Effects of training self-assessment and using assessment standards on retrospective and prospective monitoring of problem solving

• Both retrospective and prospective monitoring inform self-regulated learning.
• Training and standards of correct answers might improve retrospective monitoring.
• And retrospective judgments could provide a good cue for prospective monitoring.
• Training did not improve judgment accuracy (in contrast to prior research).
• But standards improved retrospective and prospective monitoring of problem solving.

Both retrospective and prospective monitoring are considered important for self-regulated learning of problem-solving skills. Retrospective monitoring (or self-assessment; SA) refers to students' assessments of how well they performed on a problem just completed. Prospective monitoring (or Judgments of Learning; JOLs) refers to students' judgments about how well they will perform on a (similar) problem on a future test. We investigated whether secondary education students' SA accuracy could be improved by training (Experiment 1 and 2), or by providing assessment standards (Experiment 2), and whether this would also affect the accuracy of JOLs. Accurate assessment of past performance might provide a good cue for judging future performance. Both Experiment 1 and 2 showed no effect of training on SA or JOL accuracy, but SA and JOLs were positively correlated with each other and negatively with effort. Providing standards did improve SA and JOL accuracy on identical problems, and performance on all problems.