ABSTRACT
We have known for some time that certain factors separate students who succeed in
college from those who have difficulty. This chapter identifies and discusses three factors
that affect students’ ability to achieve in college-the ability to “navigate” and understand
course expectations, motivation, and self-efficacy. An examination of these three areas is
useful for understanding how external factors, such as the demands and discourse of
college classes, and internal factors, such as feelings of motivation and self-efficacy,
affect students’ performance. We begin our discussion of these factors by identifying
study habits that either facilitate or inhibit students’ development in these three areas.
