Overconfidence produces underachievement: Inaccurate self evaluations undermine students’ learning and retention

The function of accurately monitoring one’s own learning is to support effective control of study that enhances learning. Although this link between monitoring accuracy and learning is intuitively plausible and is assumed by general theories of self-regulated learning, it has not received a great deal of empirical scrutiny and no study to date has examined the link between monitoring accuracy and longer-term retention. Across two studies, college students paced their study of key-term definitions (e.g., “Proactive interference: Information already stored in memory interferes with the learning of new information”). After all definitions were studied, participants completed practice cued recall tests (e.g., “What is proactive interference?”) in which they attempted to type the correct definition for each term. After each test trial, participants judged how much of their response was correct. These study-test-judgment trials continued until a definition was judged as correct three times. A final cued recall test occurred two days later. In Study 1, judgment accuracy was manipulated experimentally, and in Study 2, individual differences in accuracy were examined. In both studies, greater accuracy was associated with higher levels of retention, and this link could not be explained by differential feedback, effort during study, or trials to criterion. Results indicate that many students could benefit from interventions aimed at improving their skill at judging their learning.     

A confederate Agricultural Knowledge System

Abstract

Previous, analytical-empirical case studies of national Agricultural Knowledge Systems (AKSs) have produced a list of factors which are typical for successful AKSs. The aim of the present paper is to investigate (1) in how far these factors exist in the Swiss AKS, (2) in what ways the unique, confederal system of Switzerland has had an influence on its AKS, and (3) whether additional, generalizable factors can be identified, which could add to the efficiency of the national AKSs.

The federal system of Switzerland with its relatively small cantons which are responsible for law enforcement and agricultural extension (but not for research) imposes special conditions on its AKS and makes it difficult to manage them. Informal communication devices help to overcome this drawback.

The investigation of the Swiss AKS corroborates the list of criteria for well functioning AKSs that were identified in earlier research, and added two new points: (1) the need for “relais” stations to overcome interfaces between research and extension, especially when these two subsystems function at different organisational levels, or when extension is split up into small units; (2) the value of networking among different national AKSs.     

Bookselling—book buying: The European perspective of the online market

The book market in European countries is different than the U.S. market for various political, geographical, and cultural reasons. The authors outline these differences and provide background on the move to electronic commerce and future. The article includes many electronic and print sources of and bibliographic tools for locating books in the European market.     

Analysis of publications of the pilot issue of the data collection of the All-Russia Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Industry of Nanosystems and Nanomaterials”

The pilot issue of the data collection of the All-Russian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Industry of Nanosystems and Nanomaterials” gives an approximate view of the state of this field of science at the beginning of 2007. The topics of articles in the pilot issue are analyzed. The directions of development of nanotechnologies are shown. The basic types of nanomaterials, the methods of their production, and their properties and applications are given.