Writing about the Personal Utility of Learning Contents in a Learning Journal Improves Learning Motivation and Comprehension

Table 2

Means and standard deviations for the experimental conditions.

Measures	Experimental condition
	Personal-utility prompt condition		Standard prompts   condition
	M	(SD)	M	(SD)
Pretest
Comprehension^a	5.00	(2.05)	5.13	(1.73)
Learning motivation^b	4.92	(0.46)	4.66	(0.49)
Elicited strategies^c
Elaboration	0.51	(0.18)	0.46	(0.16)
Organization	2.48	(1.21)	2.66	(1.22)
Metacognitive strategies	0.25	(0.21)	0.22	(0.16)
Personal-utility statements	0.54	(0.61)	0.08	(0.21)
Posttest
Comprehension^a	13.11	(2.81)	10.00	(3.00)
Learning motivation^b	5.11	(0.49)	4.42	(0.64)
Acceptance^b	5.61	(1.09)	4.68	(1.34)

Note. The different numbers of students in pre- and posttest were owing to the illness of students. ^aScores in the comprehension tests in which a maximum of 22 points was achievable. ^bRating scores from 1 (low value) to 7 (high value). ^cAverage number of strategy indicators elicited in one learning journal.