Factors Affecting Student Time to Examination Completion

Objective. To investigate factors (prior or current knowledge, metacognitive accuracy, and personality) that might impact the time it takes students to complete an examination. Methods. On the final examination, the time to complete the examination was recorded. Prior to the course, students completed the five-factor personality assessment. During the semester, students completed four cumulative assessments that included prospective judgments of performance to improve their metacognitive accuracy. Measures of metacognitive accuracy were calculated from the difference between the students' prospective judgments of performance and their actual assessment performance for the final examination. Two weeks prior to the final examination, students completed a cumulative assessment, which served as prior knowledge; this was similar in content to the final examination. Results. The time to complete the final examination was significantly negatively correlated with examination score and positively correlated with Agreeableness, and degree of metacognitive bias. However, only current knowledge (β=-.35) and Agreeableness (β=.12) predicted the time to complete the final examination. These two factors explained about 14% of the variability in completion times. Examining the scale for the time to complete the examination, there were some regional differences between the slowest, intermediate and fastest completers. Conclusion. Current knowledge and to a lesser extent, pro-social behavior (agreeableness) influenced examination completion time. Metacognitive accuracy had limited predictability in time to complete the examination.