Pre-assessment check-ins are not only an excellent way to gauge students’ knowledge going into a module or unit, but also a way for students to check their own understanding before a large exam or project. This does not necessarily need to be worth very many points or even graded, but rather a mindset that we begin to instill in our students. If set up properly, they can help students think about their learning, or metacognition, increasing their engagement and learning outcomes by focusing on honest reflection (An et al.,2024).
Pre-assessment and Metacognition
Pre-assessment is a much broader category of learning tool than we make it out to be sometimes. Often times, we put it in a box of it being practice-test that just tell a student if they have a rote memorization of material that will show them where they need to study more. While there is certainly value in this, it is not the only form of pre-assessment. Pre-assessment can be everything from the aforementioned practice tests, exit-tickets at the end of lessons, or structured flashcards from a website like Quizlet. Notably, students stated that teacher feedback after a pre-assessment was valuable with some students noting that the feedback helped them model positive strategies for future assignments (Chung et al., 2021). Metacognition, as previously stated, is the action of a student thinking about their own learning. Usually, this comes in the form of self-reflection based on either student-led prompts or guidance by the professor (Engelmann et al., 2021). With that being said, some studies have shown that many students do not possess the baseline skills to put metacognitive strategies into practice without the guidance of an educator, so it is better for the instructor to thoughtful design prompts to help the students reach their full potential (An et al., 2024).
Why Should We Do This?
While it can seem like this is just one extra thing to do during a class that is too short and that it requires students to put in more effort than they want to, these forms of activities are vital to both the student and to you. We all have known (or been) students who were very confident in their knowledge on a particular subject only to come in and fail the test or have tested students only to find out that none of them understood the material. In this scenario, a student either ends up with a low grade on an assessment, or you have to go back and reteach the material again. Regardless of the outcome, it is not good. Instead of dealing with this, it is much easier to test them ahead of time to see if they understand what is being asked of them. One way to format this is based on Pan & Carpenter’s pre-instruction model (2023) is:
- Instructional time (lecture, videos, text, etc.)
- Check for comprehension
- Revise understanding or move forward
In conjunction with this, metacognition increases learning engagement during this process (An et al., 2024). Adding this step into the process, it becomes:
- Instructional time
- Check for comprehension
- Students explain why they responded the way they did
- Revise understanding based on student’s learning pathways
This one extra step lets us move beyond just correcting objective answers by having the students explain how they understood what you or the instructional material said. Doing this gets to the root of misunderstanding rather than just treating the symptom, incorrect answers on tests.
Pre-assessment and Metacognition in Action
While there are many assignment types that are not directly transferable from on ground to online and vice versa, there is some overlap between them in the case of pre-assessment and metacognition. The biggest two are practice quizzes and reflection journals. To combine these for the greatest effect, you could have students take a more open-ended practice exam, then right a reflection piece at the end explaining their thought process behind their answers. In this case, the practice quiz would need to be very short to reduce the cognitive load of the reflection component. Other options for online and on-ground courses are listed below.
On-ground/Synchronous Courses:
- Exit-Tickets
- Small-group Discussions/Think-Pair-Share Activities
- Classroom polling followed by discussion
Online, Asynchronous Courses:
- Low-stakes Discussion Boards
- Self-check quizzes
- Asynchronous polling followed by announcements with relevant supplemental materials
References:
An, D., Ye, C., & Liu, S. (2024). The influence of metacognition on learning engagement the mediating effect of learning strategy and learning behavior. Current Psychology, 43(40), 31241-31253.
Chung, H. Q., Chen, V., & Olson, C. B. (2021). The impact of self-assessment, planning and goal setting, and reflection before and after revision on student self-efficacy and writing performance. Reading and Writing, 34(7), 1885-1913.
Engelmann, K., Bannert, M., & Melzner, N. (2021). Do self-created metacognitive prompts promote short-and long-term effects in computer-based learning environments?. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 16(1), 3.
Pan, S. C., & Carpenter, S. K. (2023). Prequestioning and pretesting effects: A review of empirical research, theoretical perspectives, and implications for educational practice. Educational Psychology Review, 35(4), 97.