Abstract:

Today's knowledge society is increasingly driven by the dynamic and rather flexible consumption of small, usually digital information units, which fight for the attention of potential consumers. Education providers may benefit from these developments by offering voluntary content elements that support a student’s learning progress. Particularly in online and distance learning contexts, this is considered a viable approach to help keep respective learners interested and engaged. But also the more traditional in-class setting may benefit from using these kinds of self-directed learning strategies. For example, offering a learning concept in which students can voluntarily choose the type and scope of learning material they engage in between contact hours may help increase their learning progress and consequently their respective learning outcomes (i.e., it may positively impact on their exam grades).

An important prerequisite for self-directed learning, however, is motivation. In other words, if students believe that the offered learning material is interesting and will help them progress, they are more inclined to make use of such additional, voluntary learning opportunities. The extent to which different motivational components but also learning types are related to the success of self-directed learning strategies is thus considered an important research field in education.
To this end, we report on a self-directed learning study conducted with undergraduate students from two different study cohorts (i.e., C1 and C2). Both cohorts had to complete the same course as part of their curriculum, albeit C1 is currently pursuing an engineering degree (i.e., Software Engineering) and C2 works towards a degree in business (i.e., Information Systems). Such allowed for a comparison between two study disciplines. Furthermore, in case of C1 the course was organized in an online setting whereas for C2 the course was happening on campus, for which we were also able to draw some conclusions as to the effects of self-directed learning in two different study forms (i.e., online vs. in-class).

Students of both cohorts were offered lesson-timed, voluntary quizzes to boost their learning progress and help them prepare for the final exam. That is, after each class an additional quiz focusing on the respective class content became available. They were free to take quizzes when and how often they wanted. At the end of term, both cohorts were then asked to complete a short questionnaire investigating individual learning strategies and motivation. Furthermore, we asked for permission to analyse their engagement with respect to the offered quizzes and whether we were allowed to match this with their individual exam grades. Only the data of those students who gave consent to this analysis was considered in our investigation (note: participation was entirely voluntary and had no effects on students’ performance evaluation). Additionally we randomly chose five students and asked them to report on their quiz experiences and (self-directed) learning strategies.

Results show that the offer of voluntary quizzes as a means to support self-directed learning and exam preparation has been highly appreciated by our students and that it has had a measureable impact on the learning progress of those students who made use of this offer.

Keywords:

Voluntary Quizzes, Self-directed Learning, Learning Motivation, Learning Progress.