Research Blog #10: Final Abstract and Bibliography

Abstract:

This essay analyzes the traditional college student’s lack of self-regulation. It compares traditional students (ages 18 to 22) with non-traditional students (ages 23 and older), in the means of their self-regulation and way of thinking through case studies, proving that younger college students lack the elaboration and self-regulation as displayed in the 9 subscales of the MSLQ. Tests are explained to show how self-regulation can be manipulated and have positive effects on an individual, especially in their writing - as displayed in the Feltham and Sharen study, with the average students’ writing grade increasing by 13 points. Alternatives and new means of learning, primarily in writing, for those who lack the concept of self-regulation are explained as well. Curriculums focused on the knowledge of text organization to guide, plan, and self-evaluate, as well as new writing mediums - such as online blogs (i.e. Blogger) - prove to be a greater influence and motivator for traditional college students in writing. It is proven that through interaction and involvement of students in their writing, their interest and motivation are strengthened, therefore bettering their work.

Bibliography:

Baggetun, Rune, and Barbara Wasson. "Self-Regulated Learning And Open Writing." European Journal Of Education41.3-4 (2006): 453-472. ERIC. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.

"College Drinking." National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Dec. 2015. PDF. 23 Apr. 2016.

Feltham, Mark, and Colleen Sharen. "What Do You Mean I Wrote A C Paper?" Writing, Revision, And Self- Regulation." Collected Essays On Learning And Teaching 8.(2015): 111-138. ERIC. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

Jacobson, Rebecca R., and Sandra M. Harris. "Does the type of campus influence self-regulated learning as measured by the Motivated Strategies For Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ)?" Education 128.3 (2008): 412+. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.

Kitchakarn, Orachorn. "Using Blogs To Improve Students' Summary Writing Abilities." Turkish Online Journal Of Distance Education 13.4 (2012): 209-219. ERIC. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.

MacArthur, Charles A., Zoi A. Philippakos, and Melissa Ianetta. "Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction In College Developmental Writing." Journal Of Educational Psychology 107.3 (2015): 855-867. ERIC. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

Mih, Codruta, and Viorel Mih. "Components Of Self-Regulated Learning; Implications For School Performance." Acta Didactica Napocensia 3.1 (2010): 39-48. ERIC. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.

Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self-Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.

Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-control. Little, Brown. Print.

Pintrich, Paul R. "A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students." Educational Psychology Review 16.4 (2004): 385-407. Web.

Wanjohi, Racheal N., Robert B. Mwebi, and Naftal M. Nyang'ara. "Self-Regulation Of Facebook Usage And Academic Performance Of Students In Kenyan Universities." Journal Of Education And Practice 6.14 (2015): 109-113.ERIC. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.

Literature Review Blog #5

Visual: 

Citation: Mih, Codruta, and Viorel Mih. "Components Of Self-Regulated Learning; Implications For School Performance." Acta Didactica Napocensia 3.1 (2010): 39-48. ERIC. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.

Summary: This article goes in to detail on self-regulated learning. It talks about how many psychological and other factors come into play with self-regulated learning; like, learning goals, personal self-efficacy, metacognition and testanxiety

Authors: Both authors are very qualified for this study because they are both very experienced researchers with background in psychological fields. They have many other studies which are very renowned and useful.

Key terms: 
1. metacognition - awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.

2. self-regulated learning -  refers to learning that results from students' self-generated thoughts and behaviors that are oriented systematically toward the attainment of their goals

Quotes:
1. "Studies show that students with high self-efficacy benefit from high educational achievements. Consequently, they are more capable of self-regulation , prefer challenging tasks, invest more effort in solving tasks, persist more in solving difficult tasks, set higher goals, show low test-anxiety, and apply more effective learning strategies." pg 42
2. "When faced with challenging tasks they manifest diverse reactions: they draw back because of risk of failure, show negative affective reactions, attribute failure to lack of academic ability and demonstrate decreased interest for the task." pg 41
3. "More specifically, the study set off to identify the variables involved in the process of school learning, describing the relations between these, as well as the way each construct develops as school age advances." pg 39


Value: This article will help me explore my research question because I can use it as a comparison or contrast to many of my other sources using self-regulated learning. This article also brings a psychological aspect into my research which I could explore further.

Research Blog #9: Argument and Counter-Argument

My argument is that having more self-regulation will allow college students to better succeed academically, especially when it comes to writing. The other side of this argument is that self-regulation does not have such a big impact on students, which is supported by the Miller article in my sources. In this article, the results of their study found that self-regulation has no direct correlation to prediction accuracy in students. I find this counter-argument to be not so strong since it focuses on a different aspect (prediction accuracy) than most of my other texts. One comparison it does have with a few of my articles, like Pintrich's, is that it makes use of the MSLQ; a questionnaire used to evaluate self-regulation. I did find that the MSLQ is possibly outdated, so that raises a lot of questions regarding Miller's study and potentially even some of my other sources.

