Title

Training Metacognition in the Classroom: The Influence of Incentives and Feedback on Exam Predictions

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2011

Abstract

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.

Publication Title

Metacognition and Learning

Volume

6

Issue

3

First Page

303

Last Page

314

DOI of Published Version

10.1007/s11409-011-9083-7

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