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.
