Metacognitive Awareness and Academic Performance

Roughly 25 percent of first-year college students do not return for a second year. This has led to a range of policies and interventions to increase persistence in college. In this article, we assess whether cognitive strategy instruction (CSI) has the potential to improve student performance in college. We conducted two randomized controlled trials in a mandatory, year-long, first-year, reading/writing-intensive course at Spelman College, a private historically Black institution for women. We find that CSI at best impacts grade-related outcomes like GPA but not metacognitive knowledge or persistence. Future work will explore the impacts on longer-run outcomes such as graduation.