The foundation of how students usually learn is laid early in their academic lives. However, many or even most students do not primarily rely on those learning strategies that are most favorable from a scientific point of view. To change students’ learning behavior when they start their university education, we developed a computer-based adaptive learning environment to train favorable learning strategies and change students’ habits using them. This learning environment pursues three main goals: acquiring declarative and conditional knowledge about learning strategies, consolidating that knowledge, and applying these learning strategies in practice. In this report, we describe four experimental studies conducted to optimize this learning environment ( n = 336). With those studies, we improved the learning environment with respect to how motivating it is, investigated an efficient way to consolidate knowledge, and explored how to facilitate the formation of effective implementation intentions for applying learning strategies and changing learning habits. Our strategy-training module is implemented in the curriculum for freshman students at the Department of Psychology, University of Freiburg (Germany). Around 120 students take part in our program every year. An open version of this training intervention is freely available to everyone.

According to the model of constructive alignment, learners adjust their learning strategies to the announced assessment (backwash effect). Hence, when teaching for understanding, the assessment method should be aligned with this teaching goal to ensure that learners engage in corresponding learning strategies. A quasiexperimental field study with 81 university students was conducted to test whether "downward misalignment"such as using and announcing a fact-oriented test when trying to teach for understandingreduces learners' use of sophisticated learning strategies, learning motivation, and learning outcomes in terms of understanding. We found that learners in the alignment condition applied more elaboration strategies and revealed better learning outcomes in terms of understanding. The well-aligned learning situation also led to higher perceived competence and less feeling of being under pressure. These findings confirm the backwash effect. For classroom practice, they underline the importance of carefully aligning teaching goals and assessment when teaching for understanding.

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Lernende orientieren sich bei der Auswahl und Planung ihrer Lernaktivitäten stark daran, was ihnen von einer Lehrperson vorgegeben wird. Empirische Befunde zeigen, dass insbesondere die Art der Prüfungsgestaltung als einflussreiches didaktisches Mittel angesehen werden kann, das den Lernprozess Studierender stark beeinflusst. Starre Strukturen und hoher Workload in Bachelor- und Masterstudiengängen fördern diesen Effekt zusätzlich, da wenig Zeit für selbstbestimmtes Lernen bleibt. In einer idealen Lehr-Lern-Situation sollten daher Lehrziele, Lehrmethode und Prüfungsgestaltung bestmöglich auf einander abgestimmt sein, um einen effizienten Lernprozess zu fördern (Constructive Alignment). Gleichzeitig sollten die individuellen Voraussetzungen jedes Lernenden berücksichtigt werden. Dieser Beitrag zeigt auf, wie technologie-gestützte Lernsysteme dazu beitragen können, individualisierte Lernwege zu realisieren, um eine heterogene Gruppe von Lernenden beim Erreichen derselben vorgegebenen Lernziele zu unterstützen. Es wird beleuchtet, welche Lernendenvariablen und welche instruktionalen Methoden sich eignen, um individualisierte Lernarrangements zu gestalten und diskutiert, welche Konsequenzen sich daraus für die Rahmenbedingungen von Lehr-Lern-Situationen ergeben.

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