This article illustrates how coaching students to think about their study processes and to monitor their learning can really pay off. Grazyna Niezgoda, a veteran instructor at New York City College of Technology, is reviewing an algebra quiz in front of a crowded section of developmental mathematics--a noncredit course for students who have failed the City University of New York's mathematics entrance test. If these students want to stay at City Tech, they need to pass that test. Across the country, many students trip on obstacles like this. But after a decade of trial and error, Niezgoda and her colleagues believe they have found an effective way to help people through. The technique is "self-regulated learning," a series of steps that encourages students to evaluate how they study and notice where they are going wrong. There is strong evidence of success. In a rare example of a randomized controlled trial in higher education, researchers based at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that developmental-math students at City Tech were significantly more likely to pass the entrance test if they used the self-regulated learning technique.