Thirty years of academic performance-enhancement with university students: Where have we been, where are we going?

A number of reviews and meta-analyses in the past 30 years have described and evaluated interventions designed to enhance ocademic performance in university undergraduates. Reviewers’recommendations, however, have often remained unimplemented. This meta-review of reviews and meta-analyses of interventions published in the academic literature between 1969 and 1999 was aimed to determine which kinds of interventions have been successful in enhancing academic performance, to identify methodological shortcomings, and to suggest directions for future research and teaching practice. It was found that interventions are often successful at enhancing performance, with the recent trend towards cognitive-behavioural or metacognitive interventions showing most promise. However, there are widespread methodological shortcomings in the reviewed literature. Key recommendations for future research include random allocotion to treatment and control groups, the use of volunteer populations, exclusion of first semester students as research participants, use of nonanalogue outcome measures, and reporting of effect sizes rather than reliance solely on statistical significance as the index of success. A teaching style that fosters the use of metacognitive and self-directed learning strategies may further enhance contemporary teaching practice.