Abstract
Biochemistry courses have an important place as a common subject in faculties of medicine, food engineering, biology and chemistry. MSLQ, Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and Learning Approach Questionnaire were used. The study also involves repeated observations of the same instructor in a biochemistry class over eight weeks to describe students’ academic performance, instructor practice, teaching methods and generally, learning environment in the biochemistry class. Students achieving the two highest scores, two average scores and the two lowest scores from biochemistry exams were selected for in-depth interviews and results demonstrated that self-efficacy, intrinsic goal orientation, task-value, cognitive strategies such as critical thinking ability and elaboration, metacognitive self-regulated strategies and effort regulation may have a considerable importance in students’ biochemistry achievement. Results of the study also revealed that levels of students’ awareness of what and how they monitor in their biochemistry learning process has an important effect on their biochemistry success.
Highlights
Biochemistry has an important role to understand common topics in medicine, chemistry and biology curriculum
Data in the current study were collected by three methods; (1) using three questionnaires as The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) and Learning Approach Questionnaire (LAQ) about students’ motivational beliefs and learning strategies, metacognitive constructs and learning approaches; (2) conducting in-depth interviews with biochemistry students; (3) using a “structured observation forms” over eight weeks in biochemistry classes
Descriptive statistics related to scores which were measured by MSLQ scores were presented at Table 5 and Table 6
Summary
Biochemistry has an important role to understand common topics in medicine, chemistry and biology curriculum. Most of the studies were related to students’ biotechnology education, knowledge and attitudes toward biotechnology (Incekara & Tuna, 2011; Altun, Celik & Elcin, 2011; Usak, Erdogan, Prokop & Ozel, 2009; Severcan, Ozan & Harris, 2000) These studies provide substantial evidence in biotechnology education but they could not explain the factors affecting biochemistry achievement. In the related literature, there is no such a study investigated the effect of motivational and learning strategies, knowledge and regulation of cognition and learning approaches on university students’ success. There is no case study to investigate how possible factors under cognitive and motivational variables, metacognitive awareness and learning approaches can be used to explain students’ biochemistry failure at the university level in Turkey. The present study aimed to investigate the variables that effect on Turkish university students’ biochemistry achievement
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