Practicing metacognition through the use of repeated posttest predictions

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Education
• Metacognitive Skills Assessment

Background:

• Metacognitive skill development is crucial for enhancing pharmacy student self-awareness.
• This study investigated the use of postdictions (posttest performance predictions) to gauge and improve students' self-assessment accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if feedback on predicted versus actual performance enhances pharmacy students' predictive accuracy over multiple examinations.
• To explore the utility of postdictions as a novel tool for measuring metacognitive skills in pharmacy students.

Main Methods:

• Students' postdictions of their multiple-choice exam performance were collected.
• Feedback comparing predicted and actual scores was provided to students.
• Analysis focused on changes in predictive accuracy over three examinations and by overall course performance.

Main Results:

• A statistically significant improvement in predictive ability was observed from examination one to three, though examination two showed a dip.
• Lower-performing students demonstrated more varied overprediction (22-56%) compared to higher-performing students (5-21%).
• Repeated practice with postdictions led to a reduction in overpredictions, particularly benefiting lower-performing students.

Conclusions:

• While students were initially poor predictors, the postdiction method, with feedback, improved their ability to estimate performance over time.
• The greatest benefit was observed in lower-performing students, suggesting this method is valuable for targeted metacognitive skill development.
• Postdictions offer a novel and valuable addition to the toolkit for assessing student metacognition in pharmacy education.