Academic Reality Check: A Fast, Free, Practical Tool for Freshmen Retention

Author(s):  
Darcie L. Anderson ◽  
Tisha Hooks

With limited budgets and increasing enrollment demands, colleges need fast, free, and practical solutions supporting academic success and retention. The Academic Reality Check (ARC) tool helps to predict traditional freshmen awareness of their own academic expectations in college quickly, supporting the financial investment being made by all stakeholders. Similar inventories exist but they are costly, complicated, or both. The ARC tool is a valid, reliable, fast, free, and practical option. The ARC tool is available on a free website, so students, advisors, and faculty can access it easily. Students can complete the ARC tool in approximately 10 minutes and get an immediate academic success indicator score related to class attendance, attention, and note taking; time management and organization; study expectations and learning strategies; resources; and reading, writing, and homework.

2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 587-597
Author(s):  
Ricarda Corinna ◽  
Svea Isabel ◽  
Matthias Wilde*

<p style="text-align: justify;">For biology students, the diversity, complexity, and abundance of content in this field yield a heavy study load. Hence, appropriate learning strategies are key in supporting learners’ academic success. In biology, the factors gender and interest hold a unique position within the natural sciences, as there is an academic imbalance to the disadvantage of male students. In the present study, we examined the influence of gender and interest as well as its interdependences on the students’ use of learning strategies for biology learning. A total of 180 seventh through tenth grade students (Mage=14.47; SD=1.35; 60% female) from four general-track secondary schools located in Germany participated in this study. Data on the students’ level of interest and the use of learning strategies in biology lessons were collected. We used multivariate analysis of covariance with the students’ age as the covariate to analyse our data. Results revealed a significant effect of gender on the students’ use of the learning strategies rehearsal, organisation, effort, and time management. With regard to elaboration and effort, the effects of interest were found to be significant. The gender gap regarding learning strategy use was narrower for students with high levels of interest. These findings might have implications for beneficial teacher behaviour in biology.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan P. Farruggia ◽  
Cheon-woo Han ◽  
Lakeshia Watson ◽  
Thomas P. Moss ◽  
Bette L. Bottoms

Farrington and colleagues developed a model that contends that academic mindsets, academic perseverance, learning strategies, social skills, and academic behaviors affect academic success. This study tests a modified version of this model with first-year students ( n = 1,603) at a large, ethnically diverse, urban university. The hypothesized structural model had acceptable fit, with minor modifications. The direct effect on academic performance of academic mindset was strong, of academic perseverance was modest, and of time management was nonsignificant. Only participants’ academic performance had a strong positive effect on retention. Few differences by ethnicity were found. As mindsets are amenable to change, with intervention programs showing promising effects, students with low scores should be targeted to receive support early in their college careers so they may succeed in college.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Hensley ◽  
Amy Kulesza ◽  
Joshua Peri ◽  
Anna C. Brady ◽  
Christopher A. Wolters ◽  
...  

When teaching college biology students to use effective learning strategies, does it help to address both the what and the when of studying? Findings indicated that students who learned about time management in addition to metacognition had higher exam grades and commitment to earning a college degree at the end of the semester.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
Kristina Črnjar ◽  
Vedrana Čikeš ◽  
Kristina Ferenčak

Time management is the ability of consciously deciding and controlling the amount of time spent on different activities in order to be more productive and effective. In order to achieve academic success, students should be able to manage a large number of activities, from going to lectures, studying, participating in extra-curricular activities, to making sure they are getting enough rest to stay healthy. The purpose of this research was to determine if there are any significant differences in the effective time management between Chinese and Croatian students. Even though the cultural differences between these two groups are substantial, both groups are becoming a part of the same education and business market. The research was conducted on the sample of 340 Chinese and Croatian students using an online survey. The results have shown that in several time management activities there are statistically significant differences between Chinese and Croatian students. The results also indicate that the Croatian respondents are better at setting goals, determining priorities and performing tasks by priority, while Chinese students delegate tasks and determine and eliminate time wasting activities more often than their Croatian counterparts do. On the other hand, Croatian students waste more time on activities such as conducting tasks of small importance and fun activities of no relevance (e.g. “surfing” the Internet, private telephone conversations, chatting, etc.), while Chinese students are in the forefront with regard to ineffective and supernumerary meetings and overly long and supernumerary phone conversations.


