Metacognitive Monitoring and Academic Performance in College

ABSTRACT

In French universities, only one out of two students is successful in his/her first year. The drastic changes in the organization of work and the greater emphasis put on self-regulated learning (relying on metacognition) can largely explain these low success rates. In this regard, techniques have been developed to help students improve monitoring their learning activities. Our goal is to test a general and adjustable intervention on metacognition that could be used with ease by any teacher in any course. In order to achieve this, we adapted and simplified a method tested in previous research. We hypothesized that students benefiting from this intervention (over the entire semester or starting only halfway through) would get better grades than students in standard teaching conditions. The results of this study showed positive effects on students' performance. Hence, this approach would benefit undergraduates if generalized, especially when the time frame and content of courses are somewhat rigid and non-negotiable. Moreover, it is easy to implement in university classes for any course. Yet, this work does not rule out any other intervention and could be complemented by techniques focused on more global aspects of metacognition.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• learning
• metacognition
• self-evaluation
• teaching resources