Metacognitive illusions

What is a metacognitive illusion?

A misalignment between how well you think you know something and how well you actually know it

What is the fluency heuristic

If the learning of the material feels easy and fluent then I have a good understanding of it

When may the fluency heuristic occur?

When material seems easy

Obstacles that slow the process of learning produce….

Durable memories and better learning

What is a desirable difficulty?

The concept that when you have to cognitively struggle, the learning produced is more valuable

What did Carpenter (2013) do?

Look at the impact of a fluent vs non-fluent lecturer

What did Carpenter (2013) find?

Students with the fluent lecturer believed they learnt more than the disfluent one but they didn’t actually

What did Yunker & Yunker (2013) do?

Looked at the relationship between students ratings of an instructor and final grade in that module

What did Yunker & Yunker find?

Higher ratings were negatively correlated with grades

What can explain Yunker & Yunker’s findings?

Popular instructors may have fluent teaching styles that students enjoy but are not good for learning

What was the test of active vs passive learning?

Passive condition= Students completed questions whilst learning the information

Active condition= Students worked in small groups, instructor showed them how to do the questions at the end

What were the findings of the active vs passive study?

Active did better on test but passive felt like they had learnt more and enjoyed it more

What did the study on E-learning do?

• 40 minute lecture split in 4 segments

• Followed by immediate test and delayed retention test

• 5 groups: Control, annotation, normal notes, key points,

What did the E-learning study find?

Immediate:

No difference between annotating slides and just sitting there

Verbatim notes second best

Key points was the best

Delayed:

Lots of forgetting: Control, annotation, verbatim

Less forgetting: Regular and key points

Verbatim forgot the most

What was found about revision with different types of notes (control, annotation, regular notes)?

Longhand note taking meant students needed less time to revise for an exam to achieve the same mark

Did students think spaced learning or massed learning was better?

Massed

What was the study on spaced learning?

Spaced: Studied 4 problems week 1, 4 week 2, 4 week 3 then test

Massed: Studied 12 in week 3 then test

What was found in the spaced learning study?

Spaced learning was better but students believed massed was

What was the study for interleaving?

Learn painters and paints:

Blocked: learnt paintings by one artists then moved on to next artists

Interleaved: Learnt 1 by one then moved on to a different one

What did the interleaving study find?

Interleaving was much more effective than blocking