U.S. Army Cadets and Faculty Reflecting on a Metacognitive Assignment from a General Education Writing Class

by Brody Becker, Jack Curry, Charlie Gorman, Caleb Norris, J. Michael Rifenburg, and Erik Siegele

We offer an assignment from a general education writing class that invites students to hone their metacognitive knowledge by, oddly enough, writing about writing. Before we turn to this assignment, we need to detail who we are. We are a six-person author team. Five of us are first-year U.S. Army cadets. All five plan to commission into the U.S. Army following graduation. One of us is a civilian, tenured professor in the English Department.

During the Fall 2021 semester, we met in English 1102, a general education writing class offered at the University of North Georgia (UNG). Our university is a federally designated senior military college, like Texas A&M and The Citadel, tasked with educating future U.S. Army officers. Civilians also attend UNG. At our school, roughly 700 cadets learn alongside roughly 20,000 civilian undergraduate students. These details are important to what we want to describe in this post: not only a metacognitive writing assignment for this specific class but also the perspective of cadets who completed this assignment and the value of such metacognitive work for cadets. We write as a six-person team and offer collective ideas (as we do in this paragraph). However, we also value individual perspective. Author order is alphabetical and does not signal one writer contributing more than another writer.

An Overview of this Metacognitive Assignment

I (Michael) regularly teach this general education writing class. One writing assignment opened with the following prompt: “For this second paper, I invite you to reflect on a previous paper you wrote during your college or high school career. Through detailing when and where you wrote the paper, the processes you undertook to write the paper, and the feedback or grade you received on this paper, you will make a broader argument about the importance of reflecting back on writing and lessons one learns from undertaking such reflection.” This assignment is a modified version of a similar writing assignment in Wardle and Downs’s (2014) popular textbook Writing About Writing.

To prepare to write this paper, we read the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing,” a national consensus document outlining, as the title suggests, a framework for students to succeed at college level writing. This document offers eight habits of mind essential for student-writers to hone: one of these habits of mind is metacognition. We also read through portions of Tanner’s (2017) “Promoting Student Metacognition.” Tanner provided a table of metacognitive questions instructors can ask students before, during, and after the course.

Students then wrote a 1,500 word essay in response to this assignment. All student co-authors for this blog post enrolled in this specific class and completed this assignment. I now turn to my co-authors, cadet Charlie Gorman and cadet Brody Becker, to hear their perspectives on this assignment.

Cadets’ Reflections

Charlie’s reflection on this metacognitive assignment

I found that this assignment was beneficial to grow as a writer. Reflecting back on activities or assignments is a great way to improve in any aspect of life. I would have never thought about writing a paper about a paper until I was given the opportunity to write this assignment. As a future leader in the military, my writing will consist of educating material, reports, and special directions. Completing this assignment has set me up and taught me how to use past failures and successes to improve upon a future performance.

Brody’s reflection on this metacognitive assignment

This paper on metacognition was difficult for me because I had never done anything along these lines in a writing aspect previously. However, I soon found it to be helpful because of all the things I could learn from and look for in future writing. I had never thought about how looking back at previous writing could be helpful to me, so I always disregarded any past assignments and never thought about them again. This was a teaching moment for me, and I always take chances to learn new things. This assignment was one of the more beneficial things that I have done that I will continue to use for future assignments and will carry over to other things in life.

Why such an assignment is particularly helpful for cadets

In this section, Cadet Jack Curry considers why such a metacognitive writing assignment is particularly helpful for cadets who, after graduation, will commission as officers in the U.S. Army.

As a cadet, metacognition is an important step for our future progress. Being able to review and learn from our mistakes and our successes, helps us become better leaders. After any exercise or training, we conduct After Action Reviews (AARs) to find out how we can either improve upon or continue upon our training. As future officers, our job is to continue improving the skills we will use to lead future soldiers. The U.S. Army’s publication Training Circular 25-20: A Leader’s Guide to After Action Reviews (1993), states “the reason we conduct AARs are in order to find candid insights into specific soldier, leader, and unit strengths and weaknesses from various perspectives, and to find feedback and insight critical to battle-focused training.”

Concluding words of hope for more faculty-student partnerships

Our partnership started as a teacher-student one. Michael designed writing assignments and led classroom activities, and Charlie, Caleb, Jack, Brody, and Erik completed writing assignments and completed classroom activities. Near the end of the semester, our partnership shifted into one of co-authors where we wrote this blog post together over Google Docs, bounced ideas back and forth in-person after class, and coordinated further over email. We use the noun partnership intentionally to signal our commitment to pedagogical partnerships, an international and interdisciplinary movement to re-see the student-faculty relationship as one in which both serve as active agents in curriculum design, implementation, and assessment (e.g., Cook-Sather et al., 2019). As readers of and contributors to Improve with Metacognition continue to explore the benefits of structured metacognitive tasks throughout higher education, we hope that undergraduate students are at the forefront of this exploration. Partnerships between faculty and students are one productive step to ensuring that our classroom practices and processes best serve all our students.

References

Cook-Sather, A., Bahti, M., & Ntem, A. (2019). Pedagogical partnerships: A how-to guide for faculty, students, and academic developers in higher education. Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning Open Access Book Series. Retrieved from https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/books/pedagogical-partnerships/

Council of Writing Program Administrators et al. (2011). “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing.” Retrieved from http://wpacouncil.org/files/framework-for-success-postsecondary-writing.pdf.

U.S. Department of the Army. (1993). Training Circular 25-20: A Leader’s Guide to After Action Reviews. Army Publishing Directorate. Retrieved from https://armypubs.army.mil/productmaps/pubform/details.aspx?pub_id=71643

Tanner, K. (2017). Promoting student metacognition. Life Sciences Education, 11(2). Retrieved from https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.12-03-0033

Wardle, E., & Downs, D. (2014). Writing About Writing: A College Reader. 2^nd ed. Bedford.

Writing metacognitive learning objectives for metacognitive training that supports student learning

by Patrick Cunningham, Ph.D., Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Teaching through the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted disparities in how students approach their learning. Some have continued to excel with hybrid and online instruction while others, and more than usual, have struggled. Compounding these struggles, these students also find themselves behind or with notable gaps in their prerequisite knowledge for following courses. A significant component of these struggles may be due to not having developed independence in their learning. Engaging in explicit metacognitive activities directly addresses this disparity, improving students’ abilities to overcome these struggles. Given the present challenges of living through COVID-19, this is more important now than ever. However, creating activities with metacognitive focus is likely unfamiliar and there are not a lot of resources to guide their development. Here I seek to demonstrate an accessible approach, an entry point, for supporting students’ growth as more skillful and independent learners grounded in metacognition.

Cognitive Learning Objectives are Just the Start

Creating explicit learning objective is one means by which educators commonly try to support students’ independence in learning. Typically learning objectives focus on the cognitive domain, often based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. The cognitive domain refers to how we think about or process information. Bloom’s taxonomy for the cognitive domain is comprised of Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating (Krathwohl, 2002). Each of these gives an indication how a student is expected to engage or use the material we are teaching. For constructing learning objectives, there are lists of action verbs associated with each Bloom category.

Consider this cognitive learning objective for a computer programming course.

Students will be able to create and implement functions with inputs and an output in C++ programs to accomplish a specified task on an Arduino board with a prewired circuit.

This learning objective is specific to a lesson and targets the Apply level of Bloom’s taxonomy. (The approach I am presenting could equally apply to broader course-level learning objectives, but I think the specificity here makes the example more tangible.) This objective uses good action verbs (bolded) and has a prescribed scope and context. But is it adequate for guiding student learning if they are struggling with it?

Metacognitive Learning Objectives can Direct Learning Activities

Cognitive learning objectives point students to what they should be able to do with the information but do not usually provide guidance for how they should go about developing their ability to do so. Metacognition illuminates the path to developing our cognitive abilities. As a result, metacognitive training can support students’ attainment of cognitive learning objectives. Such training requires metacognitive learning objectives.

Metacognitive learning objectives focus on our awareness of the different ways we process information and how we regulate and refine how we process information. Metacognitive knowledge includes knowledge of how people (and we as individuals) process information, strategies for processing information and monitoring our thinking, and knowledge of the cognitive demands of specific tasks (Cunningham, et al., 2017). As we engage in learning we draw on this knowledge and regulate our thinking processes by planning our engagement, monitoring our progress and processes, adjusting or controlling our approaches, and evaluating the learning experience (Cunningham, et al., 2017). Metacognitive monitoring and evaluation feed back into our metacognitive knowledge, reinforcing, revising, or adding to it.

Example Implementation of Metacognitive Learning Objectives

Considering our example cognitive learning objective, how could we focus metacognitive training to support student attainment of it? Two possibilities include 1) focusing on improving students’ metacognitive knowledge of strategies to practice and build proficiency with writing functions or 2) supporting students’ accurate self-assessment of their ability to demonstrate this skill. Instructors can use their knowledge of their students’ current strategies to decide which approach (or both) to take. For example, if it appears that most students are employing limited learning strategies, such as memorizing examples by reviewing notes and homework, I might focus on teaching students about a wider range of effective learning strategies. The associated metacognitive learning objective could be:

Students will select and implement at least two different elaborative learning strategies and provide a rationale for how they support greater fluency with functions.

