Study Smarter:Building Sustainable Study Habits

An Open Educational Resource by Yiran Han & Justin Scott

DESCRIBE THE CHALLENGE:

University students often face difficulty forming sustainable study habits and regulating motivation. Without guided habit-building strategies and cognitive scaffolding, they are more likely to procrastinate and experience reduced academic performance and confidence.

CONTEXT AND AUDIENCE:

Typical Learner:
The primary audience is undergraduate students who aim to do well academically but struggle with consistent study habits. They attend classes and understand content, yet procrastinate or lack routine when managing their time and workload.

Needs & Goals:
These students want to build reliable study habits, improve motivation, and reduce procrastination. Their goal is not only to get better grades, but also to feel more confident and less stressed about school.

Extreme Case 1 – Overwhelmed High-Achiever:
Some highly-motivated students create very ambitious study plans but become overwhelmed or burnt out. They need simple, sustainable strategies and reminders to pace themselves instead of aiming for perfection.

Extreme Case 2 – Low-Motivation Student:
Others struggle to start tasks due to low motivation or confidence. They benefit from small-step habit-building approaches, encouragement, and tools that make studying feel manageable and rewarding.

POV STATEMENT:

A student who understands course content but lacks discipline to follow a study plan needs small, achievable habit-forming steps and positive reinforcement so that they can develop sustainable study habits and gain confidence in their academic progress.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Primary Learning Objectives
By the end of this resource, learners will be able to:

Identify common causes of procrastination and how they relate to academic stress and self-regulation.
Apply at least two habit-building strategies (e.g., time-boxing, task chunking, cue-routine-reward model) to structure daily study routines.
Use one motivational planning tool (e.g., weekly goal map, reward checklist, study motivation tracker) to support consistent study habits.
Evaluate their own study behaviors and identify one area for improvement using self-reflection prompts.

Sub-Objectives / “Below the surface”
Learners will also:

Increase confidence in their ability to maintain study routines and academic motivation.

Recognize emotional triggers (e.g., overwhelm, fear of failure) that impact study behavior.

Practice self-compassion and reduce negative self-talk around academic productivity.

Build meta-cognitive awareness by reflecting on why certain strategies work best for them.

IDEATION:

For our brainstorming, we started by talking about common problems students face when studying — especially procrastination and staying focused. We shared personal experiences and wrote down ideas together in a simple Google Doc. Some of the first ideas were things like a study timer, a motivation quote generator, and a habit-tracking checklist.

After some discussion, we agreed that it would be more helpful to focus on something practical and realistic — a small tool that helps students plan short study goals, track their daily progress, and stay motivated.

Our main idea is a “Study Habit Support Tool” that helps students stay consistent with their learning routine by combining small goals, reflection prompts, and gentle motivation reminders.

Our website:

Study Smarter: Challenge C (google.com)

PRINCIPLES APPLIED:

Coherence Principle:
We removed unnecessary visuals or text distractions, keeping the focus on the study strategies and reflection tools.
Signaling Principle:
Each page uses clear headings (e.g., “Why We Procrastinate”, “How to Build Better Habits”) and bullet points to highlight the main ideas, guiding learners’ attention.
Segmenting Principle:
The content is divided into short, focused sections—one concept per webpage—so that learners can process information step by step.
Personalization Principle:
The tone is conversational and encouraging (“You can do this!”), helping users feel supported and engaged.
Contiguity Principle:
Texts are placed near relevant visuals to ensure learners can easily connect explanations with illustrations.

PEER FEEDBACK:

Yiran: During the peer review process, I received detailed and positive feedback highlighting the strengths of my prototype. Reviewers consistently noted that the topic—procrastination and study habits—is highly relatable and relevant to university students. They appreciated the clear learning goals, logical step-by-step structure, and the combination of psychological concepts with practical study strategies. Several peers emphasized that the tone felt friendly, motivational, and encouraging rather than judgmental, which they felt would support students who may already feel stressed about their study habits. The use of headings and segmentation principles was also recognized as effective in guiding learners through the material.

Peers also provided constructive suggestions to further enhance the prototype. A recurring recommendation was to incorporate more interactive elements, such as quizzes, progress trackers, or real-life scenarios, to help learners apply strategies more effectively. Reviewers also mentioned areas where accessibility could be improved—for example, including captions, clarifying colour choices, and offering alternative ways for users to access the content without sound. Another point raised was the value of adding a brief summary of key takeaways at the end of each section to reinforce learning.

