Short-term versus long-term effects of cognitive and metacognitive prompts in writing-to-learn

Journal writing is a promising follow-up to course-work. A learning journal is a written explication of one’s own learning processes and outcomes after a lecture or seminar session. To fully exploit the potential of journal writing, instructional support is required. Experimental studies showed that prompts are effective in optimizing journal writing. To investigate the long-term effects of prompts, we conducted a longitudinal study. Students (N = 50) wrote journal entries about weekly seminar sessions over a whole term. The experimental group received cognitive and metacognitive prompts for their writing. The control group received a non-specific instruction without prompts. The prompts proved to be effective in the short term. However, in the long term, they had negative effects on (1) learning strategies elicited in the journals, (2) learning success and (3) students’ writing motivation. In order to avoid such pitfalls of over-prompting, a gradual fading of the prompts might offer a solution.