What is "calibration"?
...the measured gap between performance and confidence
Have you ever walked into an exam feeling like you really have your act together, only to look at the first question and feel a feeling of panic and several agonizing minutes later you walk out of the classroom feeling like you were just kicked in the face? This is because your metacognitive approximation of your abilities and your actual ability to complete a task were not calibrated. In this instance, there was a gap between your ability to perform and your ability to predict your performance. This highlights a (to the author) an exciting frontier in educational psychology and one that you through sustained and focused practice can hopefully improve. To gain a better understanding of this concept, lets look at some examples and practice calculating calibration values:
Average
Confidence
Calibration
Average
Performance
Theoretical model - An individual's calibration value represents the distance between their metacognitive appoximations and their performance. Ideally, this value would be near-zero, but a disparity can represent a number of situations
Though this seems like (and certainly can be) a nebulous situation to grasp, a person's ability to calibrate their metacognitive approximations can actually be quantified through a relatively straightforward process; a process that you yourself have already experienced in taking the baseline quiz. It works like this...
Step 1:
A person is asked a question (usually in some sort of exam or quiz setting)
Step 2:
They are then asked to report their level of confidence in their answer.
Step 3:
The question is then qraded for correctness with a correct answer being represented by a 1 and an incorrect answer being represented by a 0
Step 4:
The respondee's performance is compared to their relative confidence as reported by the subsequent question. This confidence is then converted to a decimal percentage
= 1
= 0.7
Step 5:
Finally, the absolute value of the difference between these two values is calculated and numerically represents the gap between the student's performance and the confidence related to their performance! Over the course of an exam the values from each individual question can be averaged to see how generally "calibrated" the student is in their metacognitive judgement!
Calibration Value = 0.3
0
0.5
0.7
1
Test your understanding - If this person had gotten this question incorrect, what would have been their calibration value? (Formulate a response and hover over the box at right to find out if you were correct!)
Now, lets continue our practice by taking a look at each of the examples below. For each of these example practice calculating the individuals calibration values in the "Calculation Practice" area and then practice interpreting the implications of this value in the "Interpretation Practice" section. Hover over the boxes to check your answers
Example 1:
What is the issue in this scenario? - Clyde is taking a test on the rock cycle. He is relatively unsure of many of the questions and for this particular question he marks his relative confidence as a 2/10. Upon receiving his graded exam later that next week, he sees that his unsuredness was well warranted and he failed the exam and missed the question he was 20% confident about. What was Clyde's calibration value and what could you say about his metacognitive awareness?
Calculation Practice:
Interpretation Practice:
Example 2:
What is the issue in this scenario? - Suzy is very confident she will do well on her upcoming geology exam. She has been to every class and has mostly paid attention. She has not reviewed any information, but she feels that it will just come to her when she is asked the questions. Once at the exam, she is asked a question about igneous rocks. Fairly certain she knows the answer, she reports an 7/10. Later, she receives her results and finds out she failed the exam with a 53% and got the igneous rocks question incorrect. What was Suzy's calibration value that one question and what could you say about her metacognitive awareness?
Calculation Practice:
Interpretation Practice:
Example 3:
What is the issue in this scenario? - Katheryn is a little worried about her upcoming geology exam. She has been to every class and has taken extensive notes. She has read through the notes and attempted to teach her roomate many of the important concepts, but she still is worried that she may have missed something. Once at the exam, she is asked a question about igneous rocks. Fairly certain she knows the answer, she reports an 8/10. Later, she receives her results and finds out she did very well the exam with a 97% and got the igneous rocks question (like most of them) correct. What was Katheryn's calibration value that one question and what could you say about her metacognitive awareness?
Calculation Practice:
Interpretation Practice:
Now that you have an idea of what we mean when we refer to your "calibration," lets take a closer look of how both it and metacognition in general can be approached in the learning of geoscience concepts at the introductory undergraduate level. Click "What is metacognition in the geosciences" or the related tab at the top of the page to continue the tutorial!