Training metacognition in the classroom: the influence of incentives and feedback on exam predictions

In two semester-long studies, we examined whether college students could improve their ability to accurately predict their own exam performance across multiple exams. We tested whether providing concrete feedback and incentives (i.e., extra credit) for accuracy would improve predictions by improving students’ metacognition, or awareness of their own knowledge. Students’ predictions were almost always higher than the grade they earned and this was particularly true for low-performing students. Experiment 1 demonstrated that providing incentives but minimal feedback failed to show improvement in students’ metacognition or performance. However, Experiment 2 showed that when feedback was made more concrete, metacognition improved for low performing students although exam scores did not improve across exams, suggesting that feedback and incentives influenced metacognitive monitoring but not control.

[1]  Jeffrey D. Karpicke,et al.  The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning , 2008, Science.

[2]  Linda Bol,et al.  Test prediction and performance in a classroom context. , 2000 .

[3]  J. Kruger,et al.  Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[4]  S. Tobias,et al.  The ability to estimate knowledge and performance in college: A metacognitive analysis , 1998 .

[5]  John Dunlosky,et al.  Applied Metacognition: Influence of practice tests on the accuracy of predicting memory performance for paired associates, sentences, and text material , 2002 .

[6]  Li Cao,et al.  Metacognitive Monitoring Accuracy and Student Performance in the Postsecondary Classroom. , 2005 .

[7]  M. Alicke.  Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controllability of trait adjectives. , 1985 .

[8]  J. Flavell.  Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring: A New Area of Cognitive-Developmental Inquiry. , 1979 .

[9]  Kerri L. Johnson,et al.  Why the Unskilled are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight Among the Incompetent , 2006, Organizational behavior and human decision processes.

[10]  J. Suls,et al.  Flawed Self-Assessment , 2004, Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society.

[11]  E. Deci,et al.  Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in Education: Reconsidered Once Again , 2001 .

[12]  C. A. Weaver,et al.  Repeated testing sessions and scholastic aptitude in college students’ metacognitive accuracy , 2007 .

[13]  R. Gramzow,et al.  Big tales and cool heads: academic exaggeration is related to cardiac vagal reactivity. , 2008, Emotion.

[14]  Linda Bol,et al.  Explaining calibration accuracy in classroom contexts: the effects of incentives, reflection, and explanatory style , 2008 .

[15]  Joachim Krueger,et al.  Unskilled, unaware, or both? The better-than-average heuristic and statistical regression predict errors in estimates of own performance. , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[16]  David J. Therriault,et al.  Accuracy of metacognitive monitoring affects learning of texts. , 2003 .