Enhancing Students’ Learning Motivation and Comprehension by Reflecting on the Practical Applications of Learning Materials in an Education Learning Journal

Abstract

Evaluating the learning materials' personal utility and worth is vital for cultivating motivation and involvement in high-quality learning experiences. The researchers set out to find out how using a personal-utility prompt in journal writing affected the students' motivation to learn and their understanding of biological concepts in the classroom. Sixty high school students from a Nigerian school participated in the quasi-experimental field investigation. Students were asked to maintain a weekly learning journal starting from the first week of the semester for a total of eight weeks. Students were given short instructions on how to write their journal entries, which might or might not have included a suggestion about how the entries could benefit them individually. The results show that having students think about the educational resources' personal value was a great success with the personal-utility prompt. Consequently, students whose teachers allowed them to employ a personal-utility prompt had more interest in learning and had more success with comprehension than those whose teachers did not. A clear and effective strategy for improving students' motivation and understanding in secondary science education is to have them write reflective journals in which they consider the relevance and usefulness of various learning materials.