Author(s):  
T. Hailikari ◽  
N. Katajavuori ◽  
H. Asikainen

AbstractProcrastination is consistently viewed as problematic to academic success and students’ general well-being. There are prevailing questions regarding the underlying and maintaining mechanisms of procrastination which are yet to be learnt. The aim of the present study was to combine different ways to explain procrastination and explore how students’ time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and academic self-efficacy are connected to procrastination as they have been commonly addressed separately in previous studies. The data were collected from 135 students who participated in a voluntary time management and well-being course in autumn 2019. The results showed that students’ ability to organize their time and effort has the strongest association with procrastination out of the variables included in the study. Psychological flexibility also has a strong individual role in explaining procrastination along with time and effort management skills. Surprisingly, academic self-efficacy did not have a direct association with procrastination. Interestingly, our findings further suggest that time and effort management and psychological flexibility are closely related and appear to go hand in hand and, thus, both need to be considered when the aim is to reduce procrastination. The implications of the findings are further discussed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Catalina Del Ángel Castillo ◽  
Katherina Edith Gallardo Córdova

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Marina Vladimirovna Melnichuk ◽  
◽  
Marina Anatolievna Belogash ◽  

In the context of modern digital transformation of all aspects of the socioeconomic environment, training university students for analytical processing of increasing inflows of data and dealing with complex cognitive tasks driven by metacognition has become of particular importance. The research is aimed to review the structure of metacognitive processing, the development factors of metacognitive skills, the relation of metacognitive skills to emotional and cognitive skills, and to determine their role in the achievement of academic success of university students. Methodology. The research is undertaken on the basis of theoretical investigation and comprehensive analysis of theoretical conceptualization of intelligence. The authors have researched the derivation of metacognition, the structure of self-regulating metacognitive processes and their interaction with cognitive and affective processes. The research findings confirm that the metacognitive experience provides self-reflection, emotional awareness of feelings, estimating relationships between emotional states and the degree of implementation or attainability of a cognitive task. The authors conclude that emotional intelligence is manifested in metacognitive skills and predicts academic success. Also, teaching and learning strategies are required to be refined taking into account the development of emotional and metacognitive skills of university students.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ademola Amida ◽  
Sameera Algarni ◽  
Robert Stupnisky

PurposeThis study explored graduate students' academic success by testing a hypothesized model based on the self-determination theory (SDT), which posits that motivation, time management and career aspiration predicts perceived success.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative methodology was employed to garner data from a population of 324 graduate students, and then analyzed using structural equation modeling in R.FindingsIntrinsic motivation was the strongest motivation type that predicted graduate students' perceived success. Time management was another important predictor of perceived success, while career aspiration did not impact students' perception of success. Doctoral students showed significantly higher relatedness when compared to master degree students. In addition, male students showed significantly higher career aspirations than females, while female students showed significantly higher time management than their male counterparts. The results of this study support the SDT as a framework to understand graduate students' academic success.Originality/valueImplementing the research findings may increase graduate students' academic success. This study suggests direct ways of increasing graduate students' achievement through intrinsic motivation, time management and autonomy, as well as reducing amotivation (lack of motivation) to indirectly enhance academic success.


2020 ◽  
pp. 341-348
Author(s):  
Lilly E. Both ◽  

In this study, 106 women (M age = 23 years) completed a series of questionnaires online assessing personality traits and facets (subscales), learning preferences (Activist, Reflector, Theorist, Pragmatist), and attitudes toward learning preferences.The vast majority of participants in this study believed that students are more likely to have academic success when teaching and learning strategies match their learning style. However, the results of several hierarchical regression analyses found that a large proportion of variance in learning style was accounted for by personality traits or facets. For example, 43% of the variance in the Activist Learning Style was accounted for by higher scores on Extraversion, and lower scores on Conscientiousness and Negative Emotionality. When personality facet scores were used as predictors, the proportion of variance jumped to 55%. Similarly, between 27-31% of the variance in Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist Learning Style was accounted for by personality facet scores alone. The results are discussed in terms of learning style attitudes and myths pervasive in the literature, and the need for evidence-based practices.


Author(s):  
Karolina Baras ◽  
Luísa Soares ◽  
Carla Vale Lucas ◽  
Filipa Oliveira ◽  
Norberto Pinto Paulo ◽  
...  

Smartphones have become devices of choice for running studies on health and well-being, especially among young people. When entering college, students often face many challenges, such as adaptation to new situations, establish new interpersonal relationships, heavier workload and shorter deadlines, teamwork assignments and others. In this paper, the results of four studies examining students' well-being and mental health as well as student's perception of challenges and obstacles they face during their academic journey are presented. In addition, a mobile application that acts as a complement to a successful tutoring project implemented at the authors' University is proposed. The application allows students to keep their schedules and deadlines in one place while incorporating virtual tutor features. By using both, the events from the student's calendar and his or her mood indicators, the application sends notifications accordingly. These notifications encompass motivational phrases, time management guidelines, as well as relaxation tips.


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