A Concept Mapping Activity to Enhance Pharmacy Students’ Metacognition and Comprehension of Fundamental Disease State Knowledge

Objective. To examine the impact of pre-class concept mapping activities on pharmacy students' ability to self-assess their degree of foundational disease state knowledge and predict their pre-class quiz performance. Methods. Second year pharmacy students in a problem-based learning course were responsible for self-directed learning of foundational knowledge for 14 disease states. After completing their independent pre-class reading, students worked in groups to create concept maps for which feedback was provided for four laboratory sessions, worked in groups to create concept maps but received no formal feedback for three laboratory sessions, and did not engage in any formal group activity for seven laboratory sessions. The day following each session, prior to the formal in-class discussion, students were asked to predict the number of questions they could answer correctly on a quiz covering foundational knowledge and then completed the quiz. Quiz performance was compared based on the three conditions, and bias and absolute bias were calculated to evaluate students’ metacognitive skills. Results. There was no difference in pharmacy students’ metacognition based on the conditions, as reflected by inaccuracy between predicted and actual quiz scores. However, when students had engaged in concept mapping the previous day, their quiz performance was significantly higher than when they had not. Conclusion. Concept mapping did not improve pharmacy students’ metacognitive skills but did have a small effect on their quiz performance. More research is needed to tease apart the roles of concept mapping, group activity, and feedback in altering pharmacy students’ quiz performance and metacognitive skills.