The instructional module could differentiate categories of learning objectives (e.g., memorization, elaboration, and organization), demonstrate a few examples, and provide a more complete list of elaborative learning strategies (Seli & Dembo, 2019). Then students could pick one to do in class and one to do as homework. If, on the other hand, it appears that most students are struggling to self-assess their level of understanding, I might focus on teaching students how to better monitor their learning. The associated metacognitive learning objective could be:

Students will compare their function written for a specific application, and completed without supports, to a model solution, using this as evidence to defend and calibrate their learning self-assessment.

Here the instructional module could be a prompt for students to create and implement a function, from scratch without using notes or previously written code. After completing their solutions, students would be given access to model solutions. In comparing their solution to the model, they could note similarities, differences, and errors. Then students could explain their self-assessment of their level of understanding to a neighbor or in a short paragraph using the specific comparisons for evidence. These examples are metacognitive because they require students to intentionally think about and make choices about their learning and to articulate their rationale and assessment of the impact on their learning. I believe it is important to be explicit with students about the metacognitive aim – to help them become more skillful learners. This promotes transfer to other learning activities within the class and to their learning in other classes.

Implementing and Supporting Your Metacognitive Outcomes

In summary, to create actionable metacognitive learning objectives I recommend,

clarifying the cognitive learning objective(s) you aim to support
investigating and collecting evidence for what aspect(s) of learning students are struggling with
connecting the struggle(s) to elements of metacognition
drafting a metacognitive learning objective(s) that address the struggle(s)

Armed with your metacognitive learning objectives you can then craft metacognitive training to implement and assess them. Share them with a colleague or someone from your institution’s teaching and learning center to further refine them. You may want to explore further resources on metacognition and learning such as Nilson’s (2013) Creating Self-Regulated Learners, Seli and Dembo’s (2019) Motivation and learning strategies for college success, and Svinicki’s GAMES© survey in (Svinicki, 2004). Or you could watch my Skillful Learning YouTube video, What is Metacognition and Why Should I Care?.

If metacognition is less familiar to you, avoid overwhelm by choosing one element of metacognition at a time. For example, beyond the above examples, you could focus on metacognitive planning to support students better navigating an open-ended project. Or you could help students better articulate what it means to learn something or experience the myth of multitasking (we are task switchers), which are elements pertaining to metacognitive knowledge of how people process knowledge. Learn about that element of metacognition, develop a metacognitive learning objective for it, create the training materials, and implement them with your students. You will be supporting your students’ development as learners generally, while you also promote deeper learning of your cognitive course learning objectives. Over time, you will have developed a library of metacognitive learning objectives and training, which you could have students explore and self-select from based on their needs.

Acknowledgements

This blog post is based upon metacognition research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1932969, 1932958, and 1932947. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

References

Cunningham, P. J., Matusovich, H. M., Hunter, D. A., Williams, S. A., & Bhaduri, S. (2017). Beginning to Understand Student Indicators of Metacognition. In the proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, OH.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into practice, 41(4), 212-218.

Nilson, L. (2013). Creating self-regulated learners: Strategies to strengthen students? self-awareness and learning skills. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Seli, H., & Dembo, M. H. (2019). Motivation and learning strategies for college success: A focus on self-regulated learning. Routledge.

Svinicki, M. D. (2004). Learning and motivation in the postsecondary classroom. Anker Publishing Company.

Using Learning Portfolios to Support Metacognition

Dr. Sarah Benes, Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Nutrition and Public Health, Merrimack College

Over the past four years, I have been exploring the concept of metacognition. In many ways, I think metacognition has been a large part of how I work as a practitioner both in my personal practice of reflection and in how I practice the art of teaching. However, it wasn’t until I switched faculty positions that I really started to dive into intentional research and practice around metacognition.

As noted in the “Finding Your People” blog post, this was largely because I had difficulty adjusting to new students at a new school. The challenges that arose prompted me to find ways to meet the needs of my new students in order to support their growth as learners and as people. One of the strategies that quickly arose as a strategy that could help was metacognition.

I am the kind of teacher who likes to try things. I have done a number of different activities (both research based and more “practice based”) over the past 4 years and have learned much from all of them. However, one practice in particular that stands out to me as having a significant impact on student learning and in the overall experience of the course was the use of learning portfolios. I have used similar strategies previously in both graduate and undergraduate courses, but never with an intentional focus on metacognition. The books, Using Reflection and Metacognition to Improve Student Learning: Across the Disciplines, Across the Academy (New Pedagogies and Practices for Teaching in Higher Education) by Kaplan et al., (2013) and Creating Self Regulated Learners by Nilson (2013), were resources I used (along with other research) to put the pieces together to design and develop the learning portfolio.

I primarily teach two courses: Introduction to Public Health (mostly first-year students) and Health Behavior and Promotion (mostly sophomores and juniors). Both courses serve students in the School of Health Science. I first integrated the learning portfolio into my Health Behavior and Promotion course with great success. I plan to create a learning portfolio for my Introduction to Public Health course this fall and am excited to see how it works!

Overview of the Learning Portfolio

The learning portfolio was a “deliverable” that students worked on for the whole semester. The learning portfolio was connected to a course “e-book” in which I introduced weekly topics and objectives, outlined the class preparation & included prompts for the learning portfolio (more on the “e-book” below). Students kept notes, reflections, and responses to other assignments in their portfolios. In order to support student success, students submitted the portfolios 4 times over the semester (about every 3 weeks). Each time students submitted the portfolio they received a grade based mainly on completeness. I considered “completeness” the extent to which they addressed all prompts.

I should note here that not all of their reflections are necessarily connected to metacognition. However, in most sets of prompts given, the majority of the prompts related to metacognition. Students were asked to reflect specifically their experiences in the course, how their experiences were impacting their learning, connections they are making to the content, their perceptions of the usefulness and applicability of content in their lives, their use (or lack of) metacognitive and self-regulation strategies, etc.

E-Book

One component of the learning portfolio involved responding to prompts in the “e-book”. The “e-book” included the following three “components”: 1) an introduction to the content for each week (and how it connects to previous learning), 2) guidance on what to focus on in the class preparation, and 3) metacognitive reflective questions.

The introduction to the content included connections to the learning objectives (which were also presented in the syllabus), described why they were learning the material and how it connected to previous learning. I hoped that the introduction would help them monitor and evaluate their understanding of the course content week to week and within the broader context of the whole course.

With the class preparation guidance, I was hoping to help students develop task oriented skills. I have often found it a challenge to get students to complete class preparation. Students have also been honest and shared that my concerns around the lack of class preparation completion were not unfounded. I thought that providing some guidance on what to focus on and look for might help increase the number of students completing the class prep and also increase students’ ability to retain the information and be ready to use the content in class. I also hoped that the guidance might also help them with task oriented and evaluative skills.

While I don’t have any specific data about the impacts, I definitely noticed a positive difference in student participation during this semester compared to others. Students also seemed to have a stronger grasp on the content. Of course, there are many reasons that I could attribute to these improvements, but my teaching itself didn’t change that much and the one variable that was definitely different was the “e-book” and learning portfolio.

The final component of the “e-book” were the reflective questions. Questions varied week to to week. Sample questions::

How does what you read and watched for today connect to your prior knowledge learning? How does it connect to the reading from Monday?
Review the syllabus and assignments posted in the Assignments folder, what assignments do you feel align with your strengths as a student? Which might be more challenging? Why? What are strategies you could use to help you to be successful?
What are 3 key points from these readings and the video that you think are important for college students to know?

Each class prep assignment had these kinds of reflective questions for students to activate and connect to prior learning, to monitor and evaluate their learning, and to help them identify their strengths and areas for improvement.

Lessons Learned

Using a learning portfolio in my course taught me many things:

I have learned that students communicate their thoughts, reflections and experiences in many different ways. Some responses are brief and concise, some are more “stream of consciousness”, and some provide extremely thoughtful and thorough, more polished responses. I learned to focus more on the purpose of the activity (to think about themselves and their learning), rather than the “quality” of their reflections. I felt that my my bias of what I believe a quality reflection “looks like” might impact students’ learning and growth.
I experienced the value of being able to have a “dialogue” with students through the portfolio though my feedback. Sometimes the feedback was a question, my perspectives, a connection to course content, etc. I saw the learning portfolio as a dialogue between me and the students more than a gradable assignment (though assigning points helps with motivation and completion). Student responses to these questions helped me to connect with students more deeply and provide feedback to support their learning and also add different perspectives than we may have been able to cover in class. I feel that I was able to get to know students a lot better through this model, that I was able to engage differently with each student (which I don’t always get to do in a course) .
The learning portfolio was also a place where students recorded responses to in-class discussion prompts. Sometimes I would have students respond to discussion prompts before the discussion in class to allow students to gather their thoughts, and sometimes it was after discussion to allow for processing time. I learned that this was a great way to be able to receive responses from all students as I often can’t get around to hear from students when discussing in class and students don’t always feel comfortable speaking up but it is often not because they don’t have valuable contributions. The learning portfolio structure allowed me to “hear from” each student.
I learned that it takes a little work to get “buy in” from students, which is why I spend about 2 weeks at the start of the semester talking about learning and metacognition. That way, students have a foundation to understand the “why” behind the learning portfolio (and other aspects of the course). However, I believe the time is well spent and that the content and skills they gain from both the class content and the learning portfolio are as important (maybe for some students even more important) than the course content itself.

