Month: February 2016

Metacognition for Scholars: How to Engage in Deep Work

By Charity S. Peak, Ph.D. (Independent Consultant)

True confession: I’m addicted to shallow work. I wouldn’t say I’m a procrastinator as much as I am someone who prefers checking small things off my list or clearing my inbox over engaging in more complex tasks. I know I should be writing and researching. It’s just as much of my job as teaching or administrative duties, but I get to the end of my day and wonder why I didn’t have time for the most critical component of my promotion package – scholarship.

It turns out I’m not the only one suffering from this condition (far from it), and luckily there is a treatment plan available. It begins with metacognition about how one is spending time during the day, self-monitoring conditions that are most distracting or fruitful for productivity, and self-regulating behaviors in order to ritualize more constructive habits. Several authors offer suggestions for how to be more prolific (Goodson, 2013; Silvia, 2007), especially those providing writing prompts and 15-minute exercises, but few get to the core of the metacognitive process like Cal Newport’s (2016) recent Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown and author of 5 books and a blog on college success, shares his strategies for becoming a prolific writer while balancing other faculty duties.

Newport claims that deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It is arguably the most difficult and crucial capability of the 21st century. Creative thinking is becoming progressively rare in our distracted world, so those who can rise above shallow work are guaranteed to demonstrate value to their employers, especially colleges and universities. In order to be creative and produce new ideas, scholars must engage in deep work regularly and for significant periods of time. Instead, Newport argues that most people spend their days multitasking through a mire of shallow work like email, which is noncognitively demanding and offers little benefit to academia, let alone an individual’s promotion. In fact, he cites that “a 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone” (Newport, 2016, p. 5). Sound like someone you know?

The good news is that if you carve out space for deep work, your professional career will soar. The first step is to become metacognitive about how you are spending your time during the day. One simple method is to self-monitor how you use your work days by keeping a grid near your computer or desk. At the end of every hour throughout your day, record how much time you actually spent doing your job duties of teaching (including prep and grading), writing and research, and service. Like a food diary or exercise journal, your shallow work addiction will become apparent quickly, but you will also gain metacognition about when and under which conditions you might attempt to fit in time for deep work.

Once you have a grasp of the issue at hand, you can begin to self-regulate your behavior by blocking off time in your schedule in which you can engage in a deeper level of creative thinking. Each person will gravitate toward a different modality conducive to an individual’s working styles or arrangements. The author offers a few choices for you to consider, which have been proven to be successful for other scholars and business leaders:

  • Monastic: Eliminate or radically minimize shallow obligations, such as meetings and emails, in an effort to focus solely on doing one thing exceptionally well. Put an out-of-office response on your email, work somewhere other than your workplace, or take a year-long sabbatical in order to completely separate from frivolous daily tasks that keep you away from research and writing. Most teaching faculty and academic leaders are unable to be purely monastic due to other duties.
  • Bimodal: Divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. During the deep time, act monastically – seek intense and uninterrupted concentration – but schedule other time in your day for shallow work to be completed. One successful scholar shared the possibility of teaching a very full load one semester but not teaching at all during the next as an example of engaging deeply in both critical duties.
  • Rhythmic: Also called the “chain method” or “snack writing,” create a regular habit of engaging in deep work, such as every morning before going into work or at the end of each day. Blocking off one’s calendar and writing every day has been proven to be one of the most productive habits for scholars attempting to balance their research with other duties (Gardiner & Kearns, 2011).
  • Journalistic: Fit deep work into your schedule wherever you can – 15 minutes here, an hour there. Over time you will become trained to shift into writing mode on a moment’s notice. This approach is usually most effective for experienced scholars who can switch easily between shallow and deep work. Inexperienced writers may find that the multitasking yields unproductive results, so they should proceed cautiously with this method.

The key is to do something! You must ritualize whichever method you choose in order to optimize your productivity. This may take some trial and error, but with your new-found metacognition about how you work best and some alternative strategies to try, you will be more likely to self-regulate your behaviors in order to be successful in your scholarly pursuits. If you try new approaches and are still not engaging in enough deep work, consider joining a writing group or finding a colleague to hold you accountable on a regular basis. Again, like diet and exercise, others can sometimes provide the motivation and deadlines that we are unable to provide for ourselves. Over time, your addiction to shallow work will subside and your productivity will soar… or so they tell me.

