The Relationship Between Mental Effort and Judgement of Learning on Students’ Perceived Study Effectiveness and Their Decisions on the use of Future Study Strategies

Abstract

This study aims to gain a better understanding of how students monitor their learning and how they make future study decisions. Specifically, it investigates whether students use perceived mental effort as a cue for their learning and how they reflect on study effectiveness and make future study decisions. In an online learning environment 151 students rated their perceptions of two contrasting strategies (blocked and interleaved) and indicated if they would use them in the future. A mediation model was applied for both strategies to explore the pathway from mental effort via judgement of learning to perceived study effectiveness. Multiple regression analysis was performed to examine what influenced the willingness to use both strategies. Results indicate that the role of mental effort on perceptions of the effectiveness is fully mediated by judgements of learning for the of the blocked strategy and complementary mediated for the interleaved strategy. Results strongly imply that when students need to invest high mental effort, they take this as a cue for poor learning and therefore dismiss the strategy as infective and in turn are not willing to use in in the future.