Conclusion

Adding the learning portfolio to my class has been one of the more impactful strategies I have tried. It is a lot of upfront work and a decent amount of work during the semester if I respond to all students, but I saw a significant improvement in student engagement and student learning. I also felt that I connected more with students and got to know them better. I am looking forward to trying this approach with my first-year students this fall (perhaps another blog post will be in order to share how it goes)!

Meta What? Scaffolding learning for the still developing prefrontal cortex

by Kristy Forrest, M.Ed., Academic Advisor and Success Coach,
Office of Academic Support & Advising, Merrimack College

(Post #5 Integrating Metacognition into Practice Across Campus, Guest Editor Series Edited by Dr. Sarah Benes)

Metacognition is the awareness and understanding of thought itself. In practice, it involves student planning, monitoring, evaluating and regulating thoughts in relation to learning and problem-solving. More broadly, metacognition in college refers to higher-order thinking, “thinking about thinking,” and impacts student reflection and educational motivation.

My team and I, representing the Office of Academic Support & Advising at Merrimack College, serve traditional college-aged students at a private four-year catholic institution. As Advisors and Success Coaches, part of our role is to provide developmental skill building workshops, programming, and courses. Together, we strive to support all student development including metacognitive growth. We teach our students the concept of metacognition, how to apply it, and its value in achieving academic success.

Metacognition in Teaching

Our approach is interdisciplinary. Combining concepts from advising theory, pedagogy, and developmental and learning psychology, we designed a one-credit academic development course for our students on academic probation. The idea is to learn new academic skills that are transferable in all coursework. As instructors, we help students understand metacognition as an intervention to trigger deeper understanding, comprehension, and most importantly, how applying metacognitive practices can eliminate prior gaps in their learning.

Students learn that applying metacognitive study practices not only develops deeper curiosity as learners but also how the cycle of previewing, attending, and reviewing increases the quality of their work. Additionally, they see that reflective thinking, self-regulation and self-discipline results in higher quality academic performance. Once they begin to achieve success they are more empowered and motivated to engage in work that is difficult. Moving beyond study skills to enhanced scholarly work has become our hook. We gain student buy-in much faster than when we focused only on study skills.

Nuts & Bolts of Our Course

For students who take our 1 credit course, over 90% enrolled increase their GPA an average of 1 to 1.7 points, and ultimately get and stay off academic probation. As mentioned above, we do teach the basic mechanics, habits and skills needed to be effective college students but buy-in can be tough with getting college students to see value in foundational study skills. Although we know how critical these skills are, they say that workshops about these topics often make them feel belittled. Until struggling students experience the benefits of these practices, there is quite a bit of resistance. They are, however, intrigued when we use terminology like, “applying metacognitive practices for academic success and development of higher order thinking”, and “increased competencies”.

In our one-credit course my team and I combine philosophical and practical theoretical concepts such as Chickering’s “Seven Vectors of Student Identity”; Bandura’s Self-Efficacy: Rotter’s Locus of Control: Dweck’s Growth Mindset; Duckworth’s Grit Model; and, of course, Flavell and McGuire’s Models on Metacognition. Students are required to engage in this scholarship and reflect on how each applies to them.

We begin with the concept of student identity and ask them what this means for them. We learned that so many of our students do not identify as scholarly students and so their self-concept needs reframing. This is where we initiate reflective thinking. When we ask students to take the time to define and explore what it means to be a student, and compare it with newly learned metacognitive strategies, we begin to see transformation in their approach to their learning. With greater awareness of how knowledge is acquired, that the expectation in college is to move beyond memorization to instead analyzing and evaluating, and that learning how to think about thinking, our students better understand where the goal post is. They now value becoming self-disciplined, self-regulated learners.

With this messaging, we also help them to connect how their thoughts and emotions impact their behaviors and how they are in control of their academic consequences. After establishing this new insight we discuss locus of control, growth mindset, grit, and metacognitive study practices. Through these frameworks we also work to dispel their imposter syndrome and slowly we see them disarm.

Metacognition in Advising & Coaching

Beyond our course, through general advising and coaching, we typically find academic struggles are not a reflection of student capacity, but rather a problem in habits and skills, or, lack of metacognition in their practice. In one-to-one student coaching meetings we provide individualized attention using metacognitive strategies in supporting our students to connect the dots in their coursework. Ideally, professors are doing this already. However, there are times when we see the assignments go unquestioned by students simply trying to check the done box and not understanding the why and how in the work. Basically, students sometimes fail to integrate incremental assignments with the larger concepts.

We work to develop academic skills including metacognitive strategies, so that students better comprehend their material and build competencies in their discipline. As college educators serving adolescents, we need to consider that developmentally, without a fully developed prefrontal cortex, adolescents may not have the full capacity or neuro-connectivity to put these pieces together on their own. Metacognition supports the development of this exact connectivity.

The Missing Meta Link in Student Learning

Students frequently report after learning about metacognition they now have an explanation to why they were struggling. They share that they never knew how impactful the little things like organizing, planning, scheduling, previewing, attending, and reviewing are. After recognizing that they previously did not exercise metacognitive skills, and they begin using them, students are able to recognize enhancement in their academic performance. A bonus is when their defenses come down and they open up.

Metacognition is one way that allows students to connect their choices and actions to their academic results. Referring back to developmental psychology, connecting thoughts, feelings and behavior is still really hard for a person with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. As advisors, coaches, and instructors, shedding light on this for students is where we can make a difference. Additionally, we plant seeds for further integrated learning as our adolescents develop into emerging adulthood.

Big Returns of Metacognition

The returns of learning this concept are bountiful. My favorite thing about teaching students the concept of metacognition is how it can open the floodgates to their development because it applies to every area of learning across all academic programs, disciplines, professions, or careers in every industry. Knowing about metacognition is not just a college tool. It’s a life tool.

Wisdom Gained from a Tree Assignment

by Dr. Anne Gatling, Associate Professor, Chair Education Department, Merrimack College

(Post #4 Integrating Metacognition into Practice Across Campus, Guest Editor Series Edited by Dr. Sarah Benes)

On the first day of class, I greet my new students with “get to know you” games before walking them through the outline of the semester. I am a science educator and my students are either juniors or graduate students preparing to teach early childhood and elementary education majors.

The last assignment I share with my students is a tree study. Out of all of my assignments, the tree study assignment captures their attention in very different ways. Students often say: “Observe a ‘what’, for the whole semester?” They ponder this for a while. I reply, “Yes, observe a tree, any tree, at least once a month for the whole semester.”

You may be wondering what the connection is to metacognition with this assignment. I view the tree study as a “stepping stone” toward building metacognitive skills. Students develop self-awareness and mindfulness, which can both contribute to metacognition. It can be helpful to have multiple “entry points” for students when it comes to developing metacognition and metacognitive skills. While this may be a more “indirect” path, it can be beneficial to address self-awareness and mindfulness on their own and recognize the potential benefits for metacognition as well.

Tree Study Overview

Each month, for this assignment all they need to do is make a prediction of their tree and an additional new task along the way, such as sketch your tree, observe little signs of critters, and/or work to identify it. Little did I know that this assignment would become much more than a simple observation. Yes, the students became aware of their surroundings through the observation of the trees, more in tune with the process of observing how things change over time, but more importantly I see my students becoming more and more aware of themselves and their environment.

Here is an example of one students’ tree sketch.

This assignment is much different than my other assignments in that I don’t require much more than them taking a picture of their adopted tree once a month and making a few general observations and predictions. I try to meet the students where they are. Some dive in and some just skip around with minimal observations. It is ok. There are far too many things that are high stakes, I just let this one be. I honestly have come to a point where I don’t even want to give this assignment a grade.

What have I learned?

However, I didn’t always have this perspective about the assignment. Initially, this assignment was to help students experience a long-term biology observation, closely investigating changes in a tree, identification, tree rubbings, height etc. But over the years I have come to discover that this assignment means so much more to the students, especially now with quarantines etc.

While I initially didn’t think of this assignment in this way, I have come to realize that these students were also building an awareness of how much of their lives aren’t in the moment and are just beginning to build skills to find their place in the world. This has the potential to help them with their emotional regulation and mindfulness.

More recently I have come to realize that these students were also building an awareness of how much they weren’t in the moment and are beginning to build skills to find their place in the world. This has the potential to help them with their emotional regulation and mindfulness.

