Well-calibrated intuitions, flawed judgments: Low post-instruction self-efficacy may lead students away from efficient learning

When deciding how to study, students often choose suboptimal strategies. Our experiment investigated how preferences for instructional methods—video, practice, or both combined—affect learning outcomes. By collecting preferences both before and after instruction, we tested whether learners update their decisions once they have experiential data. We randomly assigned 130 participants to receive their preferred method (honoring initial choice) or a different method (dishonoring choice). Honoring preferences did not significantly influence recall or efficiency, so control over instructional methods may be less important than the methods themselves. Contrary to previous research showing preferences for lectures, most participants initially preferred approaches involving practice (35% practice-only; 50% combined). After instruction, preferences shifted further towards also including lectures as part of instruction (74% combined). Low post-test self-efficacy predicted changing to combined instruction, indicating learners with low confidence may overvalue comprehensive approaches, even though practice alone was equally effective at promoting recall and reduced instructional time by 66%. By measuring pre-learning and post-learning preferences, along with motivation, we were able to show for the first time that learners with lower confidence were more likely to change their preference to the most time-consuming option, revealing a miscalibration in post-learning judgments not seen before learning. These findings suggest that students rely on evidence from recent experiences, including both the instruction they received and their self-efficacy after the instruction, to make decisions about future study strategies.