by Guy A. Boysen, McKednree University (gaboysen@mckednree.edu)

Imagine that you and your colleagues have just retired to the pub for a well-deserved pint at the end of a long week of work in the knowledge factory. After a few refreshing sips, you hear the challenge of “Darts!” Rather than playing the usual game of Cricket or 301, the challenger proposes a new competition but does not bother to share the rules. So, you lob darts at random, sometimes hearing “Nice shot!” and other times “Too bad, mate!” Without a clear target to aim for, however, there is no way for you to improve your performance. You lose, and the next round is on you.

If that sounds frustrating, imagine how students feel when they don’t know what to aim for in their efforts at learning – that is, how they feel in classes without clear learning objectives. Learning objectives refer to statements of what students should be able to do after an educational experience. High-quality learning objectives are clear, measurable, and focused on student outcomes rather than instructional methods (Boysen, 2012). Consider these examples.

• Students in Spanish will be able to ask grammatical questions to solicit various forms of information from Spanish speakers.
• Students who complete library training will be able to identify peer-reviewed journal articles using the EBSCO database.
• Students in Statistics will be able to compute means and standard deviations using hand calculations.
• Readers of this blog will be able to describe the relation between learning objectives and metacognition.

In a straightforward way, learning objectives let students know what they need to know – this is an essential tool for the metacognitive skill of being able to self-assess progress toward educational goals.

Just as you will never win at darts without knowing where to aim, students cannot intentionally evaluate where they are in the learning process without objectives. For example, students in Spanish who are unaware of the learning objective to ask various grammatical questions might mistakenly believe that they are muy bueno with “¿Que pasa?” as their only query. In contrast, students who are aware of the learning objective can more effectively use metacognition by self-assessing their ability to do things like ask for food, directions, the time, or an add/drop slip. Although research is needed to determine if there is a direct link between learning objectives and metacognition, there is longstanding evidence that providing students with learning objectives leads to increased learning (Duell, 1974; Rothkopf & Kaplan, 1972).

Learning objectives clearly have potential as metacognitive tools for helping students assess their own learning, so how do the best college teachers use them? Well, according to An Evidence-Based Guide for College and University Teaching: Developing the Model Teacher (Richmond, Boysen, & Gurung, 2016), there are two fundamental questions that model teachers can say “Yes!” to with regard to learning objectives.

• Do you “articulate specific, measurable learning objectives in your syllabi or other course documents?” (p. 197)

Model teachers know that, for every one of their readings, activities, tests, and papers, students can determine the learning objective and use it to consider whether or not they are achieving the intended goal. The syllabus is an especially important metacognitive tool. It is the place to introduce students to the concepts of metacognition and learning objectives. In fact, you can even use it to establish learning objectives about the development of metacognition itself (see here for more on metacognitive syllabi; Richmond, 2015).

• Do you “provide constructive feedback to students is that is related to their achievement of learning objectives?” (p. 197)

Model teachers recognize that students may be unskilled and unaware (Taraban, 2016), so they frequently offer opportunities for objective evaluation. Evaluations such as quizzes, tests, and rubric scores help to keep students’ self-assessment of learning grounded in reality (see Was, 2014 and Taraban, 2014 for more on feedback). For example, students may be 100% confident in their ability to ask questions in Spanish – that is until an oral examination. Struggling to stammer out a modest “¿Que hora es?” and nothing else should lead students to a clearer awareness of their current abilities.

In summary, don’t let your students lob random intellectual darts at mysterious learning targets. Be a model teacher by providing them with clear learning objectives and feedback on their success so that they can hone their metacognitive skills!

References

Boysen, G. A. (2012). A guide to writing learning objectives for teachers of psychology. Society for the Teaching of Psychology Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology Online. Retrieved from https://legacy.berea.edu/academic-assessment/files/2015/02/Guide-to-Writing-Learning-Objectives-for-Teachers-of-Psychology-Boysen-2012.pdf

Duell, O. P. (1974). Effect of type of objective, level of test questions, and the judged importance of tested materials upon posttest performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 66, 225–323.

Richmond, A. S. (2015, March 6^th). The metacognitive syllabus. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognitive-syllabus/

Richmond, A. S., Boysen, G. A., Gurung, R. A. R. (2016). An evidence-based guide for college and university teaching: Developing the model teacher. Routledge.

Rothkopf, E. Z., & Kaplan, R. (1972). Exploration of the effect of density and specificity of instructional objectives on learning from text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 63, 295–302.