While I enjoy seeing their tree pictures, sketches and observations throughout the semester, I have come to love their final reflections. Students each find their own way with the assignment, learning patience in waiting for a new bud, or reaching to touch a tree for the first time. Many students mention becoming more aware of, and appreciating, nature and their surroundings and becoming more aware of small changes. As I consider metacognition and its role in this assignment, I see it as a type of proto-metacognition activity.

Student Outcomes

This process of long-term observation has many students learning the importance of patience. Either their tree sprouted much later than others or their predictions missed the mark. Many students become more aware of and gain an appreciation for the subtle changes as well. “I would never have paid any attention to the trees or thought about doing this if it were not for this assignment. I was able to observe how quickly the tree changes and how crazy it is how the trees just do that on their own.”

One student named her tree and a few students even got their friends involved in making observations. Some were able to spy critters they never knew visited their trees via tracks, and even direct observation. Many students mention looking forward to continuing to observe their tree to see how it continues to grow and change and think of a variety of ways to bring a similar type of study to their future students.

In the beginning, I set more expectations, and not every student saw such value in the assignment. Yet, over time I have learned where to give and where to let go and students seem more ready to see where this experience takes them. This final tree study reflection gives students an opportunity to consider how this tree study impacted them and their learning.

Some students have even found a deeper connection to this assignment. One student, a graduate student placed in a challenging classroom, said, “You go about your day-to-day life and never notice the intricate details that nature undergoes during the springtime. Overall, I think that this assignment forced me to take a second and look at the things that surround me every day. I had never really noticed the tree across the street. . . I like that I got to look closer at the things around me and just take a second. I love trees when I am hiking and sometimes feel like I can only get it then, but this assignment showed me that it is right out my front door always.”

Students, especially now since Covid, seem to be making more changes in how they are looking, slowing down in their process of observation. Maybe by developing more self-awareness and a deeper awareness of their surroundings this assignment can contribute to metacognition perhaps in a more indirect way, offering my students different entry points to the field.

I just assigned the fall tree study this week. I will check in each week and yesterday took them to visit the school garden. There I welcomed them to taste some of its bounty and relax in the peaceful lawn under the trees. Just take time.

In closing, I feel one undergraduate truly embraced this experience in her final project. She placed this poem just above her final tree illustration slide.

Here I sit beneath a tree,
Heartbeat strong,
My soul hums free.
Angie Weiland Crosby

A special thank you to Marcia Edson and Jeff Mehigan for their design of the initial tree study.

Building Emotional Regulation and Metacognition through Academic Entrepreneurship

by Traci McCubbin, M.A., Director of the Promise Program, Merrimack College

(Post #3 Integrating Metacognition into Practice Across Campus, Guest Editor Series Edited by Dr. Sarah Benes)

I teach a required academic study skills course for undergraduate students that have been placed on academic probation. Students share a variety of reasons that have led to their academic predicament, including but not limited to: underdeveloped academic and/or study skills, social and emotional difficulties, time management flaws, and economic challenges.

After digging a bit deeper with students, I found a common trend in addition to the reasons they shared: they lacked positive coping strategies for regulating their emotions. These emotions could be related to difficulties experienced both inside and outside of the classroom. For example, I had students report that they had not been able to cope with the crushing emotions of a close friendship ending. They had either stopped attending class or could not focus in class for weeks.

As you may guess, their poor academic performance was hindering their academic confidence, and their mindset was more fixed than growth. This blog post shares my creation of self-regulation and metacognition development activities that parallel steps that might be taken when professionals create a business plan. Hence the course title, Academic Entrepreneurship.

Motivating Question: How could I even begin to teach academic strategies or have students reflect on their metacognition, if I couldn’t address their emotional state?

Drawing on Literature and Personal Experience

To begin to answer this question, I turned to the research and published work of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Emotions, Learning & the Brain and Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Immordino-Yang’s (2016) research reveals that emotions must be present for learning to occur and that strong social emotions, both positive and negative, have the power to motivate our decisions and actions including educational decisions and actions (Imordino-Yang, 2016, pp. 107,171). Dweck’s (2006) studies consistently show the positive power of a growth mindset and the disruptive power of a fixed mindset. Growth mindset is the idea that intelligence and abilities can be developed overtime with hard work and persistence, while fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence is predetermined or set (Dweck, 2006).

Through my own reflection on my academic journey, I began to understand how my emotions both positively and negatively impacted my learning. During my middle school days, I struggled with math. My mindset was fixed, and I believed that I was not capable of being successful in this subject area. It was as if every time a new concept was taught, I could feel a metal fortress of walls enclose around my brain to prevent any helpful information from penetrating the walls. Despite this struggle, I did finally master fractions and some of the intro to algebra concepts.

As one might expect of a student with a fixed mindset, my frustrations with math and my feelings of defeat followed me from middle school to high school. My high school math teacher started our class off with a review of fractions; immediately, I felt my heart race, my palms get sweaty, and the metal walls beginning to enclose. It was in this moment of panic that I decided to take a few deep breaths, which allowed me to gain clarity. I reminded myself that I already knew how to handle fractions and that I was capable of learning. That moment was life changing, I had adopted a growth mindset. I began to apply this strategy to my fixed mindset areas including but not limited to: running, science, and drumming. Overtime, I began to take more advance math courses and my overall high school GPA began to climb. I have demonstrated both a growth and fixed mindset in different areas of my academic, professional, and personal life. I believe the same must be true for most people as well as for my students.

My personal experiences, combined with the literature, led me to incorporate key components into my study skills course: emotional regulation practices, regular activities to incorporate mindfulness and mindset, and an overarching course theme of entrepreneurship.

Academic Entrepreneurship Class Context

I decided to provide my students with the opportunity to practice coping skills for regulating their emotions, better understand their mindset, and explore the power of growth mindset. Throughout the semester, we opened the start of each class with a 5-minute-or-less mindfulness meditation or a meditative activity such as mindfulness coloring or progressive relaxation. Students were then given time to reflect on the activity and share how they could apply this strategy in their personal lives and/or in the classroom when they felt overwhelmed or highly energized. Mindset was introduced through a series of video clips and case studies. Students were given multiple opportunities throughout the semester to reflect on their mindset and identify opportunities to challenge their mindset.

Concurrent with the self-regulation activities, students were asked to view their academic approach through the lens of an entrepreneur to enhance their metacognitive perspective. The idea is that by building their personal academic business plan, students are empowered to take ownership of their academic experience through a series of metacognitive reflections, exploration of new study skill strategies, and opportunities to practice new and strengthen pre-existing academic skillsets. Students were asked to focus on four areas of a business plan:

Company Descriptions: Students create their description by engaging in activities and reflections designed to help them identify their interests, personal values, previous academic experiences, activities that bring them joy, and areas of struggle.
Projections: Instead of setting financial projections, students are introduced to SMART Goals and set 4-5 goals with benchmarks for tracking their progress. Students are encouraged to set 2 goals related to their academic progress, one for health and wellness, and one for professional discovery.
SWOT Analysis: Students work through motivational interviewing to help each other identify their strengths and successes, areas of weakness, opportunities, and threats. They are also challenged to address their weaknesses and threats by applying their strengths and resources.
Marketing Plan: Through a series of activities and reflections, students create a plan to sell their Academic Success Business by identifying skills that they strengthen over the semester, resources they accessed, strategies they incorporated, and how these steps translate to leadership.

Figure 1. Academic Entrepreneurship Course Process

Concluding Question: Was I able to help my students practice and implement coping skills for managing their emotions, take ownership of their academic experience, develop a growth mindset, and think critically about their own thinking and learning?

Yes, somewhat, and no….the answer is a bit more complicated and dependent on the student.

Students did proactively engage in the mindfulness meditations and activities of their own accord. They always had the option to remain respectfully quiet and not participate in the meditations or activities. When prompted by an anonymous poll in class about their recent meditative experience, the majority of students requested that we allow for longer practices and activities. They also proactively engaged in dialogues on how they could use these techniques during study breaks, stressful parts of a test, or when dealing with their roommates.

Students landed in very different places when it came to taking ownership of their academic experience, development of a growth mindset, and metacognitive thinking. By the end of the semester a few students had fully taken ownership of their academic experience, were thinking critically and questioning their learning approach and actions, were working towards developing a growth mindset, and could identify when a fixed mindset was starting to develop.

The majority of the students made progress in one area and less progress in the other areas, or only made progress in one area. A few did not make progress outside of practicing their emotional regulation activities.

Though results were mixed, I still believe it is important to teach emotional regulation techniques, provide space for practice, and give students the time to explore and understand their mindset and metacognitive perspective. If students are more aware of their emotional state and able to exercise regulation strategies, they will be better equipped for reflecting on their mindset and metacognitive perspective. This understanding will help them implement a potential shift in perspective and targeted strategies for success. Development takes time and cannot always occur in the framework of a semester. I believe the seeds have been planted and can be nurtured by the student when they are ready to tend to their garden.

References

Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: the New Psychology of Success. Random House.

Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2016). Emotions, learning, and the brain: Exploring the educational implications of affective neuroscience. W.W.Norton & Company.

