Helping Learners Become Their Own Teachers: The Beneficial Impact of Trained Concept-Mapping-Strategy Use on Metacognitive Regulation in Learning

Abstract

Several empirical studies have shown that, during COVID-19-caused distance learning, many learners were struggling to realize the extent of self-regulated learning activities that were required to ensure the ongoing learning progress. Due to the significance of self-regulated learning regarding students’ learning success, the construct of metacognition also gained in importance, since corresponding skills are closely related to successful self-direction in learning. In our study, we focused on the learning strategy of concept mapping (CM), which is (1) directly related to beneficial effects on learning and retention performance, as well as (2) considered to cause constructive side-effects regarding metacognitive skills and, thus, self-regulated learning. To grasp CM’s full potential in terms of improving cognition-related learning performance, however, appropriate training of this learning strategy seems to be required. This raised the question of whether and to what extent appropriate CM training is also necessary to improve the metacognitive skills of our participants (N = 73 university students of different majors) in terms of the accuracy of their judgments of learning (JOLs). Although we were able to show, in a previous study, that the CM-training intensity did not affect the absolute level of these JOLs, the results of our current study show that there is, nevertheless, a significant effect in terms of the JOLs’ accuracy when considering their relationships to objective learning performance. Thus, CM training intensity affects the competence of metacognitive monitoring. In addition, we found that scaffolding- and feedback-including training conditions tend to counteract systematic misjudgments regarding the domain of conceptual knowledge, in particular. Practical implications and recommendations that can be derived from these results are discussed.