Taraban, R. (2014, December 10^th). Mind the feedback gap. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/mind-the-feedback-gap/

Taraban, R. (2016, April 1st). Unskilled and unaware: A metacognitive bias. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/unskilled-unaware-metacognitive-bias/

Was, C. (2014, August 28th). Testing improves knowledge monitoring. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/testing-improves-knowledge-monitoring/

Aaron S. Richmond, Ph.D.
Metropolitan State University of Denver

In past blogs, I’ve written about topics that focus on the relationship between academic procrastination and metacognition (Richmond, 2016), or different instructional methods to increase your student’s metacognition (Richmond 2015a, 2015b), or even how to use metacognitive theory to improve teaching practices (Richmond, 2014). However, during my morning coffee the other day I was reading a 2016 article in Metacognition in Learning by Foster, Was, Dunlosky, and Isaacson (yes, I am a geek like that). Studying the importance of repeated assessment and feedback, Foster and colleagues found that over the course of a semester sophomore and junior level education psychology students who were tested 13 separate times and provided feedback remained highly overconfident in their knowledge of the material. As many other researchers have concluded, severe overconfidence erodes accurate self-regulation and self-monitoring which can have a severe detrimental effect on student learning. After finishing my coffee, I thought about the potential long-term and pervasive impacts the lack of metacognition these students had and it dawned on me that in IwM we have not discussed when and where metacognitive skills should be taught in the college curriculum. Thus, I choose to focus this blog on potential suggestions/strategies on when and where to introduce teaching metacognitive skills in the college classroom.

When Should We Teach Metacognitive Skills?
First and foremost, as college and university teachers, we need to acknowledge that our students do not come to us from a vacuum and that they already have many developed, albeit sometimes erroneous and ineffective, metacognitive skills. Considering this fact, we need to adapt our metacognitive instruction on an individual student level to best teach our students. Now, to the question: When should we teach metacognitive skills? The answer is—of course ASAP! As one of the goals to metacognitive skills is to transfer across academic domains, introducing it during the first semester of college is imperative.

One of the most notable early interventions for metacognitive skills was done by Ken Kiewra at the University of Nebraska. Kiewra created a class “Academic Success” taught at the sophomore level using his Selection, Organization, Association, and Regulation (SOAR) model (Jairam & Kiewra, 2009). Jairam and Kiewra had modest effects of increasing student learning (e.g., recalling facts and associating relevant information among zoology terms) via these metacognitive skills. However, there are a few areas in which this approach to teaching metacognitive skills can be improved. First, this is not a class that all students were required to take (only education students). Thus, all other academic disciplines could benefit from this class (see more on this below). Second, most of the students who took this course were at the sophomore and junior college level. This course should be a first semester course for all students, rather than midway through the college career.

The final note regarding when we should teach metacognitive skills almost negates or precludes the initial question. That is, the ‘when’ is immediately, but immediately doesn’t mean or suggest once. Rather, metacognitive skills should be taught continuously throughout the college career with increasingly more advanced and effective memory and learning strategies. Just as a student would take an introductory course to a major, why not have a beginner, intermediate, and advanced metacognitive skills course?

Where Should Metacognitive Skills Be Taught?
Obviously, those at IwM, and presumably our readers, would quickly answer this question: EVERYWHERE! That is, metacognitive skills should be taught across the college curriculum. However, there are some academics who believe (a) our students have already learned effective learning strategies (Jairam & Kiewra, 2009), and (b) that metacognitive skills are not part of their curriculum. In response to the first belief, many of our incoming college and university students do not have effective metacognitive skills so it is important that we teach these skills in all different types of academic domains (Jairam & Kiewra, 2009). In response to the second belief, metacognition should be taught across all academic domains. This includes mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, nursing, psychology, anthropology. I will go so far as to suggest that metacognitive skills are tantamount to reading skills as it pertains to the learning process and should be incorporated throughout the curriculum. But herein lies the rub. I have yet to find a current model or research example of infusing metacognitive skill training across the curriculum. For example, in general studies education, why not have a metacognitive student learning objective that cuts across all academic domains. Or in a first-year-success program that is often taught in teams, why not incorporate metacognitive skill training via thematic instruction (e.g., various academic disciplines are asked to center their instruction around a similar topic) among several introductory level classes. That is, teach metacognition in General Psychology, Speech 101, Biology 101, etc. by using a threaded theme (e.g., racism) that requires teachers to teach metacognitive skills to help learn a particular topic. In the end, it is clear that all students in all disciplines could benefit from metacognitive skill training, yet researchers nor teachers have tackled these specific issues.

