Can College Students Accurately Assess What Affects Their Learning and Development?

Informal (and sometimes formal) assessments in higher education often ask students how their skills or attitudes have changed as the result of engaging in a particular course or program; however, it is unclear to what extent these self-reports are accurate. Using a longitudinal sample of over 3,000 college students, we found that students were fairly inaccurate when reporting how their experiences with faculty and peers affected their own cognitive and personal development. These findings call into question the use of perceived influence measures, and they add to a growing literature on the validity of self-reported measures of learning and development.