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Despite learners’ engagement in cognitive and metacognitive processes when marking text, text marking was only examined from a cognitive perspective. Although identification of important information using textual cues and prior knowledge is a cognitive process, the decision of whether to mark or not is metacognitive. Learners use standards they create to metacognitively monitor content and decide which parts merit marking and which do not. Acknowledging the metacognitive aspect of text marking would provide a better understanding of how the study tactic works. The current study investigates the effects of standards for metacognitively monitoring learners’ interaction with text when reading and marking. The experimental design allows comparisons of performance and marking activity among groups given or not given specific criteria of content to study and mark. The research also examines standards learners use when they freely mark text as well as the probability of recall for an information segment if marked or not marked. Learners used nstudy to mark text. nStudy is an online learning tool that allows learners to mark text and logs detailed traces of marking, and provides a description of what and how much learners’ marked. Findings show that if learners are given specific criteria to focus their learning, they do not need to mark text to process specified content. This implies that the key to efficacy of text marking is the judgment that learners engage in when deciding whether a text extract should be marked or not. Providing learners with criteria to guide marking and studying text dampens the marking of content not specified in the criteria, but it does not elevate the marking of criteria- specific content. Interestingly, learners who freely marked reported using 17 different standards when judging what to mark. Findings also show that, marking text and being engaged metacognitively in deciding what content to mark does enhance the probability of recalling marked text.

Studies examining learners’ text marking displayed some limitations. First, for the most part these studies measured recall as a learning outcome. Very few studies measured inference and none measured transfer. Second, when describing marked text, these studies mainly used two categories: high and low level sentences, and main and subordinate ideas. This classification is insufficient to explore the relationship between learners’ text marking and expected learning outcomes. Third, studies providing instructions for learners on what and how much to mark geared learners towards one learning outcome; mostly recall, thus missed on capturing the effects of different prompts that direct learners’ expectations to more than one outcome. This research used nStudy, an online learning tool that allows learners to mark text and logs detailed traces of marking, and provided a detailed description of what and how much learners’ marked, using a set of sentence identifiers, such as terms, explanations, main ideas, consequences…etc., when learners are requested to study for recall and transfer tasks. The study also tested the effect of learners’ marking on learners’ performance on recall and transfer tasks. Moreover, it examined the effect of showing learners examples of kinds of information relevant to answering recall or transfer test questions on learners’ performance. Findings reveal that recall and transfer prompts do have an effect on learners’ total marking and some of the categories learners choose to mark. Also, marking text related to recall/ transfer questions enhances learners’ performance on these tasks. Moreover, in transfer tasks, marking parts of text unrelated to transfer questions did enhance learners’ performance in those tasks. On the other hand, showing learners’ examples of kinds of information relevant to answering recall and transfer test questions do not have an effect on learners’ marking nor performance on transfer and recall tests. These findings suggest that the goal/reason learners have when they are marking affects their marking as well as their learning.