Improving Calibration Accuracy Through Performance Feedback

The importance of being able to monitor one’s own performance has increased considerably, especially in education, where students of all levels are increasingly in charge of their learning trajectory (Trilling & Fadel, 2009; Wolters, 2010). Given that these students are shown to be largely incompetent in estimating their own performance (Kruger & Dunning, 1999; Sanchez & Dunning, 2018; Sheldon et al., 2014), and given that inaccurate performance judgements are related to underachievement (Dunlosky & Rawson, 2012), a better understanding of how to improve students’ performance estimates is required. The first aim of the studies in this dissertation is therefore to investigate if, and how, students can be supported to learn how they can provide better estimates of their own performance. Furthermore, because inaccurate performance estimates do not solely depend on external support but may also relate to individual differences between students, the second aim of this dissertation is to examine how differences in performance level and more general experience with the task at hand affect both the quality of performance estimates and the effect of the support given. The third and final aim of this dissertation is to test the effects of feedback and individual differences in an ecological valid school setting

Learning to Calibrate: Providing Standards to Improve Calibration Accuracy for Different Performance Levels

This experimental study explores whether feedback in the form of standards helps students in giving more accurate performance estimates not only on current tasks but also on new, similar tasks and whether performance level influences the effect of standards. We provided 122 first‐year psychology students with seven texts that contained key terms. After reading each text, participants recalled the correct definitions of the key terms and estimated the quality of their recall. Half of the participants subsequently received standards and again estimated their own performance. Results showed that providing standards led to better calibration accuracy, both on current tasks and on new, similar tasks, when standards were not available yet. Furthermore, with or without standards, high performers calibrated better than low performers. However, results showed that especially low performers' calibration accuracy benefitted from receiving standards

Improving calibration over texts by providing standards both with and without idea-units

This study aims at improving calibration accuracy, which is the match between estimated performance and actual performance. In our experiment, one hundred and twenty-seven university students read texts and learned definitions. The students recalled these definitions during a test and made performance judgements. After recalling their definitions half of the students received full-definition standards, stating what the correct definition should have been. The other half of the students received idea-unit standards: The correct definition was parsed into units that had to be present. Providing standards improved calibration accuracy not only on current texts, but also on new, subsequent texts. Especially the calibration of low performing students benefitted from receiving both idea-unit and full-definition standards. Furthermore, over multiple texts, students who received idea-unit standards benefitted more than students receiving full-definition standards. This study is among the first to show the effect of standards on calibration on new texts and underscores the importance of self-testing

Reflection on exam grades to improve calibration of secondary school students: a longitudinal study

Grades provide students with information about their level of performance. However, grades may also make students more aware of how well they have estimated their performance, their so-called calibration accuracy. This longitudinal quasi-experimental study, set in secondary education, examined how to increase students’ awareness of the accuracy of their grade estimates in order to improve their calibration accuracy. During an entire school year, students from year 1, 2, and 3 provided grade estimates after each of their French exams. Subsequently, when students received their grades, the level of reflection support on their earlier estimates was manipulated. The first group of students just received their grade, the second group had to calculate the difference between their estimate and the actual grade, and the third group also had to reflect on reasons for a possible mismatch. We expected that more reflection support would lead to more improvement in calibration accuracy. Results showed that providing grade estimates already improved calibration accuracy over the school year, regardless of level of reflection support. This finding shows that asking for grade estimates is an easy-to-implement way to improve calibration accuracy of students in secondary education