If you’re an online student, you may appreciate the situation you’re in. You can do your work on your own time and your own setting without worrying about being at a specific place in the middle of your busy day. You can also utilize many resources while learning that you wouldn’t be able to do when learning in a lecture hall. Nothing is holding you back. Having these perks can make it seem that your performance in class is pretty good.

Don’t be fooled!                                                                      

A study done with students attending Harvard’s summer school shows that online students are generally overconfident with their grade. The control group’s average difference in expected grade and actual grade was a vast 30%. That’s 3 letter grades! Not all hope is lost, however, as the study was looking at a method to address the problem, bringing the students’ expected grade closer to their actual one, and increasing their actual performance in the class. The method of improving the grades of the students is known as interpolated testing. Basically, at certain intervals in the online lectures, the students took small tests about the content that was just recently covered. When the students were given many tests spread inside their lectures, their average grade deficit dropped to 2%, while their average grade rose by 27%.

Don’t let your performance be hindered by overconfidence. Let your online instructors know about the benefits of interpolated testing. Since sometimes implementing these tests can be too much of a hassle for busy instructors, test yourself frequently when watching video lectures if your instructor decides against adding them. Be sure to test frequently, or else the results won’t be as noticeable.