Self‐monitoring accuracy does not increase throughout undergraduate medical education

Abstract

Context Accurate self‐assessment of one's performace on a moment‐by‐moment basis (ie, accurate self‐monitoring) is vital for the self‐regulation of practising physicians and indeed for the effective regulation of self‐directed learning during medical education. However, little is currently known about the functioning of self‐monitoring and its co‐development with medical knowledge across medical education. This study is the first to simultaneously investigate a number of relevant aspects and measures that have so far been studied separately: different measures of self‐monitoring for a broad area of medical knowledge across 10 different performance levels. Methods This study assessed the self‐monitoring accuracy of medical students (n = 3145) across 10 semesters. Data collected during the administration of the formative Berlin Progress Test Medicine (PTM) were analysed. The PTM comprises 200 multiple‐choice questions covering all major medical disciplines and organ systems. A self‐report indicator (ie, confidence) and two behavioural indicators of self‐monitoring accuracy (ie, response time and the likelihood of changing an initial answer to a correct rather than an incorrect item) were examined for their development over semesters. Results Analyses of more than 390 000 observations (of approximately 250 students per semester) showed that confidence was higher for correctly than for incorrectly answered items and that 86% of items answered with high confidence were indeed correct. Response time and the likelihood of the initial answer being changed were higher when the initial answer was incorrect than when it was correct. Contrary to expectations, no differences in self‐monitoring accuracy were observed across semesters. Conclusions Convergent evidence from different measures of self‐monitoring suggests that medical students self‐monitor their knowledge on a question‐by‐question basis well, although not perfectly, and to the same degree as has been found in studies outside medicine. Despite large differences in performance, no variations in self‐monitoring across semesters (with the exception of the first semester) were observed.

An observational study of self-monitoring in ad hoc health care teams

“…With regard to the first research question, we found moderately high agreement between the external observations and team members' self-monitoring of their teams' teamwork. These findings are well in line with the literature on self-monitoring of one's individual performance on a moment-by-moment basis [31,35,39,40,48]. Our study extends this conception in two important ways.…”

“…Although we cannot exclude that professional experience plays a role in the ability to self-monitor oneself, the literature on selfmonitoring suggests otherwise (e.g. [39,40]).…”

“…It is generally assumed that the resulting confidence scores reflect the metacognitive feeling of fluency (see e.g., [38]). Previous research has shown a close relation of such confidence scores to other indicators of fluency, such as response time on diagnostic tasks [39] and the likelihood to change an initial answer in multiple choice tests [40].…”

Association between medical students’ prior experiences and perceptions of formal online education developed in response to COVID-19: a cross-sectional study in China

“…In such courses, students can watch and playback the teaching videos anytime, which reflects self-regulated learning in medical education. 34 Medical students in China have fewer experiences with live broadcast courses and blended learning. This suggests that instructors in formal medical education prefer traditional teaching methods, such as face-to-face lectures and experimental teaching.…”

Evaluation of an educational concept for risk-oriented prevention in undergraduate dental education

“…via logbook can further increase the knowledge and motivation of students by reflecting their strengths and weaknesses regarding their clinical competence [ 33 , 34 ]. However, the appropriate form and content of self-reflection can be discussed controversely [ 35 ]. Therefore, self-reflection in contrext of learning risk-classification might be a relevant issue that should be considered in the further implementation of risk-oriented prevention in curricular dental education.…”