Resources:

Gardiner, M., & Kearns, H. (2011). Turbocharge your writing today. Nature 475: 129-130. doi: 10.1038/nj7354-129a

Goodson, P. (2013). Becoming an academic writer: 50 exercises for paced, productive, and powerful writing. Los Angeles: Sage.

Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

Silvia, P. J. (2007). How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.


The Importance of Teaching Effective Self-Assessment

by Stephen Chew, Ph.D., Samford University,  slchew@samford.edu

Say we have two students who are in the same classes. For sentimental reasons, I’ll call them Goofus and Gallant[i]. Consider how they each react in the following scenarios.

In General Psychology, their teacher always gives a “clicker question” after each section. The students click in their response and the results are projected for the class to see. The teacher then explains the correct answer. Gallant uses the opportunity to check his understanding of the concept and notes the kind of question the teacher likes to use for quizzes. Goofus thinks clicker questions are a waste of time because they don’t count for anything.

In their math class, the teacher always posts a practice exam about a week before every exam. A day or two before the exam, the teacher posts just the answers, without showing how the problems were solved. Gallant checks his answers and if he gets them wrong, he finds out how to solve those problems from the book, the teacher, or classmates. Goofus checks the answers without first trying to work the problem. He tries to figure out how to work backwards from the answer. He considers that good studying. He memorizes the exact problems on the practice exam and is upset if the problems on the exam don’t match them.

In history class, the teacher returns an essay exam along with the grading rubric. Both boys were marked off for answers the teacher did not find sufficiently detailed and comprehensive. Gallant compares his answer to answers from classmates who scored well on the exam to figure out what he did wrong and how to do better next time. Goofus looks at the exam and decides the teacher gives higher scores to students who write more and use bigger words. For the next exam, he doesn’t change how he studies, but he gives long, repetitive answers and uses fancy words even though he isn’t exactly sure what they mean.

In each case, the teacher offers opportunities for improving metacognitive awareness, but the reactions of the two boys is markedly different. Gallant recognizes the opportunity and takes advantage of it, while Goofus fails to see the usefulness of these opportunities and, when given feedback about his performance, fails to take advantage of it. Just because teachers offer opportunities for improving metacognition does not mean that students recognize the importance of the activities or know how to take advantage of them. What is missing is an understanding of self-assessment, which is fundamental to developing effective metacognition.

For educational purposes, self-assessment occurs when students engage in an activity in order to gain insight into their level of understanding. The activity can be initiated either by the student or the teacher. Furthermore, to qualify as self-assessment, the student must understand and utilize the feedback from the activity. In summary, self-assessment involves students learning the importance and utility of self-assessments, teachers or students creating opportunities for self-assessment, and students learning how to use the results to improve their learning (Kostons, van Gog, & Paas, 2012).

Self-assessment is similar to formative assessment, which refers to any low-stakes activity designed to reveal student learning, but there are key differences (Angelo & Cross, 1993). First, students may undergo a formative assessment without understanding that it is an important learning opportunity. In self-assessment, the student understands and values the activity as an aid to learning. Second, students may not appreciate or use feedback from the formative assessment to improve their learning (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009). Successful self-assessment involves using the feedback to identify misconceptions and knowledge gaps, and to hone learning strategies (Kostons et al., 2012). Third, even high stakes, summative assessments can be used for self-assessment. For example, students can use the results of an exam to evaluate how successful their learning strategies were and make modifications in preparation for the next exam. Fourth, formative assessments are usually administered by the teacher. Self-assessment can be initiated by either teachers or students. For example, students may take advantage of chapter review quizzes to test their understanding. If students do not understand the importance of self-assessment and how to do it effectively, they will not take advantage of formative assessment opportunities, and they fail to use feedback to improve their learning.

The importance of learning effective self-assessment is grounded in a sound empirical and theoretical foundation. Teaching students to conduct self-assessment will help them to become aware of and correct faulty metacognition, which in turn should contribute to more successful self-regulated learning (see Pintrich, 2004). Self-assessment also involves student recall and application of information, facilitating learning through the testing effect (see Roediger & Karpicke, 2006, for a review). The proper use of feedback has also been shown to improve student learning (Hattie & Yates, 2014). Finally, self-assessment activities can also provide feedback to teachers on the student level of understanding so that they can adjust their pedagogy accordingly.

