Metacognitive Illusions Flashcards
What are Metacognitive Illusions?
A misalignment between subjective assessment of how learning (metacognition) and how it really works.
Why is it important to understand metacognitive illusions.
It is important to understand them as beliefs affect behaviour.
What is a heuristic?
A rule of thumb
What can Illusions about learning be traced back to?
A fluency heuristic
What is a fluency heuristic?
The belief that easy/ fluent learning must produce good memory.
E.g. “The lecture slides were easily understood so I will remember the information well.”
What is Desirable difficulty and what does it lead to?
Desirable difficult learning is when students have to overcome obstacles which make learning harder. The no pain no gain idea.
It leads to better memory.
Who conducted a study on fluent/ non-fluent lecturing styles?
- Think about a woodworker
Carpenter et al.
What was Carpenter et al.’s study?
Same speaker gives a lecture to two different groups.
One group receives engaging (fluent) speaker.
The other receives dis-engaging (non-fluent) speaker.
What were the results of Carpenter et al.’s study?
Student predictions were that they would learn much better from the fluent speaker than the non-fluent but results on actual test after lecture showed no significant difference.
Who conducted a study on the relationship between teaching evaluations and final marks.
- Think two German dive-bombers.
Yunker and Yunker
What was Yunker and Yunker’s study?
If a high rating indicates good teaching, this should be indicated by better learning showed by marks at the end of the course. There should be a positive correlation.
What were the results of Yunker and Yunker’s study?
There is a negative correlation. Students who rated their teacher for the first part of the course highly were likely to perform worse in the second half than those who rated their teacher poorly.
What could Yunker and Yunker’s results be due to?
Popular teachers employing fluent/ easy teaching methods which students can just follow along to rather than employing desirably difficult methods.
What is the difference between passive and active learning? Which is better?
Passive = Focus on fluent learning
Active = Focus on desirably difficult learning
Active > Passive
What is the potential problem with E-learning?
With E-learning often making use of fun and fluent activities to learn, it could lead to metacognitive illusions regarding learning.
Who ran a study on the potential problems of E-learning?
- Think North _ _ _ _ _.
Coria
What was Coria’s study?
40 min lecture with five groups.
What were the five groups in Coria’s study?
- Control (passive observation)
- Annotation
- Regular notes
- Key points.
- Verbatim
What were the results of immediate test in Coria’s study?
- Key points
- Verbatim
- Regular notes
- Annotation
- Control (same as annotation)
What were the results of delayed testing in Coria’s study?
- Key points
- Regular notes
- Verbatim (Forgot most between tests)
- Annotation
- Control
What do Coria’s results show?
Annotating slides (E-learning method) is as useless as passive observation.
Verbatim note taking experiences vast amounts of forgetting after an interval.
Key points in breaks of lecture is best as this requires retrieval of information which strengthens memory.
Describe one study on revision methods.
40 min lecture on MRSA
Tested after 8 weeks
Given as much time to revise (within reason) as they wanted from un-annotated slides.
What were the results of this one revision study on taking the test after 8 weeks?
- Notetaking
- Annotation
- Control
However, there is little significant difference between the performance of the groups.
What was significant about the time spent revising for the test after 8 weeks in this one revision study?
Notetaking spent far less time revising than the other two groups. This suggests long-hand note taking required students to spend less time revising to achieve the same mark.
