Effect of Metacognitive Prompts on Undergraduate Pharmacy Students' Self-regulated Learning Behavior.

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.

Assessing students' ability to critically evaluate evidence in an inquiry-based undergraduate laboratory course.

The ability to critically evaluate and use evidence from one's own work or from primary literature is invaluable to any researcher. These skills include the ability to identify strengths and weakness of primary literature, to gauge the impact of research findings on a field, to identify gaps in a field that require more research, and to contextualize findings within a field. This study developed a model to examine undergraduate science students' abilities to critically evaluate and use evidence through an analysis of laboratory reports from control and experimental groups in nonresearch-aligned and research-aligned inquiry-based laboratory classes, respectively, and contrasted these with published scientific research articles. The reports analyzed (n = 42) showed that students used evidence in a variety of ways, most often referring to literature indirectly, and least commonly highlighting limitations of literature. There were significant positive correlations between grade awarded and the use of references, evidence, and length, but there were no significant differences between control and experimental groups, so data were pooled. The use of evidence in scientific research articles (n = 7) was similar to student reports except that expert authors were more likely to refer to their own results and cite more references. Analysis showed that students, by the completion of the second year of their undergraduate degree, had expertise approaching that of published authors. These findings demonstrate that it is possible to provide valuable broad-scale undergraduate research experiences to all students in a cohort, giving them exposure to the methods and communication processes of research as well as an opportunity to hone their critical evaluation skills.

Changes in Biology Self-Efficacy during a First-Year University Course.

Academic self-efficacy encompasses judgments regarding one's ability to perform academic tasks and is correlated with achievement and persistence. This study describes changes in biology self-efficacy during a first-year course. Students (n = 614) were given the Biology Self-Efficacy Scale at the beginning and end of the semester. The instrument consisted of 21 questions ranking confidence in performing biology-related tasks on a scale from 1 (not at all confident) to 5 (totally confident). The results demonstrated that students increased in self-efficacy during the semester. High school biology and chemistry contributed to self-efficacy at the beginning of the semester; however, this relationship was lost by the end of the semester, when experience within the course became a significant contributing factor. A proportion of high- and low- achieving (24 and 40%, respectively) students had inaccurate self-efficacy judgments of their ability to perform well in the course. In addition, female students were significantly less confident than males overall, and high-achieving female students were more likely than males to underestimate their academic ability. These results suggest that the Biology Self-Efficacy Scale may be a valuable resource for tracking changes in self-efficacy in first-year students and for identifying students with poorly calibrated self-efficacy perceptions.

A set of vertically integrated inquiry-based practical curricula that develop scientific thinking skills for large cohorts of undergraduate students.

Science graduates require critical thinking skills to deal with the complex problems they will face in their 21st century workplaces. Inquiry-based curricula can provide students with the opportunities to develop such critical thinking skills; however, evidence suggests that an inappropriate level of autonomy provided to underprepared students may not only be daunting to students but also detrimental to their learning. After a major review of the Bachelor of Science, we developed, implemented, and evaluated a series of three vertically integrated courses with inquiry-style laboratory practicals for early-stage undergraduate students in biomedical science. These practical curricula were designed so that students would work with increasing autonomy and ownership of their research projects to develop increasingly advanced scientific thinking and communication skills. Students undertaking the first iteration of these three vertically integrated courses reported learning gains in course content as well as skills in scientific writing, hypothesis construction, experimental design, data analysis, and interpreting results. Students also demonstrated increasing skills in both hypothesis formulation and communication of findings as a result of participating in the inquiry-based curricula and completing the associated practical assessment tasks. Here, we report the specific aspects of the curricula that students reported as having the greatest impact on their learning and the particular elements of hypothesis formulation and communication of findings that were more challenging for students to master. These findings provide important implications for science educators concerned with designing curricula to promote scientific thinking and communication skills alongside content acquisition.