Coaching to Learn: Motivating Students to Adopt and Adapt Effective Learning Strategies

Abundant laboratory and classroom research demonstrate the superior effectiveness of effortful learning strategies based on cognitive science over re-reading, highlighting, and other strategies more widely used by college students. However, persuading students to adopt and adhere to effective strategies is difficult. This article outlines a novel, peer-to-peer intervention rooted in the Knowledge, Belief, Commitment, and Planning theoretical framework (McDaniel & Einstein, 2020) that emphasizes the need for students to believe in, commit to, and plan to use effective strategies rather than simply "know" them. Opportunities for faculty and learning center personnel to incorporate elements of the intervention into existing programming and adapt them to local institutional needs are described.