Creating New Habits for Learning

Intro

Goals vs. Habit

What are Habits

Habits are defined as a routine of behaviour that tends to occur unconsciously and is repeated regularly. They are part of an individuals practice or regular tendency. Habits are very difficult to "give up" as they occur as an automatic reaction to a particular situation. Since habits have a behavioural component, there is a direct relationship with self-control behaviour to habits. Those who rely on good habits generally have better successes at self-control. In contrast, those who are less successful in controlling their behaviours tend to revert to effortless, habitual behaviour frequently bad habits. In general, those who have established good habits have an increased chance to succeed in various aspects of their life.

Habits vs. goals

Habit Formation

Habit formation critically depends on repeated behavioural performance that is in sync with an individuals long-term goal.

Research shows that behaviour is likely to more habitual (habit formation) when it is consistently and frequently performed in the same example or context. When the frequency co-occurence of behaviour and context initiates an association behaviour is more likely to guided in the future. Therefore, when one confronts a context that is associated with a certain behaviour, this context will automatically prompt an associated behaviour. This desired behaviour will be effortless when the habit is formed. The process of habit formation is variable in the amount of effort required. Some individuals can create new habits as soon as 18 days while others may need 6 months. With habit formation, habit strength increases steeply at first and then begins to level off. Habits formation tends to be stronger with the following factors:

• frequency and consistency of desired behaviour
• inherent nature of the behaviour
• comfortable environment
• easier behaviours

self control

In addition to the factors above, self-control is another variation that explains the required time to form a new habit. In habit formation, repeated performance of a behaviour needs to be in sync with an individual's long-term goal. Inhibition of short-term temptations along with initiating new behaviour towards a long-term goal takes effortful self-control especially early on in habit formation.

Three Kinds of Habits

There are three classifications of habits:

1. motor habits: an individuals muscular activities; walking, running, sitting, standing, particular postures
2. intellectual/cognitive: psychological process needing intellectual capabilities such as logical thinking, good observation, reasoning
3. character: different traits such as time management, hardworking, trusting others; also referred to as emotional habits as they express feelings and emotions

Habit loop

This habit loop consists of three components: cuing environment (arrangement of place, time, people, or incidents), routine (repetitive pattern of activities), and harmony (an outcome of activating the habit), forming the habit loop (Fig. 1). We will

cues:Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior (Clear 2018). A cuing environment can serve as a habit trigger for automatic behavior. It is important because it could prompt students to perform the behavior consistently and then to trigger the learning behavior (Lally and Gardner 2013). Habits are formed when actions are tied to a trigger by consistent repetition. When a habit is triggered, people have an automatic urge to do the action; they sometimes do it without consciously knowing doing it. For example, brushing teeth is a hab. two forms of contextual cues: direct cuing and motivated cuing. First, direct cuing refers to repeated association between routine and environment. Such a continuity may facilitate the encoding of learning patterns in students’ procedural memory. For this reason, habits can be developed via providing a constant environment, for example, reading in the same room at the same time. Another example is writing a diary. Students tend to do the writing in the same notebook on the same table at a specific time. Second, motivated cuing refers to the rewarding experiences in the past. In other words, previous successful experiences may become a cached motive to do the same thing (Daw et al. 2005). For doing so, the cuing environment should include a supporting mechanism, for example, setting feasible plans before solving a complex learning task, like creation in STEM education contexts. On the other hand, some research also shows that a good everyday habit could be disrupted when specific contexts are chang

routine:The second component of the habit loop is the behavioral patterns we repeat most often, literally etched into our neural pathways. Through repetition and practice, it is possible to form (and maintain) new habits in which new response mechanisms are formed. A good way to start forming a new habit is to keep it easy and simple, as Lally et al. (2010) found that complex behaviors took longer time to become habits in everyday life.

