WORKBOOK

Table of contents
Day 1: Awareness..................................................................................................................................2
Brainstorm: Often used learning strategies.......................................................................................3
Sorting cards: Learning strategies......................................................................................................4
Brainstorm: Is your favorite learning strategy effective?...................................................................5
Brainstorm: ‘Desirable difficulties’.....................................................................................................6
Reflective Writing: Putting in effort in other aspects of life...............................................................7
Day 2: Practice.......................................................................................................................................9
Practice: Effective learning strategies..............................................................................................10
Self-explanations..........................................................................................................................10
Actively summarizing texts...........................................................................................................11
Making a practice test..................................................................................................................13
Visualization using the dual-coding method.................................................................................16
Practice: effective planning-strategies.............................................................................................18
Practicing distributed practice......................................................................................................18
Interleaved practice......................................................................................................................19
Follow-up after practicing with the strategies.................................................................................22
Practice what you preach: using effective learning strategies.........................................................23
Day 3: Reflection..................................................................................................................................24
How did you deal with obstacles?...................................................................................................25
Personas...........................................................................................................................................29
Get inspired by other students!....................................................................................................29
Reflection on the personas..............................................................................................................30
Making new goals: implementation intentions...............................................................................31
Additional materials............................................................................................................................33
Motivation questionnaire................................................................................................................34

1
Day 1: Awareness

2
 Brainstorm: Often used learning strategies
Which learning strategies do you use?

Write down the strategies that you use while studying below. Think about what you do when you are
reading something for the first time, but also how you repeat the materials, study them, and how
you prepare for your exams.

Strategy: elaborative interrogation; medium

Explanation:

Strategy:self explanations

Explanation:

Strategy: keyword mnemonic not very effective

Explanation:

Strategy: imagery text learning; low

Explanation:

Strategy: re-reading; low we confuse familiarty with knowledge

Explanation:

Strategy:

Explanation:

Strategy:

Explanation:

Strategy:

Explanation:

Which of these strategies are your favorites? Give them a star rating.

3
 Sorting cards: Learning strategies
Which strategies are effective for long-term learning?

Which strategies belong in which category? Place an ‘X’ where you think these strategies belong!

Very effective Medium effective Not effective

Summarizing x
Self-explanations x
Distributed practice x
Rereading x
Highlighting x
Practice testing x
Visualization x
Interleaved practice x
Feedback is helpful don’t make the same mistake twice

Learn materials selects things build new knowledge based on old knowledge

After you have filled this out entirely, your teacher will explain to you which of these strategies are
effective, and why. Place another sign in the table (a # for example) where the scientific evidence
would place these strategies. Which ones did you get wrong?

If you want to, you can use the table below to fill in why some strategies were (un)expectedly
(in)effective:

Explanation
Summarizing Explain in your own terms
Great way to organize things

Self-explanations Explain in your own terms

Explain notes in your own terms

Distributed practice Write your own questions and practice

Do a little bit everyday
Plan out when youre going to study and what your going to study

Rereading I read the chapter im going to read it again

Highlighting
low

Practice testing Test questions

Visualization

4
 low

Interleaved practice
effective

Brainstorm: Is your favorite learning

strategy effective?
How could you make your strategies more effective?

On page 3 you’ve indicated your favorite strategies. Did these turn out to be effective, or not at all?
In this assignment, we will attempt to make the strategies you are already using a little more
effective. Think about how to make the strategy active, and to make sure you receive feedback about
what you already know and what you do not yet know. Write down two ideas to make your
strategies more effective:

My strategy
How effective is this strategy in
itself?

How do I make the strategy more

active?

How can I make sure to get

feedback from the strategy?

My strategy
How effective is this strategy in
itself?

How do I make the strategy more

active?

How can I make sure to get

feedback from the strategy?

5
6
 Brainstorm: ‘Desirable difficulties’
Do you recognize the paradox? What do you find hardest about
learning/studying?