Additionally, reviewers noted that offering early visuals or showing what interactive components will look like could help generate more specific feedback during the development process. They also encouraged clearly stating what Creative Commons license will be used to support reusability of the final OER. Overall, the peer feedback highlighted strong engagement and structure while offering helpful guidance to expand interactivity, accessibility, and clarity.

Justin: The feedback I revised on our prototype highlighted that our project’s topic was relatable, well chosen, and relevant for our student audience we decided on. They noted that everyone has a hard time at one point or another when it comes to building their study habits and they thought the idea to make an OER on it would be great. It was also pointed out that our “Understand” phase was detailed clearly and effectively. Our approachable and encouraging tone throughout was also noted by our peers where they talked about how that would be an effective approach with the needs of students who may struggle with motivation and study habits.

Another aspect they commented positively on was the structure and layout we decided on. They noted that the content was clearly divided into manageable sections, which alines well with the multimedia learning principals. They also felt that the project’s setup of short pages with each one having its own key area supports the readability and can reduce the cognitive load on the reader/learner.

When it comes to aspects, we can improve on our peers noted that we should add some sort of interactive feature, which lead to the idea of the google forms we ended up adding to the final project. Another suggestion that was made was for us to think about the Modality Principle on the “Why We Procrastinate” page. This was due to the idea that students that are already struggling with procrastination may not want to read a big text explaining why they are. For this we decided to add more interactive features into the page to make it feel more inclusive then just reading.

TEAM REFLECTION:

As a team, we felt that our prototype successfully established a clear structure and student-friendly tone. Our peers highlighted that the flow—from understanding why procrastination happens to applying practical study strategies—was logical and well aligned with our learning goals. They appreciated the friendly, encouraging tone, noting that it helped make a stressful topic feel more approachable. Reviewers also pointed out that our use of headings, segmenting, and signaling supported cognitive clarity and guided learners step-by-step through the content, which aligns well with multimedia learning principles.

The peer feedback also identified several areas for improvement, which helped us refine the final resource. Both reviewers noted that while the structure was solid, the prototype lacked concrete examples of what the interactive elements (such as quizzes or trackers) would look like. They also brought up accessibility issues, suggesting we include captions, alternative learning formats, and clearer design choices to support diverse learners. Another suggestion was to incorporate more real-life examples or relatable learner scenarios to increase authenticity and relevance.

Based on this feedback, we revisited our prototype and implemented several revisions. We added interactive Google Forms quizzes, included self-tracking prompts, and expanded the examples used in our explanations to make the content more applicable to real student experiences. We also added sources, improved accessibility notes, and ensured that visuals and layout followed principles such as coherence and segmenting. These revisions allowed the prototype to evolve from a conceptual plan into a more complete, polished learning resource.

Overall, this process strengthened our understanding of multimedia-based learning and the importance of iteration. The feedback reinforced that effective educational design must balance clarity, accessibility, and engagement while considering different learner needs. Revising the prototype required us to connect theory to practice—especially Mayer’s multimedia principles and concepts related to motivation and habit-building. The collaborative revision process ultimately improved the quality of our resource and helped us think more critically about how to design learning materials that are usable, inclusive, and genuinely helpful for students.

INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONS:

Yiran: Working with Justin throughout this project has been one of the most positive and efficient team experiences I’ve had this term. I primarily focused on developing the initial prototype, writing the content structure, and organizing the key sections we later expanded into the final website. If anything, his dedication motivated me as well. One suggestion for improvement would simply be to keep trusting his own design instincts—his ideas were strong, thoughtful, and contributed tremendously to our final product. Overall, I feel incredibly lucky to have worked with a partner as responsible, communicative, and hard-working as Justin.

Justin: I have really enjoyed working on this project with Yiran! At the beginning of the project I had some family matters to attend to then unfortunately got really sick. Through this time Yiran was extremely understanding and helpful, taking the bulk of the workload for the prototype. For the main project I was responsible for building the website, which is something I have never done before so that was definitely a learning curve but overall I enjoyed it! If I were to make one suggestion to Yiran it would be to communicate a little bit more, but our communication was always great. I am just someone who likes a lot of communication when working in a group. Overall Yiran made great contributions to the project and was a pleasure to work with throughout this project!