Teachers play a critical role in both designing rich activities for self-assessment and also teaching students how to recognize valuable opportunities for self-assessment and to take advantage of them. Some activities are more conducive to self-assessment than others. In the psychology class example above, Goofus doesn’t understand the purpose of the clicker question nor the importance of the feedback. The teacher could have used a richer activity with the clicker questions to promote self-assessment (e.g. Crouch & Mazur, 2001). In the math class scenario, the teacher gives a practice exam, but only gives the correct answer for feedback. Richer feedback would model the reasoning needed to solve the problems (Hattie & Yates, 2014) and support self-assessment. And even when feedback is given, students need to learn how to use the feedback effectively and avoid misconceptions, such as in the history class example where Goofus wrongly concludes the teacher wants longer answers with fancy words.

I believe effective self-assessment is a critical link between assessment activities and improved metacognition. It is link that we teachers often fail to acknowledge. I suspect that effective teachers teach students how to carry out self-assessment on their understanding of course content. Less effective teachers may provide self-assessment opportunities, but they are either not effectively designed, or students may not recognize the importance of these opportunities or know how to take advantage of them.

There is not a lot of research on how to teach effective self-assessment. The existing research tends to focus mainly on the providing self-assessment opportunities and not how to get students to make use of them. I believe research on self-assessment would be highly valuable for teachers. Some of the key research questions are:

  • How can students be convinced of the importance of self-assessment?
  • Can self-assessment improve metacognition and self-regulation?
  • Can self-assessment improve student study strategies?
  • Can self-assessment improve long-term learning?
  • What are the best ways to design and implement self-assessments?
  • When and how often should opportunities for self-assessment be given?
  • What kind of feedback is most effective for different learning goals?
  • How can students be taught to use the feedback from self-assessments effectively?

Two fundamental learning challenges for college students, especially first-year students, are poor metacognitive awareness and poor study strategies (Kornell & Bjork, 2007; McCabe, 2011). The two problems are connected because using a poor study strategy increases false confidence without increasing learning (Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013). Improving both metacognitive awareness and study strategies of students is difficult to do (Susser & McCabe, 2013). I believe a promising but little studied intervention is to teach students the importance and the means of conducting effective self-assessment.

References

Angelo, T. A. and K. P. Cross (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, Jossey-Bass.

Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 417-444.

Crouch, C. H., & Mazur, E. (2001). Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results. American Journal of Physics, 69, 970-977.

Hattie, J. A. C., & Yates, G. C. R. (2014). Using feedback to promote learning. In V. Benassi, C. E. Overson, & C. M. Hakala (Eds.). Applying the science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site: http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/asle2014/index.php.

Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. III. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17, 471-479.

Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2007). The promise and perils of self-regulated study. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 219-224.

Kostons, D., van Gog, T., Paas, F. (2012). Training self-assessment and task-selection skills: A cognitive approach to improving self-regulated learning. Learning and Instruction, 22, 121-132.

McCabe, J. (2011). Metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates. Memory & Cognition, 39, 462-476.

Pintrich, P. R. (2004). A conceptual framework for assessing motivation and self-regulated learning in college students. Educational Psychology Review, 16, 385-407.

Roediger, H. L., III., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 181-210.

Susser, J. A., & McCabe, J. (2013). From the lab to the dorm room: Metacognitive awareness and use of spaced study. Instructional Science, 41, 345-363.

[i] Goofus and Gallant are trademarked names by Highlights for Children, Inc. No trademark infringement is intended. I use the names under educational fair use. As far as I know, Goofus and Gallant have never demonstrated good and poor metacognition.


Are Academic Procrastinators Metacognitively Deprived?

By Aaron S. Richmond
Metropolitan State University of Denver

Academic Procrastinators Brief Overview

One of my favorite articles is Academic Procrastination of Undergraduates: Low Self-Efficacy to Self-Regulate Predicts Higher Levels of Procrastination by Robert M. Klassen, Lindsey. L. Krawchuk, and Sukaina Rajani (2007). Klassen and colleagues state that “…the rate for problematic academic procrastination among undergraduates is estimated to be at least 70-95% (Ellis & Knaus, 1977; Steel, 2007), with estimates of chronic or severe procrastination among undergraduates between 20% and 30%” (p. 916). Academic procrastination is, “the intentional delay of an intended course action, in spite of an awareness of negative outcomes (Steel, 2007; as cited in Klassen et al., 2006, p. 916). Based on the above stated statistics, it is obvious that academic procrastination is an issue in higher education, and that understanding what factors influence it and are related to its frequency is of utmost importance.

