BASELINE DATA ON MOTIVATION AND LEARNING STRATEGIES OF STUDENTS IN PHYSICAL GEOLOGY COURSES AT MULTIPLE INSTITUTIONS: GARNET PART 1, OVERVIEW

Student adoption of cognitive strategies such as good thinking and reasoning is either limited or promoted by affective factors such as motivation, attitudes, feelings and emotions. The GARNET (Geoscience Affective Research Network) project examines the connection between affective factors and geoscience learning outcomes. Participating instructors used the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich et al., 1993) to investigate how aspects of the affective domain varied for students and to identify variations with classroom instruction strategies and learning environments. Here we report baseline MSLQ data collected from 13 physical geology classes at six institutions during fall 2008 and spring 2009 semesters. These are the first data to compare a diverse array of student values, beliefs, and learning strategies across multiple general education geoscience courses.

The MSLQ is an 81-item scale divided into six motivation and cognitive subcategories containing 15 separate subscales. GARNET institutions included public research universities, a private liberal arts college, and a community college. We analyzed matched pre and post MSLQ surveys, demographic, and performance data for 340 students. In any one semester, there are no large differences in MSLQ pre-instruction scores between different classes (hence institutions), suggesting that students’ initial motivation and learning strategies are fairly similar across institutions. There are some significant differences in MSLQ pre-instruction scores between fall and spring populations, suggesting somewhat different student attitudes as a function of semester. Within individual classes, students generally report little change in the study strategies they adopt (e.g., rehearsal, critical thinking) over the length of the semester. Various subscale categories have different trends for high and low performing students. Factors such as self-efficacy, test anxiety, and peer learning, record significant pre/post changes (p<0.05) in multiple classes across both semesters. By the end of the semester, most students became less self-confident, less anxious in test situations, and were more likely to seek help from peers and instructors.