People’s behaviors and actions can be goal directed or habitual. Goal-directed actions are rapidly acquired and regulated by their outcome. Habitual actions are reflexive, elicited by antecedent stimuli rather than their consequences. If people engage in goal-directed behaviors on a routine basis, it may become habitual. A habit may initially be triggered by a goal, but over time that goal becomes less necessary and the habit becomes more automatic. Performance of instrumental a

harmony: Harmony means peace, agreement, or concord. AThe third component of the habit loop refers to the result of habit activation. Through routine behavior and action, people may feel that their needs get fulfilled and they receive inner rewards (Phillips et al. 2016; Wiedemann et al. 2014). Such rewards may facilitate people to continue their habit. In our habit loop, we address “harmony” as a psychological outcome of habit to pursue. Csíkszentmihályi (1991) describes harmony as “inner congruence” ultimately leading to inner strength and serenity. For being in harmony, Csíkszentmihályi (1991) suggested tha Such feeling of harmony is usually coupled with their feeling of peacefulness about surrounding environment, composing people and objects they interact when they activate the routine behavior. As a consequence, this psychological experience in the new habit possibly increases a positive feedback that helps the repetition of the new behavior in the future (Lally and Gardner 2013; Neal et al. 2012). Because Rothman (2000) also noticed that “the feeling of satisfaction indicates that the initial decision to change the behavior was correct” (p. 66), the role of positive feelings is to reinforce cue-response associations.

Students

To recap, in the first anchored concept, interest, we talked about how to put interest as the first design consideration. That is, students must learn with interest or learning is interest-driven (Wong et al. 2020). Since the concept interest comprised three components—curiosity, flow, and meaningfulness—this means that students must learn curiously, immersively, or meaningfully. Learning with interest is important because students will spend more time and energy and enjoy it. In the second anchored concept, creation, we talked about how we treat a learning activity as a creation activity of knowledge or skills (Chan et al. 2019). Thus, an interest-driven learning activity is also regarded as an interest-driven creation activity. Since the concept creation comprised three components—imitating, combining, and staging—thus, an interest-driven creation activity also comprised interest-driven imitation, interest-driven combination, and interest-driven staging.

In the third and final anchored concept, habit, as discussed in this paper, we posit that if students learn with interest habitually (as when following a school timetable that regulates daily routines), and their learning process emulates the creation process, then students will become creators, hopefully, lifelong interest-driven creators (Chan et al. 2018). Since the creation process is composed of imitating, combining, and staging sub-processes, when talking about nurturing students’ habits of interest-driven creation, we are also talking about nurturing habits of interest-driven imitating, interest-driven combining, and interest-driven staging. It is important to note that when habit of interest-driven creation is formed, creation per se then becomes students’ individual interest of hobby. The students also then become self-pursuit creators. Furthermore, repeating such interest-driven creation in daily routines, students experience harmony: positive feelings such as fulfillment, satisfaction, achievement, and inner peace.

prelide to learning

good study habits are good assets to learners because the (habits) assist students to attain mastery in areas of specialization and consequent excellent performance, while opposite constitute constraints to learning and achievement leading to failure.” The learning habit greatly determines not only students’ academic achievements but also their success in the future (Chan et al. 2018; Ebele and Olofu 2017).

Students’ achievements due to good habit have a cumulative effect on their future success. Therefore, those students who have developed good learning habits earlier continue to sustain and increase the learning gains while those students who have not had good learning habits have a harder time catching up—essentially, the stronger gets ever stronger while the weaker only gets weaker, due to learning habits. This is consistent with the research findings that suggest that prior learning performance of an experience is a good predictor of future learning (Jonassen and Grabowski 1993). This

When students always acquire the aforementioned positive feelings after the routine activity, their habit formed becomes a hobby. In other words, after a habit is formed, with repeated feelings of harmony as the outcomes of activating the habit, students would behave for interest—pursuing the routine activity whenever there is opportunity. By continuing a particular hobby for a long period, students can gain considerable knowledge and skills in that area of interest.

intest and habit at school

Interest and habit can positively reinforce each other. There are two types of interest: situational interest and individual interest (Hidi and Renninger 2006). Situational interest refers to focused attention and the affective reaction triggered in the moment by environmental stimuli, but situational interest may or may not last over time. Note that situational interest is similar to triggering interest (arousing curiosity) in the interest loop (Wong et al. 2020). Individual interest denotes the enduring tendency to reengage a particular activity overtime with an expectation of positive feelings based on previous experience. Thus, individual interest represents internal drive to seek for opportunities to reengage the activity. Also, since individual interest is similar to hobby—an activity one does for pleasure when not working—it is desirable that most learning activities students find as pleasurable as their hobbies so that they can learn not under any academic pleasure.o develop interest from situational interest to individual interest, building habit through scheduled routines in schools has come to play. Scheduled routines in schools provide students ample opportunities to participate the activity they have experience of situational interest before. The more opportunities provided for students to participate such an activity, the more likely they deepen their interest from situational interest to individual interest, and, in turn, the more likely they build a habit of this activity. Thus, interest development and habit formation reinforce each other.