There Are Always More Questions Than Answers.
I’ve done it again, I’ve written a blog that touches on what I believe to be an important issue in metacognition and higher education that needs far more research. As such, I must wrap up this blog (as I always do) with a few questions/challenges/inspirational ideas.

1. Should metacognition, learning strategies, etc. be taught throughout the curriculum?
   1. If so, how?
2. If not, should they be taught in a self-contained introduction to college course?
   1. Should all college students to be required to take this course?
3. What other models of introducing and teaching metacognitive skills are there that may be more effective than a self-contained course vs. a thematic curriculum approach?
4. Once students have been introduced to metacognitive skills, what is the best method for continuing education of metacognitive skills?

References
Foster, N. L., Was, C. A., Dunlosky, J., & Isaacson, R. M. (2016). Even after thirteen class exams, students are still overconfident: The role of memory for past exam performance in student predictions. Metacognition and Learning, 1-19. doi:10.1007/s11409-016-9158-6

Jairam, D., & Kiewra, K. A. (2009). An investigation of the SOAR study method. Journal of Advanced Academics, 20(4), 602-629.

Richmond, A. S. (2016, February 16th). Are academic procrastinators metacognitively deprived?. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/are-academic-procrastinators-metacognitively-deprived/

Richmond, A. S. (2015a, November 5th). A minute a day keeps the metacognitive doctor away. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/a-minute-a-day-keeps-the-metacognitive-doctor-away/

Richmond, A. S. (2015b, July 20th). How do you increase your students metacognition?. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/how-do-you-increase-your-students-metacognition/

Richmond, S. (2014, August 28th). Meta-teaching: Improve your teaching while improving your student’s metacognition. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/meta-teaching-improve-your-teaching-while-improving-students-metacognition/

by Roman Taraban, PHD, Texas Tech University

“Just Do It” has been a great slogan for selling athletic equipment and has also spawned some humorous spinoffs, like Bart Simpson’s “Can’t someone else just do it?” And is it not how we sometimes solve problems: “Don’t think, just do it?” Although just doing it (or getting someone else to do it) may have some visceral appeal, models for teaching argue against just doing it when it comes to solving problems.

One of the most influential problem-solving models is Polya’s (1957) 4-step model: i) understand the problem, ii) develop a plan, iii) carry out the plan, and iv) look back. On this model, solvers don’t “do it” until the 3^rd step. What is really striking about this model is that it is mostly about critical thinking and metacognitive processing. The principles of understanding the problem, planning one’s approach to solving the problem, and reflecting on the solution after “doing it,” all require critical thinking and metacognition (Draeger, 2015). STEM disciplines have generally embraced the Polya model, suggesting that commitments to metacognitive thinking by researchers and instructors are widespread and well-entrenched. Two disciplines will be considered here to make that point: mathematics and engineering.

In a research study in mathematics, Carlson and Bloom (2005) collected and analyzed the problem solving behaviors of twelve expert mathematicians. The data showed that the mathematicians engaged in metacognitive behaviors and decisions that were organized within a general problem-solving framework consisting of Orienting, Planning, Executing, and Checking. One of the phases, Executing, is where one “does it” – the others are more metacognitive. Researchers have developed comparable models for problem-solving in engineering. These models preface equation-crunching with understanding the problem and planning a solution, and follow up with reflection on the solution. This is exemplified in the six-step McMaster model: Engage, Define the Stated Problem, Explore, Plan, Do It, and Look Back (Woods et al., 1997).

In spite of teachers’ best intentions, might students still just do it? Certainly! An alternative to metacognitive planning before doing, and monitoring, regulating, and reflecting, is to apply a purely rote strategy (Garofalo & Lester, 1985), also termed a “plug and chug” method (Maloney, 2011). Plug and chug in physics and engineering involves a mental search for equations that will solve the problem, but with little conceptual understanding of the nature of the problem, little strategic decision-making, and little metacognitive self-reflection and regulation of the solution process. In disciplines not involving equations, various matching and cut-and-paste strategies could qualify as plug-and-chug. James Stice, a distinguished professor in chemical engineering, described part of his own engineering training (Stice, 1999) that suggests how plug-and-chug may come about:

“When I was an undergraduate student, many of my professors would derive an equation during lecture, and then would proceed to work an example problem. They would outline the situation, invoke the equation, plug in the numbers and arrive at a solution. What they did always seemed very logical and straightforward, I’d get it all down in my notes, and I’d leave the class feeling that I had understood what they had done. Later I often was chagrined to find that I couldn’t work a very similar problem for homework.” (p. 1)

Much of the motivation for research on how experts solve problems, like Carlson and Bloom (2005), has led to developing didactic models for the classroom, like the six-step McMaster model (Woods et al., 1997) in engineering: Engage, Define the Stated Problem, Explore, Plan, Do It, and Look Back. These didactic models have been developed largely in response to the absence of metacognitive thinking among students.

