Department of Biology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506.
Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2019 Jun;18(2):ar16. doi: 10.1187/cbe.18-10-0202.
Accurate self-evaluation is critical for learning. Calibration describes the relationship between learners' perception of their performance and their actual performance on a task. Here, we describe two studies aimed at assessing and improving student calibration in a first-semester introductory biology course at a 4-year public institution. Study 1 investigated students' ( = 310) calibration (the difference between estimated and actual exam performance) across one semester. Students were significantly miscalibrated for the first exam: their predicted scores were, on average, significantly higher than their actual scores. The lowest-performing students had the most inaccurate estimates. Calibration improved with each exam. By the final exam, students underestimated their scores. We initiated a second study in the following semester to examine whether explicitly teaching students about self-evaluation strategies would improve their calibration and performance. Instruction in the experimental section ( = 290) focused on students' tendency to overestimate their abilities and provided retrieval-practice opportunities. Students in the experimental section showed better calibration and performance on the first exam compared with students in a control section taught by a different instructor during the same semester ( = 251). These findings suggest that simple instructional strategies can increase students' metacognitive awareness and improve their performance.
准确的自我评价对于学习至关重要。校准描述了学习者对自己在任务中的表现的感知与其实际表现之间的关系。在这里，我们描述了两项旨在评估和提高一所四年制公立大学入门生物学课程中学生校准的研究。研究 1 调查了学生（n=310）在一个学期内的校准情况（估计成绩与实际考试成绩之间的差异）。学生在第一次考试中明显校准错误：他们的预测分数平均明显高于实际分数。表现最差的学生的估计最不准确。随着每次考试的进行，校准情况有所改善。在期末考试中，学生低估了自己的分数。我们在下一个学期开始了第二项研究，以检验是否明确教授学生自我评估策略会提高他们的校准和表现。实验组（n=290）的教学重点是学生高估自己能力的倾向，并提供检索练习机会。与同一学期由不同教师教授的对照组（n=251）相比，实验组学生在第一次考试中的校准和表现更好。这些发现表明，简单的教学策略可以提高学生的元认知意识并提高他们的表现。
