A Study of Instructional Factors that Encourage College Students' Learning

Abstract

In this study, 60 college students majoring in psychology made evaluations of the instructional factors of a lecturer, and the teaching strategy was improved based on the feedback from the evaluations. This procedure was repeated for each lecture. Which of the lecturer's instructional factors increased the students' understanding and satisfaction was examined. The following became clear as a result of this study: 1) To utilize teaching strategies that reduce cognitive overload increases "degree of satisfaction"; 2) To teach skills such as critically thinking and taking notes increases "level of understanding"; 3) "Degree of satisfaction" and "level of understanding" are increased through enhancement of the students' self-monitoring competence by constructing a participants structure in which the lecturer and students communicate dialogically.