Metacognitive training did not increase retention of content in upper-division Anatomy and Physiology course

Abstract

Metacognitive training was embedded into an upper-division Human Anatomy and Physiology course to examine whether training improved student metacognition and retention of course content. Training included explicit instruction on the definition and value of metacognition, practice in course-specific metacognitive strategies, and assignments in which students reflected on their metacognitive strategies and how their metacognitive strategies could be altered to improve learning and exam grades. Previous work indicated that metacognitive training improved self-reported metacognitive practices and protected against declines in student self-efficacy, but did not improve exam scores. Therefore, we wondered whether the benefit of metacognitive improvement was in content retention rather than improved exam scores. This study hypothesized that metacognitive training, and the subsequent gains in self-reported metacognitive practices, would improve student retention of course content one month after the end of the course. Results indicate that students who received metacognitive training improved self-reported metacognitive practices while student who did not receive training did not improve metacognitive practices. However, metacognitive training did not alter the level of course content retained one month after the end of the course. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.