College teachers are increasingly concerned about a lack of self-regulation in Millennial students. We tested an intervention to increase self-regulated learning in 71 undergraduate students from a psychology statistics course. At the beginning and end of the semester, we measured narcissism, entitlement, external locus of control, helicopter parenting, achievement goal orientation, and several study strategies and beliefs about learning using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Half of the participants received the intervention first, while the other participants completed practice problems. At midterm, all participants switched conditions. For the intervention, participants completed a worksheet each week identifying a problem area in the material and making a plan to address this area in the coming week. The group receiving the intervention first earned significantly higher final grades. Mediation analyses suggest that a decrease in external locus of control drove this difference.
