As you may know by now, we often talk about the benefits of self-regulated learning and why it's so important for grad students.
I've also written a blog about the importance of task understanding and this summer, I wrote about
the many motivation regulation strategies outlined in Wolter's (2003) article.
If you remember, our model of self-regulated learning for grad students highlights four steps: tasks, goals, strategies, and monitor/evaluate/adapt.
So, if you've been keeping track, you'll notice that I wrote about Step 1, task understanding, and then skipped to Step 3, strategies, but never wrote about goals! I'm planning four blogs on goals and this is the first one in this series.
There are three reasons why I haven't written about goals yet. First, most grad students we work with have received advice around goal-setting more times than they can count. This usually leads to a reluctance that setting goals works for them.
Second, setting goals relies on a detailed understanding of the task and understanding tasks can be time-consuming. This step of self-regulated learning is often overlooked or ignored altogether, and this is probably why goals aren't that effective place to start. Plus, grad students aren't often looking for tasks that take MORE time but instead how to do things that make them more efficient. As an aside: spending time on task understanding can actually make you more efficient, but more on that later.
Third, most grad students come to us usually wanting help with finding better strategies. So, by starting off at Step 3, strategies, we work with our grad students to see if different strategies work for them, or if they don't, then we start at Step 1 and work through the steps to see if that helps.
However, goals are the most important part of your learning to help you be and stay motivated - especially if you set the right goals. This is why goals are such a useful tool for grad students.
Next week, I'll write more about goal-setting for grad students that will let you know why the goals you have been setting probably aren't working and how to set goals that do work.
Hint: Start by only setting goals for tasks that you're not looking forward to or tasks that are particularly challenging!
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