Habit and Creaton go-to conclusion on paper

tudents who value effort perceive ability as a malleable skill and have a growth mindset; in contrast, those who think intelligence is inherent and unchangeable exert less effort to succeed and have a fixed mindset (permanent capacity) (Hochanadel and Finamore 2015). Students’ growth or fixed mindset was evidenced to influence their habit (Yan et al. 2014). For example, a student with growth mindset may be intrinsically motivated to learn and tend to have a habit of restudying.

Forming a habit of creation is not an easy task. Creation requires a growth mindset of the students (Dweck 2006). Creation includes complex cognitive behaviors. While we are more concerned with the development of complex cognitive behaviors than simple repeated behaviors, it is challenging to unpack the underlying mechanism of how a certain cognitive action becomes an automatic behavior, and is eventually sustained to become a habitual routine behavior in a long te. the arrangement of environmental cues in creation activities may facilitate students to become self-directed learners by promoting sustainable learning and instilling the habits of creation. Students periodically engage in interest-driven creation tasks with the various loops iterated and repeated. The creation activities that students repeat often form a routine, just as the daily routine governed by the school timetable. Imitating, combining, and staging, the three components of the creation loop, can repeatedly happen in the process of interest-driven creation, forming a habitual routine behavior. Harmony refers to the outcomes of habits of interest-driven creation. Through routine, students engage with interest; through harmony, they gain the awareness that their energy has been well invested and that their needs are fulfilled, they feel a sense of satisfaction, and they feel at peace with their surroundings and the world (Fig. 2).

How to do it in school

tudents need to have a good start. Educators need to get students at a manageable pace. Students will be overwhelmed if they are to form too many new habits within a short period of time. Success is more likely to occur when students are focusing on only one or two changes, which is manageable for them at a time. Reaching the levels of automaticity is more difficult for complex behaviors as compared with that of simpler ones (Verplanken and Wood 2006) given. If students start to engage in creation work at a specific time for a fixed length of period, we should provide a cuing environment which makes them not to hesitate from the beginning. It is effective to remind students at the beginning of habit formation by clarifying the goal of the learning activities with the students. If the student knows the purpose of the activity, he/she can focus on the learning, and the study will be goal-directed which can become habitual later. For example, on. revious research on mirror neurons show that observing other people’s behaviors may facilitate unintentional and non-conscious mimic behaviors (Rizzolatti et al. 1996). The finding suggests that students should be situated in a learning environment with good behaviors. In classrooms, teachers should become the role models so that students can mimic routines that we want them to do. Besides, the teachers should also set up a norm that is conducive to develop crowd habits in classrooms. As MSSR, to help students form reading habit, their teacher also read on a routine basis for long period of time (Chan et al. 2018; Wong et al. 2020). It is essential for students to practice the new habit regularly until it becomes a routine in their life. Postponement or interruption should be avoided because it weakens the habit formation. The routine schedules in schools provide such a possibility as educators can get students engage i. Unlike more reflexive motor habits, learning-related habits are to some extent driven by goal-directed automatic behaviors. Hence, the process from its formation to automation is governed by the interaction of multiple factors including emotion, motivation, intention, social pressure, and environmental configurations. This fact implies that simply changing a part of one’s routine is unlikely to be successful if the external situations and social influences remain unchanged. he sense of satisfaction can help students engage in new behaviors in the habit loop. If students are satisfied by the experience of a new routine, they typically attempt to facilitate behavioral changes, and vice versa. Specifically, we consider that the satisfaction of the habit loop will increase the strength of the habit formation, whereas low satisfaction will gradually weaken it. Satisfaction may be boosted by reinforcing un-existing wanted habits, or disrupting existing unwanted habits. Regarding the former, the satisfaction of habit loop can potentially help students form n. The key to students’ satisfaction is to create successful learning experience as often as possible. Fortunately, educators and researchers have already provided several feasible ways of doing so. Generally speaking, successful learning experience can be achieved by cognitive and affective scaffolding. Cognitive scaffolding may support students to complete difficult learning tasks, such as questioning, providing hints, explaining, coaching, positive feedback, and modeling (see van de Pol et al. 2010), while affective scaffolding may encourage students to finish tasks and prevent possible negative emotions, such as anonymity (Cornelius et al. 2011) or information hiding (Cheng et al. 2009). In particular, teachers should provide low-ability students with additional assistance, so that students can acquire the satisfaction in the habit loop of interest-driven creat

