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Alexander R. Toftness1, Shana K. Carpenter1, Sarah K. Tauber2, & Paige E. Northern2

The Effects of Instructor Fluency and Expertise on Students’ Overconfidence

Introduction

Method (2 x 2 Design)

Results and Discussion

  • Students are generally overconfident in their learning (Finn & Tauber, 2015).
  • One source of overconfidence is instructor fluency—the ease with which an instructor appears to present information on a given topic (Carpenter et al., 2013; Toftness et al., 2017).
  • Students’ beliefs about the instruction they are receiving, such as the expertise level of the instructor, may moderate this effect by providing an additional cue upon which to base judgments of learning (Leventhal et al., 1977).

References

Carpenter, S. K., Wilford, M. M., Kornell, N., & Mullaney, K. M. (2013). Appearances can be deceiving: Instructor fluency increases perceptions of learning without increasing actual learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20(6), 1350–1356.

Finn, B., & Tauber, S. K. (2015). When confidence is not a signal of knowing: How students’ experiences and beliefs about processing fluency can lead to miscalibrated confidence. Educational Psychology Review, 27(4), 567–586.

Leventhal, L., Perry, R. P., & Abrami, P. C. (1977). Effects of lecturer quality and student perception of lecturer’s experience on teacher ratings and student achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 69, 360-374.

Toftness, A. R., Carpenter, S. K., Geller, J., Lauber, S., Johnson, M., & Armstrong, P. I. (2017). Instructor fluency leads to higher confidence in learning, but not better learning. Metacognition and Learning, 1-14.

This material, presented at Psychonomics Vancouver 2017, is based upon work supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative in Understanding Human Cognition, Collaborative Grant No. 220020483.

  • Instructor fluency increased confidence in learning and perceptions of the course and instructor, but did not affect actual learning.
  • Instructor expertise had no effect on confidence, learning, or perceptions of the course and instructor.

Expert Expectation (n=47)

Non-Expert Expectation (n=45)

Expert Expectation (n=42)

Non-Expert Expectation (n=43)

1Iowa State University, 2Texas Christian University