Impact of Virtual Instruction on Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies in Alleviating Academic Procrastination among Medical Students

 The prevalent academic procrastination among medical students, who will assume significant responsibilities in the future, can have irreversible consequences. One of the underlying factors is the weakness of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, which can be taught and learned by professors and students. The present research was conducted to investigate the effect of teaching cognitive and metacognitive strategies virtually on the academic procrastination of medical students at Iran University of Medical Sciences.

This quasi-experimental research employed a two-group before-and-after design and was conducted at the Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2023. The study included 70 medical students from Iran University of Medical Sciences, who were divided into control and intervention groups. Cognitive and metacognitive skills were presented virtually in four one-hour sessions. Data were collected using Solomon and Rothblum's Academic Procrastination Questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS 16 software.

Initially, no significant difference was found between the scores of the participants in the two groups before the cognitive and metacognitive strategies course (p>0.05). However, a significant difference was observed between the scores of the two groups after the intervention (p<0.05).

The implementation of cognitive and metacognitive strategies training has a positive and significant influence on reducing academic procrastination among students