Resources

TEDx Manhattan Beach. (2011). Mary Helen Immordino-Yang – Embodied Brains, Social Minds. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViuTHBIOq8

Trevor Ragan. (2016). Growth Mindset Introduction: What it is, How it Works, and Why it Matters. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75GFzikmRY0

Trevor Ragan. (2014). Carol Dweck – A Study on Praise and Mindsets. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWv1VdDeoRY#action=share

Helping students become self-directed writers

Dr. Christina Hardway, Professor, Department of Psychology, Merrimack College

(Post #2: Integrating Metacognition into Practice Across Campus, Guest Editor Series Edited by Dr. Sarah Benes)

Helping students to become self-directed learners is, arguably, one of the most important outcomes of education. Self-directed learning is proposed as a circular (and iterative) process. It involves making a plan, monitoring one’s progress, and then making changes or adapting as needed. These behaviors occur within the context of one’s beliefs about learning and abilities to succeed (see figure, adapted from Ambrose, et al., 2010).

Helping students to build better metacognitive skills during their regular coursework is important (see Education Endowment Foundation, 2020). This is, perhaps, because metacognitive knowledge (e.g. cognition about cognition), is a relatively abstract concept. Learning theorists like Jean Piaget suggest that learning concrete concepts occurs before learning abstract principles. For this reason, I believe that it is important to provide students with explicit tasks embedded in their courses so that they can practice these skills in order to build this more abstract and flexible set of metacognitive competencies.

This blog post shares activities and suggestions to help students build more metacognitive skills and become better self-directed learners as they complete a challenging, semester-long writing assignment.

Beliefs and Assumptions

I have taught a writing intensive research methodology course for many years, and the work in this course lends itself to an embedded approach to teaching metacognitive skills. It also presents an opportunity to help students examine their implicit attitudes toward learning and writing. Students come to the classroom with ideas about themselves as writers and may labor under notions like, “I am not a good writer” or “I have to wait until the last minute to start, because that is when I do my best work.” It is within this context that teaching students explicit and concrete ways to self-regulate their learning of the writing process is helpful. Providing activities throughout the semester helps students adjust these beliefs and build better writing practices, which can help them to not only convey their ideas, but also learn from that writing process.

Additionally, the kind of writing required in research courses is often novel for undergraduate students. Many students enrolled in the course are in their second or third semester of college and have never written a long research proposal. Their assumptions about how to approach this task are, therefore, not always aligned with the requirements. Many students also experience anxiety when faced with an assignment like writing an extensive research paper for the first time. As a result, the assignment of writing a long research proposal, as they are asked to do in this course, provides an opportunity to practice the emotional regulation skills required to successfully manage their intellectual endeavors.

Activities to guide the process of self-directed learning

For each phase of this self-directed learning cycle, I include prompts to guide students to explicitly consider their (often) implicit assumptions about the way they work. Each of these activities gives students the opportunity to reflect on their understanding of the writing process and build better metacognitive skills. Sometimes, these activities are presented in a free-writing exercise, and I commonly divide students into smaller groups to discuss their responses and then report back to the group. This sharing allows students to see that their peers often experience the same struggles during the writing process, and they can offer one another advice or support.

Assessing the assignment. With the permission of previous students, I provide examples of completed work to new students, together with my own annotations, highlighting places where and how requirements were met. This gives them a concrete understanding of what to accomplish. Additionally, I provide a detailed rubric that I review with students multiple times so they can continually compare their progress with the final expectations of the assignment.

Evaluating personal resources. I prompt students to evaluate their personal resources as writers, early in the course. To accomplish this, I ask them to reflect on their approach to writing by responding to questions like: “Please tell me a bit about your writing process and a few ways you would like to improve as a writer” (adapted from Dunn, 2011). This reflection invites them to step back from the immediate tasks and see their work as connected to their development as scholars, writers, and learners.

Planning. To help students make appropriate plans for completing a long multi-step assignment, I ask them to develop a concrete work-plan, as well as to discuss these plans with others. Two kinds of conversations can facilitate this process. One set of prompts gives students a chance to make specific plans to complete their work, including questions like, “Identify times you can complete this work” and “How much work will you complete at each time?” The other set of prompts are designed to scaffold their intellectual development. Through small-group conversations, students describe their research ideas to other students, with instructions like this: “Please describe your research interest. This is an opportunity to discuss your research ideas with someone else. Talking through your ideas is a good way to not only receive feedback, but also, it gives you a sense about which things are clear to you and which concepts need more clarification.”

Applying & Monitoring. I also ask students to write drafts of sections of this larger paper and to visit a writing fellow in our College Writing Center to discuss them. To help students monitor their progress, I have asked them to complete reflective activities after tutorial sessions, including questions like, “Please describe what you learned about the writing process in your meeting.” and “Please describe AT LEAST three specific revisions for your paper, based on your meeting with the Writing Fellow.”

Reflecting & Adjusting. Several reflective opportunities embedded in the course help students to adjust their approach to writing.

Peer review reflections: At the more immediate level, I ask students to engage in an intensive peer-review process, whereby they read each others’ papers to provide specific feedback. This process of helping others to improve their writing often provokes them to reflect more broadly on the writing process. I ask students to use the paper’s grading rubric, as well as a series of questions that help them to think about ways to evaluate whether the paper under review meets the criteria. For example, I ask them to notice if they need to re-read a passage to understand the author’s point, as this might indicate revision is warranted. After peer-review, students engage in conversations about what they have learned from the process, and I also ask them to identify at least three specific changes to their papers they should focus on next. By providing this feedback, students must step back and think about what makes writing successful, and our subsequent discussions facilitate the development of metacognitive knowledge.
Personal growth reflections: A second set of reflective activities were suggested by our Writing Center and are designed to help students consider the broader ways in which they have changed as writers. These include questions like, “Please consider the different phases of this assignment and discuss what you have learned about writing. ” and “What are the ways you have improved as a writer? What are some ways that you would like to improve in the future?” This combination of fine-grained, detail-oriented and bigger picture questions is intended to help students develop fundamental metacognitive skills and also a more nuanced understanding of metacognition for their identity as learners and writers.

The self-directed learning cycle is a circular process whereby students bring the skills they learn in one course to their next endeavors. Through this process of sharing and reflecting, they build their metacognitive skills and become more comfortable with their inchoate ideas and compositions. Hopefully, students are then able to transfer these skills into future courses and into their lives outside of academics as well.

References

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Dunn, D.S. (2011). A Short Guide to Writing about Psychology (3e). Boston: Pearson Longman.

Education Endowment Foundation (2020). Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning: Guidance Report. Retrieved on July 7, 2021 from https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Publications/Metacognition/EEF_Metacognition_and_self-regulated_learning.pdf

Finding Your People

by Dr. Leah Poloskey, Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Exercise and Rehabilitation Science, Merrimack College, and

by Dr. Sarah Benes, Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Nutrition and Public Health, Merrimack College

(Post #1: Integrating Metacognition into Practice Across Campus, Guest Editor Series Edited by Dr. Sarah Benes)

How it all began . . .

Reflecting on the journey to having a Guest Editor spot with a mini-series of blog posts about metacognition with our colleagues from across campus was a great opportunity to reconnect to the power of community in this work. And it all began with a problem . . .

We had been discussing how challenging it was to engage students in our Health Science classes (Leah teaches in the Exercise and Rehabilitation Department and Sarah teaches in the Nutrition and Public Health Department). We decided to work together to investigate more deeply (rather than just dwelling on the challenge). We applied to host a Teaching Circle, which is an informal structure at Merrimack College that allows faculty and staff to come together around common interests. Teaching Circle facilitators are awarded small stipends for their time and effort in developing and running these opportunities. We believed that the Teaching Circle structure would provide a great opportunity for us to work within existing campus initiatives to enhance collaboration and engagement with faculty and staff across campus.

Our first Teaching Circle was about student engagement. We ended up exploring mindset and the ways that mindset can impact engagement. We conducted a research study where we developed a tool that essentially is a measure of metacognitive states (Mandeville, et al., 2018). With this tool we learned how to assess a student’s self appraisal of their learning, which is a great opportunity to review a student’s intellectual development, mindset and metacognition. Now we had a way to assess these constructs, but what next?

We decided to apply for another Teaching Circle with a focus specifically on Metacognition. Our idea was approved and we were able to engage an even larger group of faculty, staff, and administrators from our academic support staff, to the psychology and business departments and more! Everyone in the group was interested in learning more about ways to support metacognition in our students in our various spaces. And this was the beginning of this blog post series!

What We Learned

Every meeting we had brought together a different group of people depending on schedules and availability. We had core folks who came each time and then a variety of others who came when they were able. Thinking about it now, we remember every meeting being exciting, dynamic, and invigorating.

We didn’t have set agendas and we didn’t have much reading or preparation (unless people asked for items to read). We really just came together to talk and share about our successes and challenges related to supporting students developing their metacognitive skills and to brainstorm ideas to try in our spaces. However, this opportunity for informal community gathering and building was a needed breath of fresh air. We always left energized for the work ahead (and we think the other participants did too!).

