Helping students develop self-awareness skills to improve learning and exam performance

In this paper, we will describe an experiment in helping students begin to self-assess their learning processes through a simple homework activity tied to examinations. This exercise was developed to provide students with an opportunity to work on their meta-learning skills, where they reflect upon learning instead of simply focusing on contents and carrying out assignments. Since awareness is considered to be the first step in growth in some models of human development, self-assessment may be one of the keys to helping students be better prepared for exams. Students performed the self-assessment of their exam performance by reflecting on their graded exams and completing a questionnaire that asked them to comment on the following: (1) how were points lost, (2) what additional information was needed to solve the problem correctly, and (3) was that knowledge known at the time of the exam? The self-assessment was assigned in two sophomore level courses in the electrical engineering department.