Metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates

Jennifer McCabe 0 ) Psychology Department, Goucher College , 1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Baltimore, MD 21204, USA Two studies examined undergraduates' metacognitive awareness of six empirically-supported learning strategies. Study 1 results overall suggested an inability to predict the learning outcomes of educational scenarios describing the strategies of dual-coding, static-media presentations, low-interest extraneous details, testing, and spacing; there was, however, weak endorsement of the strategy of generating one's own study materials. In addition, an independent measure of metacognitive selfregulation was correlated with scenario performance. Study 2 demonstrated higher prediction accuracy for students who had received targeted instruction on applied memory topics in their psychology courses, and the best performance for those students directly exposed to the original empirical studies from which the scenarios were derived. In sum, this research suggests that undergraduates are largely unaware of several specific strategies that could benefit memory for course information; further, training in applied learning and memory topics has the potential to improve metacognitive judgments in these domains. - Prior research on metacognition and metamemory in college students does not present an optimistic picture, suggesting overconfidence in self-chosen study strategies relative to academic performance (e.g., Winne & JamiesonNoel, 2002), as well as very low correlations between selfpredicted and actual performance on exams and other learning assessments (e.g., Kornell & Bjork, 2007; Kruger & Dunning, 1999), a pattern that may be especially apparent in low-performing students (e.g., Hacker, Bol, Horgan, & Rakow, 2000). This highlights a dilemma for the strategic allocation of attention and time for studying: if students are not accurate at estimating their own learning and knowledge, then they will not be able to make choices about strategies to improve areas that are weakly represented. To compound matters further, a necessary prerequisite for choosing a strategy is basic metacognitive knowledge about which learning strategies are beneficial for long-term memory. The present research aimed to address this latter issue by examining undergraduates predictions about learning outcomes, based on educational scenarios derived from published research studies (Study 1), and further, to explore how targeted instruction on applied memory topics relates to scenario prediction accuracy (Study 2). Undergraduates may not utilize the most effective learning strategies. On an open-ended survey question regarding such strategies, college students most frequently reported rereading notes or textbook (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009, p. 475). Similarly, Hartlep, and Forsyth (2000) found that most students reported reading and highlighting important concepts, then reviewing whatever they had highlighted. Importantly, in both studies, most students failed to mention a variety of techniques that have been shown to be effective in prior research; when empirically-supported techniques were listed (e.g., selftesting), they were ranked relatively low (Karpicke et al., 2009). As a piece of evidence related to the instruction issue, 80% of undergraduates in another recent survey reported that their study strategies were improvised, and not taught to them in a formal manner (Kornell & Bjork, 2007). This raises the question of whether those improvised strategies, presumably based on intuition and/or metacognitive feedback, are consistent with what is known to be effective from research, and also whether targeted instruction on learning and memory topics could improve metacognitive awareness of successful learning strategies. Based on recommendations and references from 25 Learning Principles to Guide Pedagogy and the Design of Learning Environments (University of Memphis, 2008) and from Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning (Pashler, Bain, Bottge, Graesser, Koedinger, McDaniel, & Metcalfe, 2007), I chose six learning strategy topics to survey via the Internet. The topics were purposefully chosen to represent effective strategies that were not on the surface intuitive (and indeed, some could be considered counterintuitive). I identified one representative published study for each topic whose methods I could transcribe into a brief scenario-type description. For each scenario, participants rated the predicted level of effectiveness for two contrasting learning situations (one empirically-supported and one not), for typical college students and for themselves. The two ratings were included based on the possibility that they would elicit differing degrees of accuracy. On one hand, it was possible that having to rate other students would enhance objectivity in deciding which scenario might result in the best learning; however, it was also possible that applying the scenario directly to oneself would enhance the depth of appraisal, and therefore accuracy, of predictions. This research differs from prior work on metacognitive judgments, in that instead of participants directly experiencing the learning conditions, and then making judgments of learning (JOLs) (e.g., Dunlosky & Nelson, 1994), they were instead asked to rate learning outcomes from hypothetical scenarios. Although JOLs are in part determined by mnemonic cues derived from actual exposure to the to-be-learned materials, Koriats (1997) cue-utilization framework posits that they are also influenced by participants a priori beliefs and theories about which conditions lead to optimal learning outcomes. It is this component of the cue-utilization view that is investigated here. The learning scenarios chosen for this study were presumably evaluated using mainly extrinsic cues, based on knowledge of the learning conditions and encoding operations presented in each scenario (e.g., self-generation of materials), as opposed to intrinsic cues, based on the nature of the study items themselves (e.g., degree of relatedness), a variable not addressed in the scenario descriptions. By asking participants to provide JOLs based solely on what they believe to be true about various conditions for learning, and not confounded by intrinsic or real-time mnemonic cues, the extrinsic cue contribution of JOLs can be more effectively isolated. This is important because metacognitive illusions reported in the literature (e.g., Karpicke, 2009; Koriat & Bjork, 2006) presumably arise at least in part from this type of immediate experience, in which people are fooled into thinking they have learned more than they have, perhaps through increased short-term familiarity or fluency ratings (e.g., Benjamin, Bjork, & Schwartz, 1998). The current study therefore makes a unique contribution to the literature by providing a cleaner account of students a priori metacognitive knowledge and beliefs regarding the best ways to learn and remember information. (...truncated)