The teacher should have explained the ‘experiences-versus-actual-learning paradox’ by now. In short,
it means that when we are assessing ourselves on how well we know something, this is often not in
line with what we actually know. For example: if you read a text very often before your exam, the
text becomes more and more ‘recognizable’ (you read it and think: ‘oh right’, ‘I know this’, etc.). This
makes you feel like you know the materials – but on the exam you cannot answer the questions
because you cannot seem to remember the materials. The opposite also happens: you are applying
practice testing, but you don’t know the exact answer to everything. you are confronted with
everything you do not yet know, and you feel like you don’t know anything. However, on the test it
turns out you do actually know the materials pretty well! This paradox is explained by ‘desirable
difficulties’: those things for which you invest effort, stick better in your head, even if you do not
notice yourself.

Do you recognize this paradox in your own learning?

o Yes
o No

What are your experiences with rereading?

What are your experiences with practice testing?

Are there any other strategies with which you’ve noticed such a paradox? How did that work?

What do you find hardest about learning/studying?

7
 Reflective Writing: Putting in effort in
other aspects of life
Reflecting on a different (not study-related) memory in which
you have put in effort to learn something or change something
Think of a memory in which you learned something new by putting in a lot of practice (> 30 hours),
something which cost you a lot of effort (in sports, arts, music, computer etc.) OR Changed your
behavior (for example: doing sports more often).

What have you learned?

How did you approach this?

How long did it take you to learn?

What did you do when it got tough?

Have you ever thought about quitting?

How did you convince yourself to pull through anyway?

What could someone have said to help you through this process?

What would you advise someone else who is going into the same learning process now?

8
Take a look at the intentions you wrote down to make your learning more active: how does your
advice from the reflective writing exercise relate to the application of these new learning strategies?
Think about the advice you gave yourself on the previous page. What would this mean for the
application of the active strategies on page 5?

My intentions on page 5

My most prominent advice

How I will use this advice to make my strategies

more active

Listen to the advice your peers wrote down and discuss in the group. Use the space below to write
down the useful advices they have given themselves or others:

How will you apply active learning in your studying?

9
Day 2: Practice

10
 Practice: Effective learning strategies
Self-explanations
Asking questions when reading a text for the first time

We want to understand why things are the way they are. If we understand, we can remember it
better. The materials are not only anchored more strongly in our memory, but also linked to our prior
knowledge. That is why, while reading a text, you will start asking yourself questions while and after
reading a text:

 Why? and How?

 Why is it needed to…? Why is this true? Why is this important to my field of study?
 How does this work…? How does it relate to what I already know?

Example
Paragraphs in the text Questions you might ask
Why don’t students use more effective study techniques?
It seems they are not being taught the best strategies, perhaps Which strategies?
because teachers themselves are not schooled in them.
A second problem may be that in the educational system, the Why don’t students learn
emphasis is on teaching students critical-thinking skills and how to learn?
content. Less time is spent on teaching them how to learn.
The result can be that students who do well in their early years, What is the result of this?
when learning is closely supervised, may struggle once they are
expected to regulate their own learning in high school or college.
Some questions, such as the best age for students to start using a
technique and how often they will need to be retrained or
reminded, still require further research.
But even now teachers can incorporate the most successful What could teachers do?
approaches into lesson plans so that students could adopt them
on their own.
For instance, when moving to a new section, a teacher can start by How can teachers support
asking students to do a practice test that covers important ideas their students?
from the previous section and providing immediate feedback.
Students can interleave new problems with related ones from
preceding units. Teachers can harness distributed practice by
reintroducing major concepts during the course of several classes.
They can engage students in explanatory questioning by
prompting them to consider how the information is new to them
or why it might be true.

Adapted from: Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). What works,
what doesn’t. Scientific American Mind, 24(4), 46-53.

Now read your own text! Remember to ask yourself several questions throughout each
paragraph. Stop and consciously go over what you’ve just read. In the beginning, it might be a
challenge to come up with questions, but the more you do it, the easier it gets and the more
questions pop into your head while reading!

11
 Actively summarizing texts
Summarization can be a very effective as well as an extremely ineffective learning strategy. In this
assignment, we will attempt to make an effective summary! There are a few active summarization
techniques, one of which is the read-recite-review method, but using a Cornell scheme also works
very well. You can also combine these, which is what we will do in this assignment. Therefore, this
method has several distinct steps.

