An Extensive Questionnaire about Metacognition during Emergency Remote Teaching Involving More Than 3000 Engineering Students
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
Description of the Six Parts of the Survey
- Remote teaching (RT): The perceptions of the advantages and the difficulties of remote teaching during the second semester of the 2020–2021 academic year were measured through 14 questions adapted from previous surveys [7,19]. Starting from the results of these prior works, the items were grouped into three different subgroups focused on the following factors: students’ perceptions of difficulties in the switch from in-person instruction to online learning, including the effectiveness and the organization of the course; the students’ evaluations of their instructors; and the perceived difficulties due to the online learning modality. The range of possible answers was from 1 (not at all effective or definitely worse) to 5 (completely effective or definitely better) on a Likert scale, as described in the Supplemental Material. Every question was formulated to have an immediate valuation for the improvement or the worsening of the in-person didactic experiences compared to those taking place online.
- Subjective well-being (SWB): In order to measure subjective well-being, we used an instrument called PANAS (the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) [20], which is used in psychology research. The PANAS scale consists of a series of 30 adjectives describing positive or negative attitudes towards an item, as used in [7]. The students had to give a rating from 1 (definitely less) to 5 (definitely more) regarding their feelings and their moods towards online teaching compared to in-person activities.
- Metacognition (MC): A total of 15 questions were reserved to investigate the personal cognitive process. By metacognition, we refer to the processes involving the monitoring, control, and regulation of cognition. Students were asked about learning strategies, how they take notes, or how they review material [21]. In this case, every question was identically proposed twice in the same instance but referring to before the pandemic and the present. The items were written as first-person statements, and the students were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with each statement on a scale from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree) on a Likert scale, as described in the Supplemental Material. The proposed items were adapted from the work in [7]. The 15 items were equally subdivided into 5 groups, with each one intended to measure one of the following cognitive processes: knowledge networking, knowledge extraction, knowledge practice, knowledge critique, and knowledge monitoring [22].
- Self-efficacy (SE): A total of 10 questions were dedicated to examining self-efficacy. Self-efficacy refers to ‘beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments’ [23]. Self-efficacy is considered by researcher in educational settings to be an important variable in the learning process of a student concerning their motivations, efforts, and learning strategies [24]. Additionally, in this case, every question was identically proposed twice in the same instance but referring to before the pandemic and the present. The items were written as first-person statements, and the students were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with each statement from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree) on a Likert scale, as described in the Supplemental Material. The items used in the questions were adapted from the work in [25].
- Identity (I): Concerning identity, we chose a 15-item scale adapted from [26] and [27]. In this survey, we considered five subgroups: the sense of belonging to the engineering community, the recognition of engineering roles in society, intrinsic interest in engineering, identifying as an engineer, and confidence in one’s own skills to be engineer. Additionally, in this case, every question was identically proposed twice in the same instance but referring to before the pandemic and the present. The items were written as first-person statements, and the students were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with each statement on a scale from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree) on a Likert scale, as described in the Supplemental Material. The items used in the questions were adapted from [28].
- Socio-demographic information (SD): In the survey, the participants were asked their gender, nationality, engineering discipline, the high school they attended before enrolling in engineering courses, and some information about logistics during remote teaching. Seven questions were dedicated to this kind of socio-demographic information.
3. Results
3.1. Remote Teaching (RT)
3.2. Metacognition (MC)
3.3. Self-Efficacy (SE)
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Section A
Section B
Section C
Section D
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Partecipants Header Information | Gender Header Information | Degree Header Information |
---|---|---|
3183 students | 2126 (66.8%) male 1057 (33.2%) female | 2227 (69.9%) Bachelor’s degree 956 (30.1%) Master’s degree |
Mean | SD | Median | |
---|---|---|---|
Overall question (RT) | 2.93 | 0.70 | 2.86 |
Factor | PRE/NOW | Item Number | Cronbach’s Alpha | Strength of Association | G6 (smc) | Average r |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Knowledge networking | PRE | 3 | 0.81 | Very good | 0.75 | 0.59 |
NOW | 3 | 0.81 | Very good | 0.75 | 0.6 | |
Knowledge extraction | PRE | 3 | 0.79 | Good | 0.71 | 0.55 |
NOW | 3 | 0.79 | Good | 0.71 | 0.55 | |
Knowledge practice | PRE | 3 | 0.78 | Good | 0.72 | 0.54 |
NOW | 3 | 0.78 | Good | 0.72 | 0.54 | |
Knowledge critique | PRE | 3 | 0.77 | Good | 0.69 | 0.53 |
NOW | 3 | 0.77 | Good | 0.69 | 0.53 | |
Knowledge monitoring | PRE | 3 | 0.79 | Good | 0.72 | 0.55 |
NOW | 3 | 0.79 | Good | 0.72 | 0.55 |
Factors | PRE/NOW | Mean Value | SD | t-Test p-Value | t-Test Cohen’s d |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Knowledge networking | PRE | 3.192 | 0.896 | p << 0.001 (3.2 × 10−34) | 0.22 |
NOW | 3.346 | 0.909 | |||
Knowledge extraction | PRE | 3.240 | 1.027 | p << 0.001 (2.6 × 10−44) | 0.25 |
NOW | 3.441 | 1.039 | |||
Knowledge practice | PRE | 3.519 | 0.893 | p << 0.001 (2.6 × 10−29) | 0.20 |
NOW | 3.665 | 0.885 | |||
Knowledge critique | PRE | 2.973 | 0.879 | p << 0.001 (3.3 × 10−16) | 0.14 |
NOW | 3.073 | 0.911 | |||
Knowledge monitoring | PRE | 3.729 | 0.790 | p << 0.001 (5.4 × 10−25) | 0.18 |
NOW | 3.867 | 0.779 |
No. of Items | Cronbach’s Alpha | Strength of Association | G6 (smc) | Average r | Mean | SD | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SE | PRE | 10 | 0.93 | Very good | 0.93 | 0.56 | 3.20 | 0.97 |
NOW | 10 | 0.93 | Very good | 0.93 | 0.58 | 3.15 | 1.03 |
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Mazzola, R.; Bozzi, M.; Testa, I.; Sancassani, S.; Zani, M. An Extensive Questionnaire about Metacognition during Emergency Remote Teaching Involving More Than 3000 Engineering Students. Sustainability 2023, 15, 2295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032295
Mazzola R, Bozzi M, Testa I, Sancassani S, Zani M. An Extensive Questionnaire about Metacognition during Emergency Remote Teaching Involving More Than 3000 Engineering Students. Sustainability. 2023; 15(3):2295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032295
Chicago/Turabian StyleMazzola, Roberto, Matteo Bozzi, Italo Testa, Susanna Sancassani, and Maurizio Zani. 2023. "An Extensive Questionnaire about Metacognition during Emergency Remote Teaching Involving More Than 3000 Engineering Students" Sustainability 15, no. 3: 2295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032295
APA StyleMazzola, R., Bozzi, M., Testa, I., Sancassani, S., & Zani, M. (2023). An Extensive Questionnaire about Metacognition during Emergency Remote Teaching Involving More Than 3000 Engineering Students. Sustainability, 15(3), 2295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032295