Supporting College Students' Metacognitive Monitoring in a Biology Course Through Practice and Timely Monitoring Feedback

• In Event: Educator Experiences With Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

A five-week-long monitoring intervention was conducted within an authentic online biology course. Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to three conditions, including a control condition, a monitoring practice condition (MP), and a monitoring practice and monitoring feedback condition (MP + MF). Specifically, the monitoring practice was designed to invoke students’ internal feedback and the timely monitoring feedback was designed to provide students with external information. The intervention hypothesized that the interaction between internal and external feedback would help to reduce the discrepancy between students’ perceived and actual learning. Aligning with the hypothesis, results showed that students in the experimental conditions improved their monitoring and knowledge performance. The study also reported critical factors (e.g., item difficulty) that affected students’ monitoring processes.

Authors

• Ying Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Rayne A. Sperling, The Pennsylvania State University