Articles:
1. Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self-Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.
2.Pintrich, Paul R. "A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students." Educational Psychology Review 16.4 (2004): 385-407. Web.

Research Blog #8: Case

My case regarding my topic of self-regulation will be about self-regulation in college students in writing classes. I chose this as my case because writing is one of the topics in college where most students have trouble due to all the distractions and difficulties that arise when actually trying to get to the writing. I have a few potential sources on this topic including "The Expos Five" (a documentary studying the journeys of 5 college students taking Expository Writing), "Making the Writing Process Work: Strategies for Composition and Self-regulation" (book), and "Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction in College Developmental Writing" (a scholarly article). This is a great case because writing is one of the most self-regulation intensive processes, not only in college, but also for authors and other writers.


Materials: 

1.https://vimeo.com/14011000

2. https://books.google.com/books/about/Making_the_Writing_Process_Work.html?id=M_BJAAAAYAAJ

3. http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=20d945ee-1b77-4df4-9188-c221c05d00b2%40sessionmgr110&hid=121&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=EJ1071555&db=eric

Research Blog #7: Frame

Some of the theories used in my paper are the SRL theory, the MSLQ, and although it's not necessarily a theory, I also use a few ideas from the Marshmallow Test to expand and compare on other topics. These concepts help me make sense of my project because they are quite renowned and frequently used in the self-regulatory researching field; making them very useful to explain certain studies or tests. The SRL (self-regulated learning) theory is a revised version of the IP (information processing) theory, which mostly took the cognitive aspect into account when evaluating self-regulation. Pintrich’s SRL theory “takes a much more inclusive perspective on student learning to include not only cognitive, but also motivational and affective factors, as well as social contextual factors (Pintrich, 2000b)” (Pintrich, 386). There are also four general assumptions that most of the SRL models share:

1. active, constructive assumption
2. potential for control assumption
3. goal, criterion, or standard assumption
4. self-regulatory activities are mediators between personal and contextual characteristics and actual achievement or performance

I go into further detail about these 4 assumptions in my paper, but this is the basis of the SRL theory; which is most likely going to be the my most used and important source.

Research Blog #6: Visual

It was a bit tough for me finding a visual that could fit my project, but when I saw this one I was satisfied and decided to use it. This image shows some of the components that affect self-regulation, and having control over them could lead to better self-regulation. If the word on the right next to the upward arrow isn't that visible, it says "performance." The way it's placed along side the arrow indicates that as mastery over the three self-regulation strategies increase, so will overall performance. I think this visual fits in with my paper because one of the things I try to show in my paper is that increased self-regulation will lead to better performance academically for college students. I think this will also be a useful image for my oral presentation and perhaps my research paper as well.

Literature Review Blog #4

Visual


Citation

Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-control. Little, Brown. Print. 

Summary

This book revolves around the implications of self-control and how even something as trivial as taking a marshmallow now or waiting to receive two is an indicator of a student's potential in academics or other functions.

Author

Walter Mischel: Mischel is a renowned American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. I think this fact alone is reason enough for me to use his material in my paper, especially this book of his as it focuses on self-regulation. 

Key terms

1. High delay - those who could, on a consistent basis, wait and were not subject to their impulses.
2. Hot or Cool - two ways used to describe the brain with "hot" being emotional, reflexive, unconscious — and t "cool" being cognitive, reflective, slower, and effortful.

Quotes

1. "Self-control is crucial for the successful pursuit of long-term goals. It is equally essential for developing the self-restraint and empathy needed to build caring and mutually supportive relationships.It can help people avoid becoming entrapped early in life, dropping out of school, becoming impervious to consequences, or getting stuck in jobs they hate." 
2. "The marshmallow experiments convinced me that if people can change how they mentally represent a stimulus, they can exert self-control and escape from being victims of the hot stimuli that have come to control their behavior."
3. "Beginning in early childhood, far too many people live in untrustworthy, unreliable worlds in which promises for delayed larger rewards are made but never kept.  Given this history, it makes little sense to wait rather than grab whatever is at hand."

Value

I think this source has the potential to be the backbone of my research due to the fact that it explores my topic of self-regulation fully and it is also very famous; which means many other researchers have review or critics of this experiment which will broaden the type and amount of information I have.

