Effect of metacognitive prompts on undergraduate pharmacy students’ self-regulated learning behavior

Abstract

Objective. To elucidate the ability of pharmacy students to self-regulate their learning, and to determine the impact of their self-regulatory behaviors on their learning outcomes. Methods. This study took a mixed methods approach that used “meta-learning” assessment tasks to identify the learning strategies chosen and relied on by 139 second-year pharmacy students, and to determine the relationships between the quality of strategies and academic achievement. Results. Although students had previously tried a wide range of learning strategies, they only consistently rely on a few of them. When prompted to use more advanced strategies, the quality of strategies reported were significantly related to academic achievement, with significant relationships between achievement and goal setting, self-efficacy, self-satisfaction, self-evaluation, and adaptive reactions. Conclusion. These findings suggest that high-achieving students use higher-quality forethought and self-reflective strategies than do poor-achieving students. Potentially, prompting students to engage in higher-quality strategies may increase students’ awareness of their own learning and improve student learning outcomes.