From Overconfidence to Insight: The Role of Experiential Learning in Developing Critical Reading and Self-Assessment Accuracy Among Undergraduate Students

Critical reading of scientific literature is a fundamental skill for undergraduate students in the life sciences. While traditional pedagogical approaches largely focus on direct instruction, reflective writing, and pre/post assessments, less is known about how repeated experiential engagement with primary literature—through tasks such as oral presentations and structured self-evaluation—shapes the development of accurate self-assessment and critical reading skills over time. The methodological approach of this study uses longitudinal comparison of self-ratings and instructor grades to follow undergraduate biotechnology students over two consecutive semesters during which they presented scientific articles and completed self-rating questionnaires. Instructor evaluations and student self-assessments were compared across semesters, with a specific focus on differences between high- and low-achieving students. Although no significant differences were found between the grades assigned by the instructor for the two semesters, the students—particularly the high-achieving ones—demonstrated improved self-calibration over time, as evidenced by a decreasing gap between their self-ratings and the grades they received from the instructor. Over time, low-achieving students continued to overestimate their performance on overall self-assessments, but showed growing awareness of specific difficulties, suggesting that while global self-assessment accuracy may be slower to develop, metacognitive insight can still emerge through structured reflection. The concurrent shift in students’ perceptions regarding which sections of a paper were the most difficult to understand—from the Introduction in the first semester to the Results and Discussion sections in the second—indicated deeper engagement with the structure and demands of scientific texts over time. These trends, together with increased student confidence and decreased anxiety about presenting, underscore the importance of repeated experiential learning, feedback, and reflection for fostering both critical reading skills and self-regulated learning.