Literature Review Blog #3

Visual: Author - Dionne Miller



Citation:

Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self- Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.

Summary: This study investigates how students in an urban 2-year college used self regulation strategies in a General Chemistry I course. It points to a positive correlation between performance and self-regulation, and on the basis of these findings, the author proposes possible interventions to improve self-regulation with the larger goal of improving student performance in chemistry and other science-related disciplines.

Author: Dionne A. Miller is an assistant professor of chemistry in the Natural Sciences Department of LaGuardia Community College. She received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the CUNY Graduate School and University Center in 2008. She is very knowledgeable in thew researching field and was previously a college professor so I feel as though she is qualified for this work.

Key terms: 
1. Self-regulation - the ability to manage disruptive emotions and impulses, and to think before you react.
2. Educational evaluation - the evaluation process of characterizing and appraising some aspect/s of an educational process.

Quotes: 


1. "A self-regulated learner is able to monitor his or her learning and identify and implement strategies to bring it up to the predetermined standard of the course, and therefore self-regulation has an important role in learning even if this role is not explicit to the student (Boud, 1995)."

2. "Boud (1995), Zimmerman (2002), and Schraw et al. (2006) agreed that self-regulation enables students to become effective and responsible learners who can continue their education as “lifelong learners” without the intervention of teachers."

3. "Students who are self-regulated report much higher levels of academic satisfaction and are more likely to persist in the face of significant challenges (Bandura, 1997; Zimmerman, 2002). Self-regulation is thus highly desirable in our students, especially those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses and majors where these courses stress understanding, application, and synthesis of the fundamental disciplinary concepts rather than simple memorization (Glynn & Muth, 1994; Zoller, 2000)."

Value:
This material helps me explore my research question because it gives me some insight into how performance is related to self-regulation. It seems as though performance is indeed positively correlated with self-regulation, and this supports my potential argument that the more self-regulated someone is, the more they will see their performance in academics increasing.

Research Blog #5: Bibliography

Bibliography

Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton. Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 2013. Print.

Lehrer, Jonah. "Don't!" The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 18 May 2009. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.

Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self-Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.
Pintrich, Paul R. "A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students." Educational Psychology Review 16.4 (2004): 385-407. Web.

Pintrich, Paul R. Understanding Self-regulated Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1995. Print. 

Su, Xiaoxia, Ron E. Mcbride, and Ping Xiang. "College Students’ Achievement Goal Orientation and Motivational Regulations in Physical Activity Classes: A Test of Gender Invariance." JTPE Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 34.1 (2015): 2-17. Web. 
Todd, Jemma, and Barbara Mullan. "The Role of Self-regulation in Predicting Sleep Hygiene in University Students." Psychology, Health & Medicine 18.3 (2013): 275-88. Web.

Research Blog #4: Research Proposal

Working Title: Self-Regulation among College Students

Topic

My paper is going to be focused on the implications and effects of self-regulation in college students. Taking pieces from what I have read, it seems that most researchers find that the amount of self-regulation a student possesses has the potential to affect a plethora of different things; academic success, sleep hygiene, and engagement are just a few. I am interested in this topic because self-regulation is a concept that intrigues me and seeing as I am currently a college student, I want to know how it affects those like me.

Research Question

What sort of implications arise for college students depending on their ability to self-regulate?

Theoretical Frame

Although I am not yet sure about what theories I will be using to analyze facts and case studies, I do have an idea of what I am trying to explain. I want to understand what role self-regulation plays in determining the many factors of a college student’s life; their grades, social life, etc. Is self-regulation even that big of a factor when it comes to these things? I want to find out the answer to that question as well. Most cases suggest that the more self-regulated a student is, the more positive affects they'll see as a result of that. One specific framework that did interest me from one of my readings was the SRL(self-regulated learning) Perspective. “the SRL perspective takes a much more inclusive perspective on student learning to include not only cognitive, but also motivational and affective factors, as well as social contextual factors (Pintrich, 2000b).” This quote, from the article “A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students,” presents an interesting theory on how relying on the self can change the way motivation and other factors affect a person. Moreover, Dionne A. Miller performed a study explaining how self-regulation can lead to better performance for students, and improving self-regulation is the way to go if students want to see improvements in their performance.