In their 2007 article, Klassen and colleagues conducted two studies to understand the relationship among academic procrastination and self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-esteem and then understand this relationship within “negative procrastinators” (p. 915). In study 1, they surveyed 261 undergraduate students. They found that academic procrastination was inversely correlated to college/university GPA, self-regulation, academic self-efficacy and self-esteem. Meaning as students’ frequency of academic procrastination went down, their GPA and self-reported scores of self-efficacy, self-esteem, and self-regulation went up. They also found that self-regulation, self-esteem, and self-efficacy predicted academic procrastination.

In study 2, Klassen and colleagues (2007) they were interested in knowing whether there was a difference between negative and neutral procrastinators. That is when procrastinating caused a negative affect (e.g., grade penalty for assignment tardiness) or a neutral affect (e.g., no penalty for assignment tardiness). They surveyed 194 undergraduates and asked students to rate how academic procrastination affected, either positively or negatively, specific academic tasks (reading, research, etc.). They then, divided the sample into a group of students that self-reported that academic procrastination negatively affected them in some way or positive/neutrally affected them in some way.  What they found is that there were significant differences in GPA, daily procrastination, task procrastination, predicted class grade, actual class grade, and self-reported self-regulation between negative procrastinators and neutral procrastinators. They also found that students most often procrastinated on writing tasks.

So Where Does Metacognition Come in to Play?

Because a main factor of their focus was self-regulation, I think Klassen and colleagues study, gives us great insight and promise into the potential role (either causal or predictive) that metacognition plays in academic procrastination. First, in Study 1, they used the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & MckKeachie, 1993) to measure self-efficacy for self-regulation. This MSLQ subscale assesses students’ awareness of knowledge and control of cognition (Klassen et al., 2007). It asks question like “If course materials are difficult to understand, I change the way I read the material.” or “I try to change the way I study in order to fit the course requirements and instructor’s teaching style.” (p. 920). As self-efficacy for self-regulation are a subset of metacognition, it is clear to me, that these questions indirectly, if not directly, partially measure elements of metacognition.

This makes me wonder, it would be interesting if the results of Klassen et al.’s study hold true with other forms of metacognition, such as metacognitive awareness. For example, how does it relate to metacognitive awareness factors that Schraw and Dennison (1994) suggest, such as knowledge and cognition (e.g., declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge) vs. regulation of cognition (e.g., planning, information management, monitoring, evaluation)?  Or, as Klassen et al. did not use the entire battery of measures in the MSLQ, how does academic procrastination relate to other aspects of the MSLQ like Learning Strategies, Help Seeking Scale, Metacognitive Self-Regulation, etc. (Pintrich et al., 1993). Or how might Klassen’s results relate to behavioral measures of metacognition such as calibration or, how does it relate to the Need for Cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982)?  These questions suggest that metacognition could play a very prominent role in academic procrastination.

There Are Always More Questions Than Answers

To my knowledge, researchers have yet to replicate Klassen et al.’s (2007) with an eye towards investigating whether metacognitive variables predict and mediate rates of academic procrastination.  Therefore, I feel like I must wrap up this blog (as I always do) with a few questions/challenges/inspirational ideasJ

  1. What is the relationship among metacognitive awareness and academic procrastination?
  2. If there is a relationship between metacognition and academic procrastination, are there mediating and moderating variables that contribute to the relationship between metacognition and academic procrastination? For example, critical thinking? Intelligence? Past academic performance? The type of content and experience with this content (e.g., science knowledge)?
  3. Are there specific elements of metacognition (e.g., self-efficacy vs. metacognitive awareness vs. calibration, vs. monitoring, etc.) that predict the frequency of academic procrastination?
  4. Can metacognitive awareness training reduce the frequency of academic procrastination?
  5. If so, what type of training best reduces academic procrastination?

 References

Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 116.

Ellis, A., & Knaus, W. J. (1977). Overcoming procrastination. NY: New American Library

Klassen, R. M., Krawchuk, L. L., & Rajani, S. (2008). Academic procrastination of undergraduates: Low self-efficacy to self-regulate predicts higher levels of procrastination. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33, 915-931. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2007.07.001

Pintrich, P. R., Smith, D. A. F., Garcia, T., & McKeachie, W. J. (1993). Reliability and predictive validity of the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (MSLQ). Educational and Psychological Measurement, 53, 801–813.

Schraw, G., & Dennison, R. S. (1994). Assessing metacognitive awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 19, 460-475.

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 65–94.