First, actively creating the summary. We’ll use the read-recite-review method:

1. Read the text (use the text you brought which you’ve already read)
2. Write a summary from memory (recite): what do you still remember?
3. Review your summary: did you explain everything, was there something you missed?

By writing a summary in this manner, you’ve been actively engaging with the materials, which makes
them stick better in your head. the summary you are going to write, you can write in the scheme
below (in the column called ‘summary’).

Example
For the excerpt of the article summarized here, see page 10.

Title (of the article): What works, what doesn’t (Dunlosky et al., 2013)
Keywords/questions Summary
Ineffective strategies Students often use ineffective learning strategies, which gets them in a lot
(student & teacher) of trouble. Teachers often also do not know how student scan learn
effectively and focus mainly on their own courses/content. Because of this,
the teachers do not know how to support their students.
Supporting effective There are many ways in which teachers can support their students:
learning strategies starting their sessions with practice tests which include feedback for
(teachers) students, supporting distributes and interleaved practice by coming back
to subjects in later sessions, and having students explain new information
to themselves by guiding their questions.

You’re up!

Title (of the article):

Keywords/questions Summary

12
 Keywords/ Questions Summary

Step 2: complement with keywords and/or questions to complete the Cornell scheme. In the
scheme you have now made a summary on the right side, but the left column has been left blank. In
that blank space, you can add those keywords and / or (short) questions. Thanks to this Cornell
scheme you can easily test yourself: cover the right column; can you explain the keywords and
answer the questions on the left side?

If you would like to continue using the Cornell method, please download the form from our website:
www.studysmartpbl.com

13
 Making a practice test
The essence of practice tests is: questioning yourself. This is a form of "retrieval practice": retrieving
information from your memory. In this sense, it is actually a training of remembering. By answering
practice questions, you are checking whether you can actively retrieve the studied materials from
memory when asked. You hereby commit yourself to thinking more deeply. Possible ways of
practicing retrieving information from your memory are:

 Complete practice tests (which you can write yourself, or get from teachers)
 Ask yourself questions about what you have studied, explain the answers to yourself and check
whether the answers you gave yourself were indeed correct
 Someone else asks you a question and you explain the subject matter
 Create a practice test on flashcards about the text you need to learn (on paper or online:
www.quizlet.com)

There is some overlap between the aforementioned strategies (self-explanations and summarizing
using the Cornell method) and this method. This is because practicing answering questions can be
easily integrated into other strategies to make them more effective (after all, you are more active
with the material, and you practice retrieving the information).

By using the Cornell method to write your summaries, you are already writing practice test /
flashcard questions, as it were: the keywords and questions in the margin or on one side of the card,
the explanation or the answer next to it or on the other side. Furthermore, by using self-explanations
while reading, you are already asking yourself practice questions about what you have read. It is also
very useful to let others ask you questions, for example you can also create and exchange practice
tests, so that you can practice more.

For this exercise you will practice making flashcards. You just can't cut them out easily or write on the
different sides, so we'll use a table for that. However, we can practice the way of asking!

Example

Front (question/keyword) Back (answer/explanation)

Make practice tests ("retrieval practice")
&
Effective learning strategies
Distributed practice (returning to the topics you
need to learn more often)
Active learning (actually actively working with
Which principles make learning strategies the subject matter, for example asking
effective? questions about it) and immediate feedback
(knowing whether you are doing well and why)
Difficulties in learning: ways of learning that
make learning "more difficult", but also more
What are "desirable difficulties" active, and thereby ensure that the subject
matter lingers better in your head

See the next page for the blanks exercise!

14
You’re up! Use the article you brought which you’ve already read and fill in flashcards:

Front (question/keyword) Back (answer/explanation)

15
Front (question/keyword) Back (answer/explanation)

16
 Visualization using the dual-coding method
Everyone knows about visualization: expressing text in pictures. By using both words and
images/graphs/diagrams etc., information sticks better in your memory. In order to convert a text
into pictures, you have to understand it, think about it, come up with a good kind of picture (see
below). Only then you can actually express the text in a picture. In this way, the subject matter is
understood at a much deeper level.