Research Plan, Case, or Additional Questions

Some additional questions that arise are as follows: How does self-regulation affect a tudent’s academics? Is it possible to change your own control over self-regulation? There are many more questions that also come from this topic, including the one I posed in the theoretical frame section, which was: is self-regulation even that big of a factor when it comes to a college student’s lives? To continue, I am going to be looking for information or case studies pertaining to anything having to do with college students and self-regulation; perhaps a study about how self-regulation affects academic success, or information regarding to what affects the differences in self-regulation among college students. I know it still sounds rather unorganized and it’s clear my paper is not as focused as it should be; but, I feel as though the more I research on the topic, the more my paper will come together. One of the studies that caught my eye was actually in one of the readings we went over in class, “Paying for the Party,” by Armstrong and Hamilton. Even though the main focus is not self-regulation, the study talks about one case where even though the student was very self-regulated, she ended up doing poorly in her classes due to other factors like social status. This shows me that self-regulation is not the only thing that can affect the life of a college student .

Bibliography

Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton. Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 2013. Print.

Lehrer, Jonah. "Don't!" The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 18 May 2009. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.

Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self-Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.

Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-control. Little, Brown. Print.

Pintrich, Paul R. "A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students." Educational Psychology Review 16.4 (2004): 385-407. Web.

Su, Xiaoxia, Ron E. Mcbride, and Ping Xiang. "College Students’ Achievement Goal Orientation and Motivational Regulations in Physical Activity Classes: A Test of Gender Invariance." JTPE Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 34.1 (2015): 2-17. Web.

Todd, Jemma, and Barbara Mullan. "The Role of Self-regulation in Predicting Sleep Hygiene in University Students." Psychology, Health & Medicine 18.3 (2013): 275-88. Web.

Literature Review #2

(1) Visual:
  One of the authors: Matthew Planchard.


(2) Citation:
Planchard, Matthew, Daniel, Kristy L., Maroo, Jill, Mishra, Chandrani, and McLean, Tim. "Homework, Motivation, and Academic Achievement in a College Genetics Course." Journal of College Biology Teaching. 41.2 (2015):11-18. Web.


(3) Summary:
This study is based off research pertaining to the relationship between student motivation, homework completion, and academic achievement at the college level. They found that there is a positive correlation between motivation and academic achievement. They also provide suggestions on how to increase a students motivation.

(4) Main Author:
Matthew Planchard is currently a software developer who focuses on the hard sciences; However, his background comes from the researching field. He worked as a research assistant during his stay at the University of Souther Mississippi, which gives him some qualification to do work regarding my study.


(5) Key terms:

Academic Achievement- the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has achieved their educational goals.

Motivating Factors- drivers of human behavior related to the intrinsic nature of the work, but not necessarily to the surrounding circumstances or environment. 


(6) Quotes:

1. "In their study, a student who comes to a university with the desire and motivation to learn is more likely to seek out and find positive academic experiences, triggering positive feedback loops between the student and the instructor or institution" (12).

2. "We compared student reported motivation with actual performance in terms of Problem Pack and homework completion, using a t-test to determine if there was a significant relationship between credit, extra credit, or reinforcement motivating factor and completion of the related assignment type" (14).

3. "However, we found discrepancies between students’ reported motivation and actual completion rates. Students were pragmatic in practice given that they were more likely to attempt assignments that directly impacted their grade. It is more likely that most students are motivated by a combination of factors" (16).


(7) Value: 
This material will help me explore my research question because it is a direct study of the effect motivation has on students and their academic achievement. It also talks about what motivates students, and how to increase the levels of motivation in a student. 

Literature Review Blog #1

1.  Authors: Chan, Hsun-Yu; Wang, Xueli

2. Citation:
Chan, Hsun-yu, Wang, Xueli. “Interact for What? The Relationship between Interpersonal Interaction Based on Motivation and Educational Outcomes among Students in Manufacturing Programs at Two-Year Technical Colleges.” Community College Review. 44.1 (2016): 26-48. Web.

3.Summary: This reading talks about a study performed to observe the interactions of differently motivated students entering manufacturing programs at different public two-year technical colleges. The study found that these interactions can be grouped into three different categories, depending on the different underlying motivations. Towards the end, they also use their findings and give the information to the schools they studied from, giving them pointers on how to improve their learning environment.

4. Authors: Xueli Wang has a masters degree on Higher Education and Student Affairs from OSU. She studies college students' pathways and success, with a particular focus on community colleges and undergraduate STEM education. Hsun-Yu Chan received his masters degree in the Department of Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin. His research interest includes peer relation, peer influence, and parent-child conversation. Hsun-yu also works in an NSF-funded project focusing on improving technical college student learning and academic success. The fact that both these authors have masters on topics regarding education and students shows me that they are knowledgeable on my topic.

5. Key terms:

Interpersonal Interaction - "a communication process that involves the exchange of information, feelings and meaning by means of verbal and non-verbal messages, between two or more persons."

