The accuracy of metacognitive monitoring hinges upon accurate judgements of learning

As described above, metacognition relies heavily on self-assessment. Self-assessment is prone to error and bias, so students should be informed of conditions and practices that may lead to more accurate judgements of learning. In general, as described below, judgements of learning following a delayed retrieval attempt (retrieving information from memory, but not immediately following a study session of the same material) will lead to more accurate monitoring of learning (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1992).

Errors due to Familiarity

Students may conflate their general familiarity with a subject with their actual understanding of the specific content at hand (Serra, Metcalfe, Hacker, Dunlosky, & Graesser, 2009). For example, if a student has a calculus exam and a physics exam coming up and generally feels more knowledgeable in math than physics, they may devote more study time to physics. This might be a reasonable approach, or it could be a faulty approach if the student does not have a solid understanding of the specific calculus subtopics to be covered on the exam. When developing study plans, students should take into account the specific content to be covered on the exam instead of focusing on generalities. Engaging in regular retrieval practice will also help to mitigate familiarity bias.

Another common pitfall related to familiarity that students may encounter is in their comprehension of texts. A student may skim the key terms list of a chapter and overestimate their knowledge of the chapter content because the terms seem familiar. Also, responding to end-of-chapter comprehension questions immediately after reading a text can lead to illusions of knowing. A more accurate self-assessment of learning can be made when the learner attempts to define key terms, describe how they are related to each other, and answer comprehension questions about the chapter after a delay (> 30 minutes after reading the chapter). Summarizing texts at a delay (without referring to the text during summary writing) has been shown to lead to more accurate judgements of learning (Thiede & Anderson, 2003). Researchers have also shown that students who generate keywords from a text a short time after reading it (and without referring to the text during the exercise) will make more accurate judgements of their learning than students who generate a keyword list immediately after reading a text (Thiede, Anderson, & Therriault, 2003).

Foresight bias

Prediction about one’s ability to retrieve information at a future time (e.g., during an exam) can suffer from foresight bias when the prediction is made in the presence of the correct answer (e.g., while studying) (Koriat & Bjork, 2005). Within the context of a given book chapter or a given problem set, students may be practicing a limited number of concepts or procedures. This may lead a student to inaccurately believe that the tasks are easy. On an exam covering a wide array of concepts, discerning which concepts apply to which questions may be more difficult. Instead of studying one topic at a time, students should be encouraged to create practice tests where concepts to be covered on the exam are interleaved. Instructor supplied practice tests could also be useful here.

Other Factors to Consider:

• Novices are not as good at self-evaluating their comprehension, so build in opportunities for formative assessment.
• Because MIT students were so successful in their K-12 education, they may be over-confident in their use of metacognitive skills and their habits may be difficult to change. Research indicates that longer-term interventions may be necessary for university students. There may be no noticeable short-term gain from an intervention targeting metacognition because some “un-learning” of previous, ineffective study habits needs to occur (Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996; Hofer, Yu, & Pintrich, 1998).
• The evidence suggests that metacognitive training should be provided in context of the disciplines to promote deeper learning. If used consistently in teaching and learning contexts, metacognitive strategies can be reinforced throughout the curriculum. However, if faculty do not consistently embed metacognitive training in their curriculum, transfer of metacognitive skills between contexts may still be an issue (Hattie et al., 1996).
• In laboratory studies, subjects allocated more study time to materials that they thought were more interesting (Son & Metcalfe, 2000). This suggests that motivational factors influence metacognitive control. Highlighting the real-world applications of content or making explicit ties between the content at hand and other disciplines may increase student interest.