To what extent can think sheets with or without reflection prompts support self-regulated learning from text?

Abstract Misconceptions impair learners’ text comprehension and judgment accuracy, which can hinder effective regulation processes. Think sheets are worksheets that require learners to contrast misconceptions with the correct information from a text. This study investigated to what extent completing a think sheet with ( n = 30) or without ( n = 32) reflection prompts compared to solely reading ( n = 30) benefits university students’ text comprehension, transfer, judgment accuracy of comprehension and transfer, and adequacy of regulation decisions. Overall, the results showed that completing a think sheet provided little benefit compared to having students read about the misconceptions and correct information, and that there were no significant differences between completing a think sheet with and without reflection prompts. Nonetheless, an unanticipated advantage of completing a think sheet was observed concerning comprehension and transfer: When engaging in reading only, unexpectedly, students with fewer misconceptions before studying achieved poorer comprehension and transfer performance than students with more misconceptions. In contrast, when completing a think sheet, this influence of misconceptions did not occur. Judgment accuracy of comprehension and regulation decision adequacy did not depend on how many misconceptions students had and/or on the instructional method they received. Regarding judgment accuracy of transfer, students with more misconceptions before studying more strongly underestimated their ability to transfer their acquired knowledge, while there was no effect of the instructional method.