When you let text and images come together, two different ‘roads’ to the same information are laid
in memory. This means that you can also access this information more easily on a test: there are
multiple ways to ‘cue’ that information. So it's not about making a picture and learning just that, but
about learning both! This is also why you can work the other way as well: suppose a teacher used a
picture in his / her lecture, then use that picture to see if you can explain the concept in words! You
can also test yourself with a picture you have made or received from a teacher: can you explain the
whole concept based on a picture?

Here are some examples of picture types you could make:

It is important with this strategy to remember that not all material is suitable for expression in this
way. Therefore, be critical of the articles / subject matter you brought along, whether this strategy is
possible.

You can practice visualization on the next page

17
Image (own or from teacher) Explanation (in words)

18
 Practice: effective planning-strategies
Practicing distributed practice

Planning distributed practice means: planning intervals between different study sessions on the same
subject. In other words, if you have already learned about photosynthesis on Monday, you will not
reread is that same afternoon, but, for example, on Monday the next week. In this way, the subject
matter is embedded much more strongly in your memory. You will notice that you forget some of the
material between sessions, but that is entirely normal. This just goes to show that it is good to learn
it again: if you ‘relearn’ something, you will forget it more slowly (remember the graph)! By
repeating, the subject matter is therefore much more firmly anchored in memory.

A schedule with room for repetition looks like this:

Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday

8–9 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast

9 – 10

10 – 11 Prepare Task 5 20% Prepare Task 5 80% Repeat Task 1 2nd x

11 – 12 Prepare Task 5 50% Prepare Task 5 100%

12 – 13 Lunch Lunch Lunch

13 – 14 Repeat Task 1 1st x Tutorial Prepare Task 6 30%

14 – 15 Tutorial Prepare Task 6 50%

15 – 16 Repeat Task 2 1st x

16 – 17 Sports Sports

The longer the periods between repetitions, the longer you will eventually remember the material.
The example above has also been repeated in a very short time. You will plan the next two weeks for
this assignment, in order to leave more room for repetition!

Also schedule standard things, such as exercising on a Monday evening, working on a Tuesday
afternoon, or getting up later because of a fraternity evening the previous day. This way you can
make your planning as realistic as possible. During the scheduled period, keep track of how much you
have actually been able to do. Many people are "time optimists": they think they can do more in a
certain amount of time than is actually feasible. By keeping track of how much you do in which time
for a while, you can make your schedules increasingly realistic.

Also keep in mind to leave room for relaxation and any unforeseen events!

After the explanation of interleaved practice (page 19)

you can fill in a schedule
(this is the same scheme – pages 20 & 21)

19
 Interleaved practice
Mixed learning (interleaved practice) means that you alternate topics while studying. So instead of
learning the same topics over and over in the same order, alternate which topic you do after another
topic.

If you study 1 theme on a Saturday, this is less effective than if you alternate 3 topics during that
same amount of time. Interleaved practice is most effective if the exercise types or content of the
subject matter are similar. That way you have to think about which solution strategy to use for each
exercise. For example if you are studying mathematics / statistics: if you always practice 1 subject
(probability calculation with return, for example) then you know that you can always use that
solution, then only the numbers change. If you then do all probability calculations without return,
you learn them, as it were, independently from each other. When you get those subjects mixed up
on the test, it is difficult to imagine which solution strategy you should use now. If you had learned
the different topics in an alternating fashion, you would have learned not only how the different
solutions work, but also what to look for in a question to know which method you need when, for
example.

Interleaved practice looks like this:

And in a planned schedule:

Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday

8–9 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast

9 – 10 Prepare Task 5 100%

10 – 11 Repeat Task 2 1e x Prepare Task 6 20%

11 – 12 Repeat Task 4 1e x Repeat Task 3 2e x Prepare Task 6 40%

12 – 13 Lunch Lunch Lunch

13 – 14 Repeat Task 1 2e x Tutorial Repeat Task 4 2e x

14 – 15 Prepare Task 5 50% Tutorial Repeat Task 1 3e x

15 – 16 Prepare Task 5 80% Repeat Task 2 2e x

16 – 17 Sports Sports

You can fill out a schedule on the next page

(for both distributed and interleaved practice)

20
 Table for planning week 1

Ti Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

me Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan %
7-8
8-9
9-10
10-11
11-12
12-13
13-14
14-15
15-16
16-17
17-18
18-19
19-20
20-21

20
 Table for planning week 2

Ti Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

me Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan % Plan %
7-8
8-9
9-10
10-11
11-12
12-13
13-14
14-15
15-16
16-17
17-18
18-19
19-20
20-21

21
 Follow-up after practicing with the
strategies
Think

How was it for you to practice these strategies? What obstacles do you think you might encounter?

