Well, it is time for my final post in my series on self-regulated learning and graduate education. This series resulted in the following posts:

Today, I want to discuss the other key to a graduate program informed by self-regulated learning principles: goal setting and feedback. I just finished typing up our graduate students’ annual reviews.  You might remember that our end of the year report was what started me on my quest to consider what a graduate program informed by self-regulated learning would look like. I learned from my fabulous colleagues Chris Wolters and Shirley Yu that intrinsic motivation, which exists within the self and usually stems from a personal interest in a task, is much better for achievement than external motivation, which usually comes from an external entity setting the goal. Hence, the final key to a graduate program informed by self-regulated learning is goal setting and feedback, informed by intrinsic motivation primarily, with some extrinsic mixed in.

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Self-regulated Learning and Graduate Education: What Graduate Programs Should do Part 1

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Please find this post at: https://clairekampdush.com/2014/09/19/self-regulated-learning-and-graduate-education-what-graduate-programs-should-do-part-1/

Today I want to wrap up my series on self-regulated learning and graduate education. I want to revisit my original question: “What information, tools, tasks, and activities could we provide to promote our graduate students’ learning, intellectual development, and achievement of their post-graduate school goals?”. Over a series of posts, I reviewed information and tools (writing skills, research skills, and presentation/teaching/media skills) to promote graduate student success. My posts on tools ended up discussing tasks and activities to master those tools as well, so look in those posts for those discussions.

If I had to sum up my series of posts, I think that the keys to a graduate program informed by self-regulated learning principles would be a focus on professional development and goal setting and feedback. I want to discuss both; in the post I am focusing on professional development.

After writing these posts, I have been reflecting on graduate training. Of the tools I identified that graduate students need, I think most graduate programs focus primarily on teaching students the scholarship of their field, and how to contribute to it, which would fall under the category of “research skills”. The other tools I identified are largely ignored in graduate training, unless an advisor takes it upon themselves to teach them: writing skills, presentation/teaching/media skills, and those parts of research skills that do not deal with conducting research (such as consuming research). I now believe all graduate programs should have the following, and that these could lead to improvements in graduate student achievement.

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Motivation, Self-Regulated Learning, and Graduate Education

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Please find this post at: https://clairekampdush.com/2014/05/08/motivation-self-regulated-learning-and-graduate-education/

I have been working on revising our grad handbook, and leading some revisions to our graduate curriculum this year in my role as grad studies chair. One process I looked at was the end of the year report. We have grad students submit annual evaluations. These annual evaluations were used to give students a rating of “satisfactory”, “excellent”, or “unsatisfactory”. Starting next year, to be in line with the OSU grad school, we are changing the ratings slightly so that they are “reasonable progress”, “excellent”, and “warning”. As part of this change, I wrote up some guidelines for what reasonable and excellent progress might look like for graduate students.  My thinking was that students might want to see what would be needed to achieve these categories. My colleagues reacted negatively, in particular, to the “excellent” progress guidelines.  Thus, I began to reflect on this question – what motivates graduate students?

photo credit: angietorres via photopin cc

photo credit: angietorres via photopin cc

I started my search for the answer with a search of the literature. I  found almost nothing on motivation or self-regulated learning among graduate students. Indeed, it seemed that there was virtually no literature on the topic. Lucky for me, I have two new fabulous colleagues in my college that are experts in self-regulated learning – Chris Wolters and Shirley Yu. I had coffee with both of them, and they agreed with my assessment – there was virtually no research on motivation and graduate students.

Thus, I was on my own. I discussed with both Chris and Shirley about strategies that work with regard to grad students and motivation. The first thing I learned was that intrinsic motivation is much better for achievement than extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation exists within the self, and stems from a personal interest in the task itself. Extrinsic motivation is externally motivated, and usually stems from an external entity setting the goal. That is, the motivation to do the task is that the outcome is desired, not that the task is inherently interesting to the individual. Intrinsic motivation is related to greater achievement.

As I thought more about motivation, that lead me to the concept of self-regulated learning. There has been much written on self-regulated learning as it applies to undergraduate education. What is self-regulated learning? According to Zimmerman (1990), “self-regulated learners plan, set goals, organize, self-monitor, and self-evaluate at various points during the process of acquisition” (p. 4-5). Sounds like the perfect graduate student, right?

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