Thinking about Thinking: The Relationship between Confidence, Attainment and Metacognition in Computer Science

摘要

Thinking about thinking, or metacognition as it is better known, is something that cannot be easily taught but rather is developed and practised by an individual. It can be beneficial because students make connections between their learning experiences, discover their own learning preferences and can improve their understanding of interconnection between concepts that the current HE system of modularisation tends to undermine. It is a skill that an individual develops and practices over time based on a wide range of experiences and learning opportunities. We hope to develop teaching approaches that help to improve students' awareness of their own metacognitive processes and learning strategies and by extension, their confidence in applying their previous experiences and knowledge to unfamiliar tasks and problems they encounter during their degree. This paper outlines a preliminary study that explores the impact of confidence on student attainment. The study involved reviewing three stages of student experience - (i) The level of experience and confidence of students when entering the first year of the degree, (ii) their attainment at the end of first year and (iii) their level of confidence before and after coursework submission in the second year of their degree. Our results show that there may be a direct relationship between confidence levels and student attainment. Our results show there is some link between metacognition and confidence, with further exploration we can identify this link further and create metacognitive learning strategies.