A Framework for Student Performance
Cover image by Yamu_Jay from Pixabay
by Cindy Nebel
In my full-time position, I work with medical students primarily on self-directed learning. As medical students, they are primarily assessed through complex multiple-choice exams where they are critically thinking through a clinical vignette to select the best answer in a relatively short amount of time. It’s a difficult task for anyone to perform and, most often, I see students when they are struggling to succeed at this task.
Today I want to share with you a framework that I use to talk to students about their exam performance. This framework can be applied to any situation in which a person is being assessed on the spot. I would argue that you could use this to think about job interviews, public speaking, performances, or certainly standardized testing.
The Framework
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Content
Often when examining test performance, students grasp onto the largest and most obvious component of performance: the content. After all, you have to know and understand the material in order to use it on the exam.
Content is best improved through a combination of knowledge acquisition and review as well as active recall of information and other evidence-based strategies. These strategies are the primary focus of this blog and take into account the cognitive mechanisms that underpin learning.
Content isn’t just about exams, though. If someone is giving a speech, this involves the content of the speech as well as related information needed for Q&A. If someone is performing a musical piece, content would involve the actual music to be performed. It is the WHAT of performance.
Test-taking
The next component in the framework is test-taking. Even if someone knows the material needed for an exam, there is skill in narrowing down answer choices, time management, and metacognitive awareness. There is also skill in knowing when and how to take effective breaks during an exam (particularly if the exam is 8 hours long as in medical school!).
While content is still the largest predictor of success and must be a primary focus of self-directed study, test-taking skills can make or break a performance.
As one example, maybe a student tends to overthink questions and often selects the wrong question. One strategy students can use is to rate each answer choice from -3 to +3 based on the evidence they have to support it. If they have a lot of evidence against an answer choice, they would rate it -2 or -3. If they have no evidence for or against, it would be rated 0. It doesn’t feel good to choose a 0 or 1, but after rating all the questions, students can feel more confident with that selection if it truly is the highest objective choice.
Of course, the appropriate strategy for students depends on whether and what is going wrong. Students may require careful coaching to determine whether they are having issues with test-taking strategies and what the appropriate strategy would be to help their unique circumstances.
This concept can also be applied to other types of performance beyond exams, but depend critically on the strategies required for that type of performance. Time management may be an issue across many types of performance, but how you strategize a solution for time management likely depends on the type of situation.
Working Memory
The last component of this framework is working memory. While I’m calling this working memory, it truly involves any and all psychological factors that may be impacting a student’s ability to perform. This includes but is not limited to:
Wellbeing
Sleep
Nutrition
Exercise
Burnout
Attentional control (possibly ADHD)
Other personal life factors
As with test-taking strategies, even with high content knowledge and good test-taking strategies, a student who is trying to perform with only half their normal working memory capacity is unlikely to be successful.
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And, as before, the appropriate solution to these issues requires careful analysis of what’s going on to determine appropriate strategies. Arguably, all types of performance are going to require working memory and factors that diminish effective use of working memory will detrimentally impact performance. Which factors matter most likely depends on the type of performance, but working memory is critical across domains.
How to Use the Framework
Admittedly, this framework is oversimplified. I use this to communicate many different programs of research in a way that is easy for my students to understand. Every part of this framework has considerable nuance. However, I find this to be a very straightforward way to make sure that I’ve covered my bases when working with students. We talk about how they are studying first to cover content, but then I make sure to ask about their experience taking an exam and issues they might be experiencing, as well as a wellness check where I quickly ask about the factors listed above. In this way, students are better able to engage in reflection on their own struggles and I am better able to diagnose what’s happening, especially with a student who is reporting that they are studying using effective learning strategies already.