Obstacles:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Pair
Discuss with your neighbor what you could learn from each other: how would the other deal with
your obstacles?

Obstacle Possible solutions

1.

2.

3.

4.

Share
Share your ideas (yours and your neighbor's), tips and tricks with the group. Pay close attention to
what the other groups have discussed, and get new information for yourself from them! Fill them in
in the schedule above.

22
Practice what you preach: using effective
learning strategies
Write out the goals you want to achieve for the next session! Use the schedule below. Be specific!
Make sure that you can actually study based on what you fill out here. Also, make sure it's specific
enough to assess next time how well you've adhered to these plans!

The strategy I will be using

How I will do this

With these materials

At these moment

The strategy I will be using

How I will do this

With these materials

At these moment

The strategy I will be using

How I will do this

With these materials

At these moment

Plan your next week - And plan when you plan the next week! Use the schedules on pages 20 & 21.

23
Day 3: Reflection

24
 How did you deal with obstacles?
Share, in subgroups of 3 to 4 students, which obstacles you have encountered and how you have
dealt with them.

Use the incident method. There are different roles within the incident method:

1. the ‘contributor’, the person who presents a problem or challenge

2. the ‘rest’ of the group, everyone who thinks about the challenges, except the contributor
3. the whole group, so everyone who is in your subgroup of 3 or 4 (the contributor and the rest)

The incident method has 7 steps, which are followed one after the other. There are specific people
speaking for each step:

1. Introduce your problem or challenge Contributor

2. Ask clarifying questions Rest
3. New insights on the problem/challenge Contributor
4. Provide advice Rest
5. Discuss the pieces of advice Whole group
6. Come up with alternative solutions Whole group
7. Evaluation Whole group

Everyone in the subgroup must take turns, everyone will have the role of contributor once. To guide
the discussion, all phases are explained in full once, followed by completion schemes for the various
roles.

1. Introduce your problem or Talk about the problem / challenge you have been
challenge experiencing lately. Don't tell the others how you handled
this problem / challenge yet.
For example: “I found it difficult to prepare all texts
and materials for the teaching sessions. It is so much
material, and I have so many other things to do, that
in the evening I hardly found the time to prepare
properly.
2. Ask clarifying questions Ask the contributor clarifying questions to get a better idea of
the situation. Do not ask how the student solved the
problem yet! Remember to leave COA (it works better in
Dutch) at home (Comments, Opinions, Advice) & bring LSQ
(Listening, Summarizing, Questioning; again, better in Dutch).
For example: "What else do you have to do during
the week?"; "How much time did you have left to
study?"; "At what times during the day did you want
to study?"
3. New insights on the Has the contributor received new insights into his / her
problem/challenge problem? Which are they? What had you not thought of,
what has now become clearer to you?
For example: “I always try to learn in the evening,
when I actually always have the evenings fully
planned”
4. Provide advice Take your time to think about possible solutions to the

25
 problem: what could the contributor do? First write down
your advice, then give your advice for a solution to the
contributor
For example: "You could take a good look at your
time schedule to build in a study routine, and make
sure you keep the evenings free and start learning at
other times."
5. Discuss the pieces of How did the contributor solve the problem; or tried to solve
advice it? In the group, discuss options for solving the problem and
compare them. The person who introduced the problem
chooses an appropriate next step for him / her.
6. Come up with alternative As a group, think of other alternative solutions to the
solutions problem
7. Evaluation Was this helpful to you, as a contributor or as a group
member? What do you take from this discussion?

Completion schemes
As contributor
1. Shortly explain your
problem / challenge

2. What do you notice about

the clarifying questions
that the others ask you? Is
there a theme?

3. Enter any new insights

into the problem here

4. What advice do the others

give? If it helps you, you
can also see what they
have written down

5. What is the appropriate

next step? Enter here how
you will deal with the
problem in the future

6. Can the group come up

with even better
alternatives?

