Pharmacy Students’ Ability to Think About Thinking

Abstract

Objective. To investigate students' metacognitive skills to distinguish what they know from what they do not know, to assess students' prediction of performance on a summative examination, and to compare student-identified incorrect questions with actual examination performance in order to improve exam quality. Methods. Students completed a test-taking questionnaire identifying items perceived to be incorrect and rating their test-taking ability. Results. Higher performing students evidenced better metacognitive skills by more accurately identifying incorrect items on the exam. Most students (86%) underpredicted their performance on the summative examination (actual573.6 6 7.1 versus predicted563.7 6 10.5, p,0.05). Student responses helped refine items and resulted in examination changes. Conclusion. Metacognition is important to the development of life-long learning in pharmacy students. Students able to monitor what they know and what they do not know can improve their performance.

Test-Enhanced Learning in an Immunology and Infectious Disease Medicinal Chemistry/Pharmacology Course

“…Metacognitive skills are associated with the academic success of high performing students, while low performing students tend to lack these skills. 35,36,38 Interestingly, cohort analysis of module effectiveness based on admissions statistics (Table 6) identified students with low PCAT/science grade point average (SGPA) ratios as the group helped most by the modules. This finding is interesting because it may support that improved test taking and metacognitive skills contribute Number of students in cohort with a positive mean examination difference .110% and the number of students in cohort with a negative mean examination difference of ,-10%…”

“…30,32,[34][35][36][37][38] In pharmacy, developing metacognitive skills is important because they are necessary for self-directed lifelong learning. 32,37,38 In this study, we sought to demonstrate that testenhanced learning could be used as a curricular tool for pharmacy education, specifically for immunology and medicinal chemistry topics, to enhance learning performance and promote development of test-taking and metacognitive skills among students.…”

“…30,32,[34][35][36][37][38] Metacognitive skills include selfawareness of knowledge and lack thereof, as well as the ability to develop learning strategies, monitor one's learning, and make changes to the learning processes as needed to improve learning. 30,32,[34][35][36][37][38] In pharmacy, developing metacognitive skills is important because they are necessary for self-directed lifelong learning. 32,37,38 In this study, we sought to demonstrate that testenhanced learning could be used as a curricular tool for pharmacy education, specifically for immunology and medicinal chemistry topics, to enhance learning performance and promote development of test-taking and metacognitive skills among students.…”

Development of a Summative Examination with Subject Matter Expert Validation

“…8,9 The first section of the questionnaire asked students to identify up to 10 items they felt certain they had answered incorrectly. Students were asked to choose if the question was difficult to understand or too detailed.…”

“…8 The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and implementation of a summative examination along with the measures used to show its validity and reliability and, secondarily, to examine the impact of this type of assessment on the culture of the college and on resource utilization.…”