In fact, as a result of the Metacognition Teaching Circle, we embarked on a whole new project in which we used the MINDS survey (Mandeville, et al., 2018) at the beginning of the semester and then created “low touch” interventions to support metacognition and growth mindset depending on how students scored on the scale. From this we learned that many students are not familiar with concepts of metacognition and mindfulness, that many actually appreciated the tips and strategies we sent them (and some even used them!), and that students felt that more learning on these topics would be beneficial.

This then lead us to another study, this time examining faculty perceptions of metacognition which we were excited about because our experience suggested that it is likely that folks in certain settings or with certain backgrounds would be more familiar with metacognition and that faculty may not have the understanding or skills to teach metacognition in their courses. For faculty, it is so important to understand the idea of metacognition as it enables students to become flexible and self-directed learners. The teaching and the support of metacognition in the classroom is impactful. It allows students to become aware of their own thinking and to become proficient in choosing appropriate thinking strategies for different learning tasks. Unfortunately, this line of inquiry did not last long due to COVID 19 but we hope to pick this back up this year as we feel it is an important area that could be impactful for faculty and students.

While the research ideas and changes to practice are exciting and were impactful benefits of our Teaching Circles, one of our biggest takeaways was the reminder of the importance of finding others who are also doing the work. Sometimes on our campus, and we suspect it is the case at other institutions as well, we get siloed and often our meetings are with the same folks about the same topics. Being able to facilitate and participate in a cross-campus initiative about a passion topic was an amazing opportunity to meet new people, make new connections, gain different perspectives and create new ideas and strategies to try. We found many people doing great work with students on our campus across so many different departments and schools, and most importantly, found “our people” – people who you can go to when you are stuck, people who you can bounce ideas off of and collaborate with . . . we found our “metacognition people” (some of them at least).

While this was not a “new” idea or “cutting edge”, coming off a year in which we have been separated (in so many ways), we were reminded of the power of connections with others to maintain and sustain ourselves as academics and as humans. We wanted to share that in the guest series by not only showcasing some of the work that our colleagues are doing but also to remind readers to try and find your people . . . whether they are on your campus or off, whether you meet in person or virtual – or only via Tweets on Twitter . . . find the people who can help you maintain, sustain and grow your interest, skills, passion and joy!

We hope you enjoy reading the work of our colleagues and that it helps you on your journey.

References

Mandeville, D., Perks. L., Benes, S. & Poloskey, L. (2018). The Mindset and Intellectual Development Scale (MINDS): Metacognitive Assessment for Undergraduate Students. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30(3).

Pandemic Pedagogy: Lessons Learned about Fostering Online Metacognitive Conversations to Increase Motivation in Students

by Gina Burkart, Ed.D., Learning Specialist, Clarke University

The 2021 Academic year brought new challenges to education, as teaching and learning quickly moved online. Those who had never taught online received crash courses and hoped for the best. Students found themselves learning either remotely from home or alone in dorm rooms through web conferencing. While online learning offered convenience, the remote and distant nature of the learning often left students and professors feeling isolated from each other. As a professor, I noticed students to be less engaged in discussions and interactions with each other. In online forums, other professors and colleagues complained of the same. As the semester progressed, students’ motivation seemed to plummet.

As the Learning Specialist on campus, I reach out regarding the Academic Concerns raised for students on campus. Academic Concerns are raised by professors through an electronic alert system when students struggle academically or stop attending class. The concerns come to my email and I reach out to the students and cc the students’ advisors and athletic coaches. During the 2020-21 academic year, I observed a large increase in concerns sent for students not submitting assignments, not attending class, and not participating in discussions. Lack of student motivation seemed to underlie many of these trends. As I read articles and discussion boards across the nation, I saw the problem was epidemic.

This blog post describes how I addressed this lack of motivation and engagement by incorporating metacognitive conversations into my work with students for whom Academic Concerns had been raised, and by incorporating similar metacognitive exercises into my Learning Strategies course. The majority of the students in the Learning Strategies course are on academic probation, so they often start with very low motivation. Some had been dismissed but allowed back in to the university on a last chance.

Engaging Struggling Students through Empathy and Metacognitive Conversations

I have been working with college students for over twenty years, and it continues to amaze me how much they crave to be heard. As previously mentioned, the past year, this need for connection and communication was epidemic—so much so that my calendar was full of meetings with students (every 30 minutes) throughout the entire Fall semester. Students wanted to meet and talk—and they often scheduled regular weekly meetings. The other anomaly was they kept the meetings—even on Fridays! These meetings became pivotal to rebuilding their motivation. And, it all began with empathy.

Discussions of the effects of technology on relationships and the importance of empathy in education are not new. Social Psychologist Sherry Turkle has been researching this connection between technology and human relationships since the 1970’s. Most recently she has written about how increased time with technology has negatively impacted our ability to interact with each other. In Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Turkle (2015) said “Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It is where we develop the capacity for empathy. . . . And conversation advances self-reflection, the conversations with ourselves . . . . (p. 3).

In meeting with the students, even though it was online, I worked to remove the barrier of technology and make the meeting human by conversing with them as though we were sitting together casually in my office. I asked students how they were doing, the names of their cats and dogs, about their family members, and I told them a little bit about what was going on with me. THEN I asked about what was going on with their courses. I empathized with them a bit and then we moved on to problem solve in a metacognitive conversation. A metacognitive conversation guides students in reflecting on and monitoring their cognitive processes, progress, and performance to build self-efficacy. For example, after empathizing with a student, I asked:

What is causing you to not turn in the assignments?
What might you do about that? How could I help?
What is interfering with you attending class? What might make a difference? How could I help?
How did you study for the test? What is one change you could make?
What if you tried this?
How might I help you?

I found it helpful to ask open-ended questions and let them talk as much as possible. Students really like to be heard. Many are seldom listened to and crave an audience. They also benefit from hearing themselves. Also, I benefit from hearing them talk—as I begin to pick up on themes I can say things like “I heard you say _____ a couple of times. This leads me to believe you tend to _____________.” They often respond with “exactly!” I then offer them some suggestions based on research and show them resources to try.

Together, we form a simple goal for them to implement and accomplish in a week and check on in the next week. I model it and practice it with them. Also, I connect the struggling student with a student Academic Coach who is trained by me. They can continue to work on the goal and engage in further metacognitive conversations. This type of follow up and academic mentoring between students fosters motivation and metacognition, as evidenced by increased class participation, improved GPAs, and attendance.

As Turkle (2021) shared in her latest book The Empathy Diaries “ . . . only shared vulnerability and human empathy allow us to truly understand one another” (xix). Once the students felt heard and understood, they were willing to work with me to solve their problems. In knowing someone else invested in them, they were willing to invest in themselves.

Infusing Metacognition in a Learning Strategies Course

I needed to revisit this lesson in my own teaching in the Spring when I also noticed a lack of student motivation in my own courses—even with the new infused strategies. And, it wasn’t that the students were confused. Over and over, they told me that the course was simple and easy to use and made sense. They demonstrated the ability to find materials and understanding of how to access materials. Yet, assignments were not being turned in. As motivation dwindled, important curriculum would not be studied and articles would go unread. Deadlines continued to be missed. The online chats I had set up with peer mentors for participation were not being attended. Engagement was dismal and grades were plummeting. So, although I already had incorporated some metacognitive strategies into the course, at midterm I attempted to infuse what was working with one/one meetings with students.

This effort began with midterm conferences. I always have had students evaluate themselves on the goals they set at the beginning of the semester and go over how they are progressing in the course. Students have always been amazingly honest. When I did this during the spring 2021 semester, they openly and apologetically shared they were not motivated and were not looking at the curriculum or submitting work. So, we focused on what was causing the lack of motivation.

Since the course curriculum (College Study Strategies) had all the resources they needed to solve the motivation problems, we revisited the resources in the course that they had missed—such as articles, videos, and power points on motivation, procrastination, time management, and so on. We read some together and set goals. I also reopened the deadlines so they could revisit the curriculum they needed and complete the discussions (now that they had purpose and motivation). They admitted they had known where the resources were and how to access them—they said they just had not had motivation to do it. But, after we had discussed how the resources applied to their situation and would help, and set specific goals, they began to appreciate a reason and need to access the materials.

To reinforce the goals set and encourage usage and follow through of the materials, I allowed extra credit to make up missed online chats related to the missed curriculum if students scheduled meetings to discuss the curriculum with an Academic Coach. The Academic Coach reported the meetings to me. The results of behavior changes after midterm conferences were significant. For example, at midterm there were 15 Fs in the course out of 28 students. When I submitted final grades, there were only 5 Fs. One F had changed to an A and 2 Fs had become Bs.

This experience led me to again appreciate the power of metacognitive conversations with students. Specifically, it reinforced how empathy can motivate students—even through technology and in a pandemic.

References

Turkle, S. (2021). The empathy diaries. New York: Penguin Press.

Turkle, S. (2015). Reclaiming conversations: The power of talking in a digital age. New York: Penguin Press.