Manufacturing Programs - have "distinctive and rich curricular environments and contexts that serve as an optimal venue for exploring interaction among students (e.g., through both individual and group projects) and between students and faculty (e.g., through workshops) in more diverse ways as opposed to in other programs such as liberal arts transfer programs." 

6. Quotes:
- "To address this gap in the literature, the present study explored different forms of interaction based on motivation among two-year college students in manufacturing programs, and how these different forms of interaction are associated with academic achievement (i.e., grade point average [GPA]) and retention/graduation."
- "They surveyed four-year college students on the reasons for engaging in interaction with faculty (i.e., SFI), and the results from factor analysis revealed five major motivations: relational, functional, excuse, participating, and sycophancy. While the relational and sycophantic motives are relationship-oriented, the other three motives are linked to cognitive learning."
- "...we argue that individuals' motivation for interaction represents a more accurate approach to understanding interaction and its potential link to future educational outcomes. Furthermore, we argue that motivation is a latent drive that propels individuals to engage in certain behaviors to meet their needs, similar to Pintrich's (1999, 2004) conceptualization that motivational belief informs self-regulatory learning strategies."

7. Value: This material will help me explore my research question because not only does it talk about motivation and perform a study surrounding the topic, it also references many other researchers and their studies relating to my topic. Even if the information does not perfectly end up fitting in with my paper, I will have access to many other studies as a result of this scholarly article. 

Research Blog #3

                Although I have not thought much about it, the issue of Privatization has a pretty direct connection to my topic. According to one of the readings called “Higher Education and Privatization,” Privatization is defined as the "movement away from public financing and toward private financing." Like I talked about in my Analytic essay, this change caused a lot of problems for students, two major ones being stress and financial debt. My topic focuses on the motivation of students in College, and I am going to be researching a lot of different sub-topics like how motivation depends on the major a student chooses or how motivation differs between minorities and other students; but, one connection I thought up was that the emergence of Privatization has most likely boosted the motivation of a lot of students going to college today. The fact that most students or their parents have to pay money out of their pockets for a college education means that students are less likely to take their education for granted. They will focus more and be more motivated because it's their money on the line; no one likes wasting money. The debt created by privatization also has to be a booster for student motivation, seeing as that debt can ruin someones life, as shown in The Student Loan Documentary. College students now feel as though they must do good academically in order to get a good job once they graduate so they can pay off their loans.

Scouting my topic

          After reading Professor Goeller's comments on my previous post, I decided to take on his suggestion about refining my focus when it came to motivation in college students. I'm going to begin my research using the following question: How does major choice affect academic motivation? Basing my research on this question will help give me some direction in my research paper, and I'm genuinely interested in how motivation is affected depending on a student's major. While searching online, the key terms I found most useful were college, motivation, and major choice. I found a few articles, a few blogs, and to my surprise, a lot of "edu" websites regarding the topic. I found one article ("Determinants influencing college major choice and their relationship to self-determined motivation, achievement, and satisfaction") specifically talking about my research question which I'm sure is going to be one of my sources. Other potential sources are: a book recommended to me by Professor Goeller called "Drive" by Daniel Pink and a scholarly article called "Motivation for Major Choice in Relation to College Major Satisfaction." I did not have much success in the news, scholar, or book sections of google other than these sources; but, there seemed to be a lot more in the normal google search. Some other ideas that came to me as a result of this search were how motivation affects a students academics, the difference in motivation depending on whether a student is a minority or not, and the link between major choice and satisfaction.

             

Two of the links I found which I think are going to be useful for my paper are the following:

• https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/11637

• http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_college_student_development/v046/46.3dennis.html

These links lead to scholarly articles which I think will be very useful starting points for my research. The first one directly talks about my question, "How does major choice affect academic motivation?" and the second one potentially has some new ideas I can cover. For example, the second article brings up how motivation affects academic success, which seems like another great research topic. To finish up this blog, I could not really find any controversy or differing viewpoints on my topic just yet; but personally, I think that students who choose a major solely for the potential money they could be making will have lower motivation than students who choose a major they are genuinely interested in. Although this might seem obvious, there is no telling what I could potentially find while researching this topic.

Research brainstorm

For my research topic, I'm thinking of writing about what motivates students in College. Why do some students excel in their academics while others don't? Why do some students choose to prioritize partying and drugs over their grades? What methods must be taken to motivate a student? Personally, I think many students come to college with a specific level of motivation or dedication that they have developed throughout their lives; but, I feel as though the environment of college allows some of this previous motivation to either grow or shrink. The fact that students have some independence and are around others who are the same age takes a part in this as well without a doubt.