Students online learning habits

Study habits encompass a variety of behaviors that include what strategies students use to learn, understand, and retain course content, how much time is spent studying, and how students distribute their study time over the course of a semester (12, 14). As the transition to emergency remote learning demonstrated, these skills are underdeveloped in students, particularly those enrolled in large, introductory classes, and many students developed a negative attitude toward online learning as a result (1, 2). How can faculty equip their students with the cog.Specifically, students lack the ability to effectively assess their learning and often feel that they learn more from cognitively superficial study habits such as re-reading the textbook or their lecture notes (11). This outcome is particularly common among students enrolled in online coursework. Due to limited instructor–student interaction, online courses require students to assume greater responsibility for their learning, to actively monitor their performance, and to apply appropriate study strategies to be academically successful

Recommendations for developing effective study habits

Recommendation	Rationale	Study habits developed
Establish content (and digital) learning objectives	Students struggle with using digital tools for academic purposes	Making diagrams Explaining concepts Self-assessment Consistent and spaced study time
Aligning learning objectives and assessments	Students struggle with constructing meaning from online content and identifying concepts to study	Self-assessment Explaining concepts
High quality feedback	Students struggle with constructing meaning from online content and identifying concepts to study	Self-assessment
Scaffolding	Students cite poor time management and inability to assess learning as barriers to online learning	Consistent and spaced study time Synthesizing notes Making diagrams Explaining concepts Self-assessment
Multiple due dates	Students frequently express issues with procrastination and turning work in on time despite having a clear due date	Consistent and spaced study time
Incorporating online formative assessments	Students struggle with constructing meaning from the lectures posted by instructors	Self-assessment
Provide resources outside of recorded lectures and textbook	Students struggle with using digital tools for academic purposes	Synthesizing notes Use of and completion of problem sets Explaining concepts Self-assessment
Facilitate student-content engagement with interactive instructional materials	Students feel that online learning is less engaging and motivating than face-to-face learning	Use of and completion of problem sets Making diagrams Explaining concepts Self-assessment

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Learning

while learning habits are a strategy to obtain good learning outcomes. Therefore, learning habits are an important factor in the learning process. This is following the opinion of Rana and Kausar (2011) which states that the main key to student learning success is good study habits. Good learning habits will make students get high learning achievement. "Students with better strategies and better learning habits tend to show higher academic achievement" (Aluja dkk, 2004). This can happen because good learning habits will be able to create a learning atmosphere that really supports learning. "A good learning atmosphere is the right atmosphere in understanding what the student is learning, so that mastery of a subject matter will increase" (Wahyuningsih, et. al. , 2013). Also there is an effect of CBT and self-efficacy on c. Learning habits significantly affect student learning outcomes with an effective contribution. There is a positive influence between learning habits and learning outcomes. This means that if the learning habits are high, the learning outcomes obtained are high, and vice versa if the learning habits are low, the learning outcomes obtained are low. Selfefficacy significantly affects student learning outcomes with an effective con. In the learning process, learning habits need to be instilled in students. Learning habits in question mean that students need to plan and study discipline, apply learning procedures, study skills, and strategies to achieve student P ISSN: 2621-0843 E ISSN: 2621-0835 ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities Volume 4 Issue 4: 437-444 442 learning achievement optimally if these components are appropriately implemented. These learning habits are called positive study habits. In other words, if students' learning habits are positive, their learning outcomes may be maximized so that their learning achievement is high and vice versa if students tend to have unfavorable habits, it is possible that student learning outcomes will be less than optimal so that their learning achievement is low. Therefore, high self-efficacy and the cultivation of good learning h

Specific to Learners

erformance on early assessments is a strong predictor of performance later in a course (Bowen & Wingo, 2012), suggesting that students who begin a course using effective learning strategies may continue to use them throughout the course and likewise for students who start out with less effective strategies. Thus, an intervention to improve students’ learning strategies, particularly early in the semester, might yield substantial benefits in course performance. What students do while studying, in contrast, is very important (Dunlosky & Rawson, 2015). For instance, listening to music, watching television, and using the internet while studying all impair students’ learning and subsequent exam performance