Choosing What to Study: Do Internal Judgments Predict Study-Time Allocation Over and Above External Agendas?

Research on how students allocate their study time has focused primarily on the influence of goals (often called “agendas”) and metacognitive judgments (learners’ perceptions of how well they know the material). Studies of agenda-based study time allocation have typically operationalized agendas using explicit point values assigned to learning different material in the context of in-lab word-pair learning tasks. The present study extends this agenda-based regulation framework to more educationally realistic settings through in-lab manipulations of course structure presented in a syllabus (Studies 1 and 2) and observational data from study planning exercises in real classes (Studies 3 and 4). The present studies allowed for the comparison of the predictive utility of internal learner judgments in addition to external agendas. Specifically, we included external agenda-related cues (e.g., whether a unit would be tested, whether exams were cumulative, the expected number of exam questions) and internal judgments (e.g., interest, difficulty, confidence) to determine whether students’ internal judgments predict study time over and above external agendas. Across the four studies, external agendas accounted for substantial variance in students’ study time allocation intentions and in three of the four studies, internal judgments explained relatively little variance over and above the explanatory power provided by external agenda-related cues. The fourth study showed more optimistic estimates for the amount of variance explained by internal judgments. Nevertheless, the relative importance of internal judgements and external cues varied with context, underscoring the importance of investigating metacognitive regulation using educationally relevant materials and real-world educational settings.