7. Evaluation

26
 As a group member (‘rest’)
The ‘contributor’ was:
1. What’s the core of the
problem?

2. What do you not know

yet?
3. What does the
contributor notice?

4. What would you like to

add to step 3? Write down
a short piece of advice.

5. What does the

contributor choose?
6. Can you think of
alternative next steps?
7. Evaluation – what do you
take from this discussion
for your own situation?

The ‘contributor’ was:

1. What’s the core of the

problem?

2. What do you not know

yet?

3. What does the

contributor notice?

4. What would you like to

add to step 3? Write down
a short piece of advice.

5. What does the

contributor choose?

6. Can you think of

alternative next steps?

7. Evaluation – what do you

take from this discussion
for your own situation?

27
 The ‘contributor’ was:
1. What’s the core of the
problem?

2. What do you not know

yet?
3. What does the
contributor notice?

4. What would you like to

add to step 3? Write down
a short piece of advice.

5. What does the

contributor choose?
6. Can you think of
alternative next steps?

7. Evaluation – what do you

take from this discussion
for your own situation?

The ‘contributor’ was:

1. What’s the core of the
problem?

2. What do you not know

yet?
3. What does the
contributor notice?

4. What would you like to

add to step 3? Write down
a short piece of advice.

5. What does the

contributor choose?
6. Can you think of
alternative next steps?

7. Evaluation – what do you

take from this discussion
for your own situation?

28
 Personas
Get inspired by other students!
Watch the videos & write down for yourself what you can learn from these students. You can use the
questions in the completion schemes for this

Linda
Why did Linda change her
strategies?

Which strategies does she apply

now?
How is she using those strategies?

Which obstacles did she run into?

How did she deal with those?

What has changing her learning

strategies brought her?

Max
Why did Max change his
strategies?

Which strategies does he apply

now?
How is he using those strategies?

Which obstacles did he run into?

How did he deal with those?

What has changing his learning

strategies brought him?

29
 Reflection on the personas
What can you learn from them? And what do others learn from
them?

‘Think’:
What can you learn from Linda and Max? Think of an advice you could give yourself based on the
video(s):

‘Pair’:
Share your advice with your neighbor: what did he / she write down? Could you also learn something
from this? Write down some helpful advice that you learned from your neighbor:

‘Share’!
Share your advice with the group! Other members of the group will probably also have good ideas!
Write additional good advice that you have received from the group below:

30
 Making new goals: implementation
intentions
Look back at your goals from session 2 on page 24. In the meantime, you should have tried them out,
and you have most likely encountered all kinds of obstacles and challenges. We discussed these
obstacles and challenges extensively in this third session. Now consider for yourself which strategies
you want to use in the future. These can be the same as in session 2, but they can of course also be
different effective strategies. As long as it is future-proof.

Strategy 1

Strategy 2

Possibly strategy 3

Now try to make these goals very specific: when are you going to apply which strategy in which way,
and what do you want to achieve with it? Make sure to write down the goals in “if…; then… ”rules.
We do this because “if… then…” rules are harder to ignore! Because you link your goal to a specific
situation, that situation is more difficult to ignore. For example:

 If I have prepared the next task, then I will test myself for a previous task
 If I read an article for the first time, then I will ask myself 2 questions for each paragraph
 If I come home on Saturday after the game, then I prepare the task for Monday
 If I have had my tutorial, then I immediately write down the most important points

Strategy 1
IF: THEN:

IF: THEN:

Strategy 2
IF: THEN:

IF: THEN:

Possibly strategy 3
IF: THEN:

IF: THEN:

31
What have you encountered between session 2 & 3 (think back at the beginning of the session, what
did you contribute in the incident method)? How do you ensure that you continue to use the new
strategies? Look back at the advice your fellow students gave you and each other, what advice are
you going to take into account?

Advice 1

Advice 2

Advice 3

Come up with ways to keep reminding yourself of your goals! For example, think of a place on your
desk where you can always see your goals, stick a post-it on your screen, as long as you are
reminded!

