1. Will the students persist in better study habits for the next exam?

Probably not unless this becomes, in some sense, a routine. If they’re given the opportunity to collectively, publicly analyze the objectives and evaluate their preparation >beforetheyshould< want to do for the benefit of their own learning), we’re always going to fight a losing battle. That is, we’re always going to be attempting to “fix” our students’ deficiencies — as if they are so much faulty lab equipment that we can cite as the reason for our feelings of failure. I would suggest that some difficulty might spring from the assumptions you could be carrying with you into your teaching.

For example: “all students are capable of achieving the same level of success with the course content in the same amount of time.” This is an offshoot of the “students are interchangeable widgets” axiom that so plagues educational research, but really started with the industrial school model. But I digress…

Suffice it to say, instead of looking for the silver bullet with which to solve the perennial problem of motivation, you might want to consider the assumptions that underlie your perceptions of things like “motivation.” Not to say you’ll find a ‘cure’ in any sense, but you might allow more room for thoughts and actions (like the one described in the original post) to guide you to better, different engagement.