Combined Cognitive-Motivational Interventions With Substantial Benefits for Undergraduate Biology Grades: A Meta-Analysis of 10 New Experiments

Students’ success in undergraduate STEM requires both study strategies and motivation to use them; most interventions have focused on only one. We aimed to improve course grades using different iteratively-developed combinations of cognition-focused and motivation-focused intervention modules. Participants were 3,092 undergraduate biology students at 3 universities over 4 years, randomly assigned to a no-treatment control or one of 17 intervention combinations. Using meta-analysis, averaging across 10 studies, the combined intervention had an effect of g = .30. Significant moderators were student fidelity of access g = .24 and post-iterative phase of the research g = .26. Combined cognitive-and-motivational interventions can meaningfully improve undergraduate students’ course grades (corresponding to 6.6 percentage points on final course grade), with minimal instructor involvement.