My research examines how learners monitor and manage their own learning. I work with educators, fellow scholars, and students to understand how people make decisions about learning: What do I know? What should I study next? Which strategy should I use? When have I learned enough? Yet learners often base these decisions on imperfect cues—such as fluency, effort, confidence, or recent test performance—that can create inaccurate impressions of learning. Across laboratory, online, and classroom studies, I investigate how metacognition guides learning and how educational activities can support more accurate monitoring, more strategic decisions, and more durable learning.
Metacognitive Monitoring and Memory
One line of our research examines the relationship between metacognitive monitoring and memory. Judgments of learning are typically used to measure how well learners expect to remember material later. Our work shows, however, that making these judgments can itself affect later memory. In particular, judgments of learning can improve recall when they strengthen cue–target relationships that support later retrieval (Janes, Rivers, & Dunlosky, 2018; Rivers, Janes, & Dunlosky, 2021; Rivers, Dunlosky, Janes, Witherby, & Tauber, 2023). This research helps distinguish when monitoring simply measures learning from when it becomes part of the learning process.
We also examine how accurately confidence reflects performance in other learning and problem-solving contexts. For example, our work has explored gender differences in confidence during number-line estimation (Rivers, Fitzsimmons, Fisk, Dunlosky, & Thompson, 2020) and how people predict their ability to solve insight problems after encountering misleading or fixating information (Storm & Hickman [Rivers], 2015). Together, these projects help identify when learners have an accurate sense of their performance—and when their confidence may lead them astray.
Beliefs About Effective Learning Strategies
A second major focus of our research is what learners believe about effective study strategies. Practice testing, or retrieving information from memory, is a powerful way to promote long-term retention. Yet learners often underestimate its benefits and view testing primarily as a way to check what they know (Rivers, 2021). Our work investigates why these misconceptions persist and how experience, feedback, direct instruction, and other forms of support can help learners develop more accurate beliefs (Rivers, Dunlosky, & McLeod, 2022; Rivers, 2023).
Learning activities can also shape how students approach future learning. Learners adapt their encoding strategies to the type of test they expect (Rivers & Dunlosky, 2021), and taking a test can improve how they encode new material later (Storm, Hickman [Rivers], & Bjork, 2016). These findings show that tests do more than assess or strengthen previously learned information: They can also change how learners study and process new information.
Designing Learning Activities That Work
A third line of research applies these insights to the design of learning activities. In our work on pretesting and prequestioning, we have found that learners often fail to recognize the benefits of attempting questions before receiving the relevant information. With appropriate support, however, they can develop a better understanding of why these activities work (Pan & Rivers, 2023; Pan, Chua, Rivers, & Teo, under review). More recent research shows that covert prequestioning—attempting an answer mentally—and overt prequestioning—producing an answer—can provide similar benefits for learning from text. This finding suggests that prequestions may promote learning partly by directing attention toward important information (Rivers, Berdelis, Pan, & Tauber, 2026).
In related work on retrieval practice, we compare the effects of overt retrieval, such as typing an answer, with covert retrieval, such as mentally recalling it. Overt retrieval appears especially beneficial for complex material, whereas covert retrieval may provide a faster, though sometimes less thorough, alternative (Rivers, Northern, & Tauber, 2025). This research helps clarify the tradeoffs between the effectiveness and efficiency of different retrieval activities.
Assessment, Feedback, and Educational Contexts
A final theme of our research concerns how assessments, feedback, and other features of educational environments shape students’ judgments and study decisions. Classroom exams can provide valuable formative feedback, but students do not always use that experience accurately when evaluating their concept-level knowledge (Rivers, Dunlosky, & Joynes, 2019). Thoughtful assessment design can also improve learning. For example, requiring students to justify their answers on multiple-choice questions can enhance performance and may support more accurate monitoring (Clark, Rivers, & Overono, 2025; Hardy, Kostal, Nayak, & Rivers, 2026).
We also examine how instructional materials and educational systems guide learning. Rubric point values can influence how students allocate their study effort across STEM concepts (Shumaker, Rivers, & Tauber, 2025), and metacognitive knowledge, monitoring, and control can be measured in authentic settings such as pharmacy education (Rivers, Dunlosky, & Persky, 2020). Our work further considers how students and faculty interpret student evaluations of teaching, including whether evaluations reflect the use of evidence-based practices such as daily quizzing (Rivers, Babineau, Neely, & Tauber, 2023). Together, these projects examine how educational contexts can be designed to support better-informed decisions by both learners and instructors.