Image from: https://www.connecttocommunicate.com/

Improving Metacognition By Understanding Cognitive Bias

by Dana Melone, Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School

This school year, I had the unique opportunity to continue to teach the Psychological Sciences as well as a course on Brain Based Study Techniques. As part of the psychology curriculum, I have always had a unit that taught students the various cognitive biases as well as how they impact their lives. In talking with my Study Technique students this year and reading their reflections in class on our lessons and how they are applying them to their classes, I noticed a common trend. They are making these cognitive errors in their own thinking and it was hurting their studying and learning.

I took this bit of anecdotal evidence and had students examine their own biases after their quizzes, exams, and course interactions. My hope was that this process would help them develop awareness of their own biases in their thinking and in turn help guide their future thinking and behaviors. It is not enough to just be metacognitive, but students must also be aware of when they might be relying on a biased interpretation of their studying and learning. The hope is that students will learn to recognize that bias has influenced their thinking and make adjustments as needed.

Targeted Cognitive Biases

There are over 50 cognitive biases that psychologists consider when they examine thinking, but I chose 3 of the biases to have my students examine:

Cognitive Dissonance: Cognitive dissonance occurs when we have a belief and we in turn do something that goes against that belief. That produces internal cognitive discomfort for us, so we develop an excuse to make ourselves feel better. Excuses can be truthful but they can also be non truths we tell ourselves to get over the discomfort. The most common way I saw this occurring with my students was after doing poorly on an exam.The students knew they should be getting help when needed and studying in the right way. When they did not do that thing, they often claimed that the teacher disliked them, they did not have time to use better study techniques, or the test was so hard no one could have passed it.
Self-Serving Bias: This occurs when we attribute good things that happen to us as a result of our own actions and in turn, negative things that happen to us are attributed to an external cause. I saw this with my students in our discussions as well. When students succeeded on a quiz or test they were almost always attributing that to their study method, understanding of the material, and ease of the test. When they did poorly, they talked about the test having things on it they did not study, or that teacher purposely created hard exams, etc.
Overconfidence: This bias occurs when we think we know more than we really do. We overestimate our ability on something. It can occur multiple ways, but my focus was post exam. Students receive a quiz or test score and really think they are about to get a great score. Instead, their score was much lower than they were expecting. I would often see students talk about this in their reflections. They would really think they knew the material and were shocked that they did not score well on the exam.

Overcoming the Biases

Once I realized that students were making these types of cognitive errors, I taught a lesson on the errors and we went over various examples. I then added an analysis of these biases to their weekly reflections of their classwork, test, and quiz outcomes.

Cognitive Dissonance: Think about cognitive dissonance and the three phases: I have a belief, I do something that goes against that belief, I develop an excuse to relieve the discomfort. This class is all about using correct learning, studying, and communicating techniques to improve our learning outcomes. This knowledge about effective learning represents our beliefs. In reflecting on your week, did you engage in behaviors that did not align with those beliefs and then fall victim to this bias? If so, explain. Then describe how you will help yourself overcome this in the future. If you feel you did not fall victim to this bias, provide commentary on how you overcame it with an example from your week.
Self-Serving Bias: Examine your reflection of the week. Choose a positive element from your reflection and explain how others helped to contribute to your success. Choose a negative element from your reflection and explain what you personally could have done differently to help change the outcome.
Overconfidence: Did you have any tests or quizzes this week that produced a lower score than you were expecting? If so, what could you have done differently in your preparation that may have helped you avoid overconfidence?

The goal of adding these questions was to help students think about ways their own cognitive errors may be contributing to their studying, learning, and assessment scores. Metacognition is best when we also incorporate awareness of possible bias and errors in our cognitions. My hope is that students will think about these biases as they move through high school and life, and that in turn they will use that thinking to become better learners in all their courses.

Why Metacognition?

By: Melissa Terlecki, PhD, Cabrini University PA

“Learning about myself wasn’t easy. Metacognition took way more work than all my other classes, but I learned so much about myself that I hope to apply in the future” – Anonymous Student Quote.

The Question at Hand

What do we want our students to get out of college? Does it extend beyond content – to include skills to potentially last a lifetime? I believe so, and argue that self-awareness and metacognition development should be part of what every college student achieves.

Self-awareness involves understanding one’s strengths and areas for improvement; it’s recognizing how we grow best and optimizing our potential. Metacognition is more than just “thinking about thinking” – it’s applying that self-knowledge to better oneself. Skills and strategies related to self-awareness and metacognition may not come naturally – or easily. Explicitly promoting them both through coursework in college may be a start.

Below are short overviews of two initiatives I have led at my institution, along with some student and faculty feedback and a brief personal reflections. I encourage you to think about ways to incorporate self-awareness and metacognition.

Metacognition in Leadership

I embarked on a journey to include metacognition as part of a Leadership program based on the Social Change Model of Leadership Development. Self-awareness is core to living and leading up to one’s greatest potential in strengths-based development. Metacognition, based on this model, is focused on building positive change in society as a leader at any level. Thus, I built a course around developing self-awareness while linking recognition of one’s skills to leadership potential. My “Metacognition in Leadership” course is open to any of our students, and although part of a Leadership minor, many seek to take it, despite the rumors of the workload.

Metacognition is built in every activity and assignment and simulates a flipped classroom. Course feedback shows that students are challenged yet do really well in the course, including self-measured improvements in metacognition. Grades are high and students argue that metacognition should be taught to everybody.

“Why is this not taught in grade-school? I would’ve done much better…” – Michelle Brzoska, Student.

“I believe for me it was challenging to dig deep into my traits and values. We just do things and say things without thinking about them. However, this course pushed me to consider those traits and reflect on them. Most of the time we do not have the time to reflect on ourselves and I believe sometimes it leads to false perceptions about ourselves.” – Maria Khan, Student.

Metacognition in First-Year Experience

I also sought to embed self-awareness in first-year experience (FYE) programming, as we know self-awareness of interests and strengths can lead to persistence (and retention) in academic settings. In 2020, our FYE programming was about to undergo revision. I was asked to step in to provide a metacognitive framework for students’ college success, as realizing their best path to learning and to their eventual major/s is the goal of such a course.

Students learned about topics such as self-regulation, emotional intelligence, motivation and achievement, among other areas, which were directly connected to student self-assessments. Faculty utilized regular reflections and feedback, with weekly check-ins and academic advising. Course feedback from both instructors and students was favorable: students enjoyed learning about themselves and faculty appreciated this, yet commented on the challenging nature of teaching metacognition (given faculty teaching our FYE course are from all different disciplines):

“Content was good but challenging to take on. Students got a lot out of it in only one semester. Faculty need more training in metacognition” – Anonymous Faculty Quote.

Reflections on Interventions

Adding metacognitive content AND pedagogy takes work. And time. And a lot of grading and feedback. It is an iterative process and is not static or traditional by any means. Students may resist active engagement that forces them beyond their comfort zones in passive learning, and especially self-awakening. This is a different type of learning than students are used to or expect at the college level, perhaps given their previous experiences at K-12. It takes more effort on both the student’s and the instructor’s parts.

Both students and faculty need training in metacognition: the pedagogy, the routine self-reflection and feedback. I provide metacognition training/workshops to institutions for both faculty and staff. I have seen and heard the impact these techniques can have on teaching and learning. For metacognition to stick, however, it needs to be more than quick tricks – metacognition is a “lifestyle” change in pedagogy for teachers. It has to be a new way of learning and self-discovery for learners. Again, this is not easy, but is well worth the effort, as benefits of self-awareness extend beyond the classroom to our relationships, our jobs, and our lives.

“I think it’s important for people to learn metacognition because of the awareness and understanding you get from it. Once you learn more about it, it’ll be easier to control your emotions and be able to comprehend how others feel” – Orlyany Sanchez, Student.

“I hope I can keep reflecting after this course is over. It has already changed how I think and feel about other people” – Anonymous Student Quote.

“It is extremely vital that we learn about metacognition to understand ourselves better so we can interact with others well. There were times where I was not able to connect with others because I was not able to connect with myself. But this [course] showed me the importance of knowing oneself as well as applying to my future” – Maria Khan, Student.

—————–

Note: Feel free to contact the author, Melissa Terlecki, for more information on course materials and/or metacognition workshop availability to bring to your school! (mst723@cabrini.edu)

Note 2: Catch my talk on metacognition at the 2021 American Psychological Association virtual conference as the Harry Kirke Wolfe Lecturer! (12-14 August; see https://convention.apa.org/)

Learning Philosophies of Teachers and Students: Two Neglected Metacognitive Catalysts for Success

by Dr. Ed Nuhfer, California State Universities (retired)

Hmmm… COVID year… what a trip. If I slept through it, there were nightmares—lots of ’em. Where did I leave off last April (Nuhfer, 2020)? Oh yeah, we ended with a question: “How might teaching students to write their learning philosophies improve their learning?” Well, OK…let’s continue that… by first realizing that professors’ teaching philosophies are their learning philosophies, and those who do write them come to recognize how keeping such a written record enhances success in teaching.

