Month: May 2017

Keep Calm and Improve with Metacognition: reflecting on three years of reflecting

John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

As Lauren and Aaron have recently noted, Improve with Metacognition (IwM) is now three years old. The site has become a space for collaboration and conversation around a range of issues loosely coming under the heading of ‘metacognition.’ My thinking about the nature of metacognition has shifted since we launched the site. I began thinking about thinking and reflecting on reflecting, but because of conversations on the site, I have come to use the term ‘metacognition’ to refer to awareness of a process (self-monitoring) and the use of that awareness to make changes in behavior (self-regulation). I’d like to take a moment to reflect on how IwM has helped me improve in three areas of my life with greater self-monitoring and self-regulation.

First, I like to think that I’ve always been the sort of teacher that encourages his students to think about their thinking. I confess, however, that my involvement with IwM has made me aware of my shortcomings with respect to developing my students’ metacognition. While I had been pretty good at nudging students to think carefully about content, I had also consistently missed opportunities to invite students to explicitly reflect on the efficacy of these strategies. For example, I took time in class to help students learn to annotate their reading, but I did not often teach them how to monitor whether these strategies were working and find alternatives when they did not. My efforts to adapt my Just-in-Time teaching strategies to be more metacognitive (Draeger, 2014, 2015, 2016) represent one of my attempts to make meaningful adjustments based on a growing awareness of my teaching practice.

Second, I am an everyday writer. I am up early most mornings working on one project or another. From that point of view, writing a blog post of 500-1000 words should have been a piece of cake. As I started blogging, however, I quickly became aware of the need to think about audience, style, and accessibility in ways that I had not thought about these considerations before. I have learned some lessons in the last three years and I am still making adjustments as I work to find “blog-sized” topics and refine my “blog voice.” I have grown as a writer because blogging for IwM has forced me to think more carefully about my craft. Further, I have found joy in writing in this short format. Much like taking a day trip to recharge your batteries, my excursions into the blogging space take me off my normal beat and path in ways that rejuvenate my other scholarly endeavors and bring fresh perspective.

Third, I had not initially thought through the role of blog space editor prior to IwM, but I’ve been delighted by regular interactions with metacognitive bloggers from around the United States (and indeed the world). Lauren, Aaron, and I regularly offer feedback to site contributors. I enjoy the opportunity to kick around ideas each week. This is, in part, because I am a nerd and relish indulging in new ideas. It is, in part, because I enjoy the writing process and this role gives me a front row seat as I watch scholars mold their ideas. It is, in part, because I enjoy the back and forth of intellectual banter. And it is, in part, because I like knowing that I am part of a growing community of metacognitive scholars. I find that my work with the IwM community crops up in all sorts of places and informs my interactions with others, both professionally and personally.

As I reflect on the last three years, I believe there will always be room for me to grow as a teacher, writer, and scholar. But I want to thank the IwM community for prompting me to think more carefully about these areas of my life. Improved awareness has led me to make subtle changes and these changes have led to improved performance. As we move into our fourth year together as an IwM community, I am coming to trust that I can keep calm, carry on, and improve with metacognition.

 

References

Draeger, J. (2014). “Just-in-Time for Metacognition.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/just-in-time-for-metacognition.

Draeger, J. (2015). “Using Just-in-Time assignments to promote metacognition.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/using-just-in-time-assignments-to-promote-metacognition.

Draeger, J. (2016). “Fine-tuning Just-in-Time assignments to encourage metacognition.” Retrieved from  https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/fine-tuning-just-time-assignments-encourage-metacognition/

 


Glimmer to Glow: Creating and Growing the Improve with Metacognition Site

by Lauren Scharff, Ph.D., U. S. Air Force Academy *

It’s been three years since Improve with Metacognition (IwM) went live, but the glimmer of the idea started more than a year prior to that, and we still consider it a work in progress. The adventure started with a presentation on metacognition that Aaron Richmond and I gave at the Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) convention in 2013. We both had independently been working on projects related to metacognition, and decided to co-present in the teaching track of the conference. We had good attendance at the session and an enthusiastic response from the audience. I made the suggestion of forming some sort of online community in order to continue the exchange of ideas, and passed around a sign-up sheet at the end of the session.

I have to say that my initial idea of an online community was very limited in scope: some sort of online discussion space with the capability to share documents. I thought it would be super quick to set up. Well, the reality was not quite so easy (lol) and our ambitions for the site grew as we discussed it further, but with help from some friends we got it going just in time to unveil it at the SWPA 2014 convention. Along the way I pulled in our third co-creator, John Draeger, who helped shape the site and presented with us at the 2014 convention.

As Aaron mentioned in his reflection last week, during the past three years we have shared information about the site at a variety of conferences both within the United States and beyond. The response has always been positive, even if not as many people go the next step and sign up for updates or write guest contributions as we’d like. One common line of questioning has been, “This is fantastic! I am interested in doing something similar on the topic of X. How did you get it going?”

We do hope that IwM can serve as a model for other collaboration sites, so here are a few things that stand out for me as I reflect on our ongoing efforts and the small glow we have going so far.

  • Partnerships are essential! John, Aaron, and I have some different skill sets and areas of expertise relevant to running the site, and our professional networks reach different groups. Further, with three of us running it, when life gets nuts for one of us, the others can pick up the slack. I can’t imagine trying to set up and maintain a site like IwM all on my own.
  • Practice metacognition! The three of us periodically join together in a Skype session to reflect on what seems to be working (or not), and share ideas for new features, collaboration projects, etc. We use that reflection to self-regulate our plans for the site (awareness plus self-regulation –> metacognition). Sometimes we’ve had to back off on our initiatives and try new strategies because the initial effort wasn’t working as we’d hoped. A long-time saying I’m fond of is, “the only way to coast is downhill.” Any endeavor, even if wildly successful at first, will require some sort of ongoing effort to keep it from coasting downhill.
  • Be open and provide an environment that supports professional development! (And realize this requires time and effort.) We want to encourage broad involvement in the site and provide opportunities for a wide variety of people interested in metacognition to share their ideas and efforts. We also hope to have a site that is viewed as being legitimate and professional. This balancing act has been most apparent with respect to the blog posts, because not everyone has strong writing skills. And, we believe that even those with strong writing skills can benefit from feedback. Thus, we provide feedback on every submitted post, sometimes suggesting only minor tweaks and sometimes suggesting more substantial revisions. The co-creators even review each other’s drafts before they are posted. As anyone who provides feedback on writing assignments or reviews journal articles knows, this process is a labor of love. We learn a lot from our bloggers – they share new ideas and perspectives that stimulate our own thinking. But, providing the appropriate level of feedback so as to clearly guide the revisions without squashing enthusiasm is sometimes a challenge. Almost always, at least two of the co-creators review each blog submission, and we explicitly communicate with each other prior to sending the feedback, sometimes combined and sometimes separate. That way we can provide a check on the tone and amount of feedback we send. Happily, we have received lots of thanks from our contributors and we don’t have any cases where a submission was withdrawn following receipt of our feedback.

Upon further reflection, my overall point is that maintaining a quality blog, resource, and collaboration site requires more than just getting people to submit pieces and posting articles and other resources. We hadn’t fully realized the level of effort required when we started, and we have many new ideas that we still hope to implement. But, on so many levels all the efforts have been worthwhile. We believe we have a fantastic (and growing) collection of blogs and resources, and we have had several successful collaboration projects (with more in the works).

We welcome your suggestions, and if you have the passion and time to help us glow even brighter, consider joining us as either a collaboration-consultant or as a guest blogger.

Lauren

* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.