Business undergraduates' knowledge monitoring accuracy: how much do they know about how much they know?

Abstract

It has been argued that the ability of students to appreciate the extent of their own knowledge is essential to enable them to appreciate where gaps may exist and prompt the development of remedial learning strategies. This article reports on a study investigating this capability in which 307 business undergraduates provided 7525 judgements on the state of their own knowledge in respect of issues addressed in their study programme. The findings indicated a general tendency for overconfidence in knowledge, which was more evident in those studying on the first year of their degree programme than students in their second year. These findings suggest that effective learning may be hampered by students’ ignorance of gaps in their knowledge, particularly in the early stages of academic programmes, and that they may benefit from interventions to assist them in developing a better appreciation of their current state of knowledge.

Keywords:

• knowledge monitoring
• self-assessment
• metaknowledge
• overconfidence
• higher education