Abstract

College freshman face the challenges of adapting to instructional styles and expectations that differ from high school and junior college experiences. Several researchers have demonstrated that improving academic performance in college requires more than a traditional, remedial study-skills orientation (Biggs, 1978; Derry & Murphy, 1986; Ford, 1981). For many students, college challenges their level of motivation and requires significant adjustments to academic aptitude but standard curricula usually provides little or no help in identifying and overcoming the barriers to learning (Newell, Dahm, Harvey, & Newell, 2004) or the development of metacognitive skills. The purpose of this paper is to present a research plan that furthers empirical findings; findings that show that students who are exposed to metacognitive strategies in the classroom perform better academically.