Abstract

In an era where information and knowledge are updated ever faster, learners’ autonomous learning ability becomes more and more important and is even regarded as one of the key factors to pedagogical success and lifelong learning. While project-based learning is widely adopted in higher education worldwide, learners’ motivation, especially achievement motivation, in adopting autonomous learning strategies to proceed with such kind of projects seems a field relatively less touched. To test the role of achievement motivation in the adoption of autonomous learning strategies in contests, the authors conducted an experiment to 70 participants in 10 contest teams who were involved in the preliminary contest of 2017 NBEPC. Questionnaire survey method was adopted and the result indicates that: 1) teams with high achievement motivation have better application of autonomous learning strategies in the contest; 2) students using more autonomous learning strategies score higher in the contest results; 3) all three phases of autonomous learning have significant relevance with the contest result; 4) all seven types of autonomous learning strategies show significant relevance with the contest result. Despite the limitation of the study, the result is quite significant in learning practice.

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