At the University of Utah, metacognitive training was implemented as part of an online homework system during the first- and second-semester general chemistry courses. Students in the experimental sections completed weekly quizzes and practice tests and predicted their assessment score. Afterward, they were provided with feedback on the accuracy of these predictions and received detailed feedback of how they performed on each chemistry topic within the assessment. They used this information to create study plans, indicating their ability by chemistry topic and selecting areas they would focus their studying upon. The control sections had the same course structure across both semesters as the experimental sections—with students completing the same assessments and receiving the same feedback of their ability by chemistry topic—but students in these courses did not predict assessment scores or create study plans. At the end of the year of general chemistry, students could have received two consecutive semesters of metacognitive training or no metacognitive training. Additionally, some students only received one semester of metacognitive training, either during the first or second semester of general chemistry. At the end of the year, students in both sections were assessed using the ACS general chemistry II final exam. Final exam results of the second semester control section, which had no metacognitive training, indicated a long-term effect of the training: students who received metacognitive training during the first semester of general chemistry performed 5% better on the ACS final exam than students who received no metacognitive training across the year. Additionally, metacognitive training was found to have cumulative effect on students’ chemistry ability: for each semester of metacognitive training received, students’ ACS final exam score improved by 3%. Even more importantly, this training targeted the bottom quartile of students: these students improved by more than 4% on the ACS final exam with each semester of training received. The result was a cumulative improvement of nearly 9% on the second semester ACS general chemistry final exam among the bottom 25% of students receiving a full year of metacognitive training in general chemistry.

The long-term and cumulative effect of online metacognitive training in general chemistry

255th National Meeting (2018)

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