What motivates and demotivates students in their engagement in at-home work for high-stakes assignments, such as test preparation and writing and revising papers? This paper outlines a student-centered method to identify learning strategies students actually use and obstacles students actually face compared to what is reported in the literature. This method provides awareness and agency of strategies and obstacles to attempt to change student behavior and perceptions. The three research goals were 1) identifying learning strategies and obstacles with a user-centered design method, 2) mapping the strategies and obstacles to the Expectancy-Value-Cost Model (EVC Model) of motivation theory, and 3) noting the effectiveness of those strategies and obstacles and reporting the results to students in between major class assessments. Our results show that that across Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines and student levels, students use and encounter similar strategies and obstacles.