Although teaching methods could account for some of the absence of metacognitive thinking in beginning students, domain-specific knowledge may also be a factor. Few would disagree that domain-specific knowledge plays a key role in successful problem solving. Indeed, Carlson and Bloom attributed the expertise of their mathematicians, in part, to “a large reservoir of well-connected knowledge, heuristics, and facts” (p. 45). Can a novice student readily access domain-related facts, organize information within the problem, muse, imagine, and conjecture over possible strategies, apply heuristics, and effectively monitor progress? Of course not. Obviously, the absence of domain-specific knowledge in beginning students enables and motivates the teaching of domain-specific knowledge. But I would like to argue that the absence of domain-specific knowledge also enables and motivates teaching students metacognitive processes. This may seem illogical, but it’s not. The point is that an absence of domain-specific knowledge provides instructors with a great opportunity to teach the domain-specific knowledge but also how to think about thinking about that knowledge, that is, how to be metacognitive while learning facts and procedures.

Getting students to “Think, then Do It” will require more than working examples for them on the blackboard in order to convey domain-specific knowledge. Instead, within a framework like that provided by Carlson and Bloom, the metacognitive processes at each step of solving the problem should also be modeled. Some students may show metacognitive behaviors early on, and all successful students will eventually catch on. However, to truly be a pedagogical principle, it needs to be part of the learning situation. A model of metacognitive instruction (Scharff, 2015) for the student could be guided by the work on scaffolding metacognitive processes proposed in the seminal work of Brown and Palinscar (1982). The point is to take the domain-specific knowledge that you are trying to convey and to model and scaffold it to students along with the metacognitive decisions and control that go with expert problem solving, and to do it early on in instruction. It is worth mentioning that James Stice, who was taught to plug and chug, became a follower and proponent of the six-step McMaster model as professor of chemical engineering.

There is an old Jack Benny joke. Jack Benny was a comedian known for being a cheapskate. One night a thug stopped him – “Don’t make a move bud, your money or your life.” After a long pause, the thug, clearly annoyed, repeated – “Look bud, I said….Your money or your life.” Jack Benny: “I’m thinking it over.” Just to be fair, sometimes we should just Do It and not think too much about it. When it comes to teaching and learning, though, thinking about thinking is better.

References

Brown, A. L., & Palinscar, A. S. (1982). Inducing strategic learning from texts by means of informed, self-control training. Tech Report No. 262. Urbana: University of Illinois Center for the Study of Reading.

Carlson, M. P., & Bloom, I. (2005). The cyclic nature of problem solving: An emergent multidimensional problem-solving framework. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 58, 45-75.

Draeger, J. (2015). Two forms of ‘thinking about thinking’: metacognition and critical thinking. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/two-forms-of-thinking-about-thinking-metacognition-and-critical-thinking/ .

Garofalo, J., & Lester Jr., F. K. (1985). Metacognition, cognitive monitoring, and mathematical performance. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 16(3), 163-176.

Maloney, D. P. (2011). An overview of physics education research on problem solving. Getting Started in PER..Reviews in PER vol. 2. College Park, MD: American Association of Physics Teachers. http://opus.ipfw.edu/physics_facpubs/49

Polya, G. (1957). How to solve it. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Scharff, Lauren (2015). “What do we mean by ‘metacognitive instruction?” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-we-mean-by-metacognitive-instruction/

Stice, J. (1999). Teaching problem solving. In Teachers and students – A sourcebook (Section 4). University of Texas at Austin: Center for Teaching Effectiveness. Retrieved from

http://www.utexas.edu/academic/cte/sourcebook/teaching3.pdf

Woods, D. R., Hrymak, A. N., Marshall, R. R., Wood, P. E., Crowe, C. M., Hoffman, T. W., Wright, J. D., Taylor, P. A., Woodhouse, K. A., & Bouchard C. G. (1997). Developing problem solving skills: The McMaster problem solving program. Journal of Engineering Education, 86(2), 75–91.