Also consider backup goals: if your "if-then" rule fails, what are you going to do? How are you going
to adjust it? For example (on the intention: If I have prepared the following task, then I will test
myself on an earlier task): if I have not tested myself twice after preparing, then I will test myself
every night after dinner. (make sure that the alternative is actually an if ... then rule in itself, in this
example the second is: if I have finished eating, then I will test myself).

Back-up 1
IF: THEN:

Back-up 2
IF: THEN:

Back-up 3
IF: THEN:

32
Additional materials

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 Motivation questionnaire
The next questions are related to your motivation, study attitude and achievement.

Select the answer option which is the most applicable to your situation where 1 stands for not at all
true of me and 7 for very true of me.

Some-what not true of me (3)

Some-what true of me (5)

Not at all true of me (1)

Very true of me (7)

Not true of me (2)

True of me (6)
Neutral (4)
Question

1 It is important for me to do better than other

students
2 It is important for me to do well compared to others
in this tutorial group
3 My goal in this tutorial group is to get a better grade
than most of the other students
4 I worry that I may not learn all that I possibly could in
this tutorial group
5 Sometimes I’m afraid that I may not understand the
content of this tutorial group as thoroughly as I’d like
6 I am often concerned that I may not learn all there is
to learn in the tutorial groups
7 I want to learn as much as possible from the tutorial
groups
8 It is important for me to understand the content of
this course as thoroughly as possible
9 I desire to completely master (understand) the
material presented in this course
10 I just want to avoid doing poorly in this course
11 My goal in this course is to avoid performing poorly
12 My fear of performing poorly in this course is often
what motivates me

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 Exercise academic motivation – Feedback sheet

This sheet gives you some feedback about your academic motivation and your achievement goals.
Take your time to read through the difference approaches. Where did you score the highest? That is
an indicator that you are mainly driven by this approach, and that factors described there motivate
you to study.

Can you relate to these results and do you agree? What motivates others to study?

Take your time to think about why you study here at university? What do you want to achieve with
your studies? And what helps and motivates you, to study?

Performance approach
1. It is important for me to do better than other students.
2. It is important for me to do well compared to others in this class.
3. My goal in this class is to get a better grade than most of the other students.

If your answers on these items reflect that these statements are somewhat true for your situation,
this means that you do your best to achieve the highest grades and do not want to fail. Because your
goal is related to performing better than others, your study methods are focussed on learning
everything what is expected on the exam, not what you want to learn. This can lead to the situation
that after having passed the exam, on the long term you cannot recall adequately what you have
been studying.

Mastery avoidance
4. I worry that I may not learn all that I possibly could in this class.
5. Sometimes I’m afraid that I may not understand the content of this class as thoroughly as I’d
like.
6. I am often concerned that I may not learn all there is to learn in this class.

These items refer to the type of learning called mastery avoidance. If your answers on these items
reflect that these statements are somewhat true for your situation, this means that you are
intrinsically motivated. That means that you learn because you are really interested in the topic, not
because you learn for passing the exam. On the same time, you feel insecure about passing your
exam and you do not know how to cope with the stress of this uncertainty.

Mastery approach
7. I want to learn as much as possible from this class.
8. It is important for me to understand the content of this course as thoroughly as possible.
9. I desire to completely master the material presented in this class.

These items are related to what is called mastery approach. If your answers on these items reflect
that these statements are somewhat true for your situation, this means that you (as in the
performance approach) do your best to get high grades and do not want to fail. But in this case you
are not afraid to fail. You are intrinsically motivated and process the materials you have to study on a
deep level. You really want to understand what you are studying and you do want to be able to recall
it on the long term, not just for passing the test.

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 Performance avoidance
10. I just want to avoid doing poorly in this class.
11. My goal in this class is to avoid performing poorly.
12. My fear of performing poorly in this class is often what motivates me.

This type of learning is called performance avoidance. If your answers on these items reflect that
these statements are somewhat true for your situation, this means that you are insecure about your
learning methods. Because you worry so much about your performance, you have difficulties with
your concentration, but you still try to prepare as good as possible for the exam in order to pass the
tests. You have the feeling that you did not find the right learning method yet.

Reference:

Elliot, A.J. & McGregor, H.A. (2001). A 2x2 Achievement Goal framework. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 80(3), 501-19.

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