Assessing metacognition in the classroom: Student help-seeking behavior

Introduction: The study's purpose was to develop an assessment of student's metacognitive monitoring of help-seeking behavior. Methods: This study piloted an assessment of help-seeking behavior in first-year student pharmacists to answer two questions: (1) Does help-seeking behavior depend on how familiar students are with the content? and (2) When students ask for help, does their performance and metacognition differ from when they do not seek help? As part of their year-end capstone, students answered drug information questions. The drugs within these questions were chosen based on the level of emphasis during the first-year curriculum (i.e. more familiar or less familiar). For each question, students rated their confidence level for their answer's correctness and marked whether they would ask their preceptor for help. Bias scores were calculated under conditions of familiarity based on level of emphasis (more familiar vs. less familiar) and help-seeking (asked for help and did not ask for help). Results: Students performed better on more familiar material (d = 1.2), with a small difference in confidence on more familiar material (d = 0.2). When students asked for help, they scored lower (d = - 2.2) and reported lower confidence (d = -3.7). Students were more likely to ask for help from their preceptors on more familiar content than less familiar (odds ratio = 1.25) and less likely to ask for help when they were overconfident (odds ratio = 0.18). Conclusions: Overall, students were more overconfident for less familiar material and were less likely to ask for help.