College Students’ Distractions and Strategies From a Self-regulated Learning Perspective: A Qualitative Analysis

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, TX.

The purpose of this proposal was to identify the types of distractions college students face while completing academic tasks. Additionally, we were interested in how students attributed the underlying causes of their distractions and the types of strategies they utilized to minimize distractions. the types of strategies students utilized to minimize distractions. We conducted qualitative methods whereby they analyzed students’ assignments from a learning to learn course (preliminary analyses N=76). We found 11 distinct distractions, 8 distinct underlying causes of distractions, and 8 distinct strategies. As well, a mismatch was noticed a mismatch between distractions and strategies. These finding provide meaningful implications to designing effective learning to learn courses and programs that are intended to increase students’ self-regulated learning.