Philosophies are reflective; they record the results of a metacognitive conversation with oneself. The results articulate the plan for practice disclosing what one wants to do, how one chooses to do it, and how to know the chosen practices’ impact. Philosophies focus on learning about process, which is too rarely the stuff of college education, where the emphasis is on learning content—the disciplines’ products. Even “student-centered-learning” structures too seldom involve directly teaching students to be reflective about how to learn.

$Illustration of components (thinking, teaching, learning) in the fractal generator for faculty and students (by Ed Nuhfer)$

Six critical components of a teaching philosophy appeared in the graphic of the fractal generator above (and also shared my April 2020 blog). An informed teaching/learning philosophy considers all six components. Three crucial components describe internal strengths enlisted during learning: affect, levels of thinking, and metacognition, and three more are competencies mainly built from external sources: content, pedagogy, and assessment.

For nearly twenty years, I led week-long faculty development retreats in which each faculty arrived with a written one-page document that they had constructed as their teaching philosophy. A faculty member rarely arrived at a retreat with a written philosophy that addressed more than three of the six components.

Through the retreats, participants revisited and edited their philosophy a bit each day. Our final exercise of the retreat was sharing the revised philosophies in groups and polishing them more for use. No participant left without awareness of the vital role that each of the six components played. Participants’ written philosophies of practice were probably their most valuable tangible takeaway.

Why written philosophies?

Consider the advantage a written plan confers to constructing anything complex. Architectural design requires written blueprints and strategies because the challenge is just too complex to address well by acting spontaneously from what one can carry around in one’s head. Construction contractors avoid working without a written plan because doing so produces disappointing results.

Learning and teaching are challenges as complex as any construction project. A teaching/learning philosophy acts as the equivalent of an architectural design plan and encompasses the big picture of what we intend to do. Students need learning philosophies for the same reason professors need them, but acting spontaneously without any written philosophy is probably the norm in higher education. How many of your students approach learning with a written plan?

The six components that are so essential for professors to consider also confer similar value to students. It really is up to professors to mentor students to craft their first informed learning philosophies. An excellent way to start students toward constructing their personal learning philosophies is to give each a nearly blank paper with the six components’ names at the top.

Beginners must begin to incorporate the six as a checklist by asking self: “Where are awareness of affect, levels of thinking, etc. in my practice?” After they internalize these six through at least a year of practice, they become cognizant of how all six are interconnected, and awareness occurs that developing one component awakens new insights about the others’ roles. Some authors of philosophies later employ visualization and supplement their philosophies with graphics.

Years ago, the fractal generator shown above became my graphical philosophy. I produced fifty articles under the title “Educating in Fractal Patterns…” for The National Teaching and Learning Forum, as that graphic philosophy helped me more deeply understand and grow from my experiences. Those who maintain a written philosophy and reflect on it regularly will almost surely have similar “Aha moments.”

Essential Components

Let’s see how we can help students become reflective and increase their capacity to learn from the six components.

Affect

We can help students to appreciate the importance of affect by reflecting upon whether the affective mode in which they find themselves is “I have to do this” or “I want to do this.” (See assignment shared in Nuhfer 2014.) Wanting to learn enlists more brainpower to drive learning. Finding ways to make learning fun for ourselves, to want to do it—such as making a party of it by studying with others, can become our most valuable asset. Quantitative courses elicit the most negative affective responses from students (Uttl, White, Morin, 2013). Yet, the book I recommend as the most inspirational book ever written to learn to reverse negative feelings for specific content is Francis Su’s Mathematics for Human Flourishing. A particular quote I like from p. 11 follows: “When some people ask, ‘When am I ever going to use this?’ what they are really asking is ‘When am I ever going to value this?‘”

Pedagogy

Teachers employ “active learning” pedagogies (Univ Wyoming resources) to increase learning through engagement. One principle underlies all “active learning:” the more of the brain invoked during learning, the better the learning. But another principle is seldom addressed: the longer the time spent in learning with significant portions of the brain activated, the greater the understanding.

Students can apply the same principles to enlist more of their brains. Writing to learn along with reading invokes more of the brain than only reading to learn. Revision of written products, multiple revisions, is one of the most powerful learning strategies known, at least as powerful as any modality on the “Active Learning Spectrum” linked above. For developing their learning philosophies, instructors should assign students to write, revise, and record at the end of each revision how doing revision improved their understanding. Learning to enlist active learning by writing to learn for oneself does not require doing a thesis. Simply writing and revising how to solve a word problem or an evaluative assignment offers sufficient capital through which to develop an appreciation for the power of writing to learn.

Content

Writing (Didn’t we just mention its power?) a knowledge survey builds understanding of the course content that faculty quickly appreciate (Nuhfer & Knipp, 2003). Watch these two very short videos to get a sense of what knowledge surveys are and their impact.

Screen shot of Dr. Ed Nuhfer talking about what knowledge surveys are and their benefits — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENW51282Bwk

screenshot of opening slide stating "Faculty reflect on the value of knowledge surveys" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWbw8buSXIo

With each knowledge survey item that a professor writes, they should follow that with the thought, “What do students need to know to respond with understanding?” That will lead to writing several additional items to build the scaffold needed to address the former item. While students lack the expertise to construct course-based knowledge surveys from scratch, instructors can direct students to share in scaffolding their learning. They can let students build a knowledge survey in small pieces by frequent assignments such as: “Given the content we covered today, replace the knowledge survey’s items about that content with your own authored items to address the equivalent content.” An additional brief helpful exercise to help students to build their own learning philosophy can be: “How did writing your own knowledge survey items change your understanding of the content material? Why might writing such items be a useful learning strategy for learning in other subjects and courses?”

Levels of Thinking

We have already covered developmental levels in a prior post (Nuhfer, 2014), and we showed the connection between levels of thinking and affect (Nuhfer, 2018). Nearly all students misperceive becoming educated as learning skills and content. They have heard of “critical thinking” or “higher-order thinking,” but almost none can really articulate what either looks like. They will not know about such developmental levels of thinking unless the faculty teach them. We earlier provided a module with which instructors can do so (Nuhfer & Bhavsar, 2014). If you are unfamiliar with such developmental models and levels of thinking, which is likely, go through the same module for yourself. Then, guide students through it.

Metacognition

Is it surprising that this component should receive a mention on this blog? What would be truly surprising is if any personal learning philosophy sentence was not a product of metacognitive reflection. A written philosophy archives the portions its writer valued that came out of purposefully directed conversations with self. It expresses the current state of the author’s focus at a specific stage of development. It will change with additional experiences and reflections.

Assessment

The assessment portion of the philosophy likely considers three questions. The first is “Did I really practice my philosophy—did I do what I planned to do?” The second is “What happened as a result?” The third is “Based on what I learned from what happened, what will I focus on next?”

When one develops the ability for “fractal thinking,” one is constantly considering what would result if a pattern of action taken at one scale were enacted at different scales. If these three assessment queries give valuable substance to building an individual’s expertise, what might result if we nurtured such happening at the scale of a program or an institution?

For years, I had hoped to convince an institution to replace the practice of using student ratings scores as the highest stakes criterion for the annual review of instructors with professors’ written philosophies instead. Review committees would examine each philosophy and ask correlatives to the three questions above. It seems easy to see why encouraging metacognitive reflection on improving practice offers a superior option to thinking instead of raising student ratings’ scores. Sigh! I’m still hoping for just one institution to try it.

In summary, writing, revisiting, and revising learning philosophies scaffold us to higher proficiency. Addressing the same six components offers professors and students common ground on which to come together to understand learning and the process of becoming educated.

Promoting Learning Integrity Through Metacognition and Self-Assessment

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

When we think of integrity within the educational realm, we typically think about “academic integrity” and instances of cheating and plagiarism. While there is plenty of reason for concern, I believe that in many cases these instances are an unfortunate end result of more foundational “learning integrity” issues rather than deep character flaws representing lack of moral principles and virtues.

Learning integrity occurs when choices for learning behaviors match a learner’s goals and self-beliefs. Integrity in this sense is more like a state of wholeness or integrated completeness. It’s hard to imagine this form of integrity without self-assessment; one needs to self-assess in order to know oneself. For example, are one’s actions aligned with one’s beliefs? Are one’s motivations aligned with one’s goals? Metacognition is a process by which we gain awareness (self-assess) and use that awareness to self-regulate. Thus, through metacognition, we can more successfully align our personal goals and behaviors, enhancing our integrity.

Metacognitive Learning and Typical Challenges

When students are being metacognitive about their learning, they take the time to think about (bring into awareness) what an assignment or task will require for success. They then make a plan for action based on their understanding of that assignment as well their understanding of their abilities and current context. After that, they begin to carry out that plan (self-regulation). As they do so, they take pauses to reflect on whether or not their plan is working (self-awareness/self-assessment). Based on that interim assessment, they potentially shift their plan or learning strategies in order to better support their success at the task at hand (further self-regulation).

That explanation of a metacognitive learning may sound easy, but if that were the case, we should see it happening more consistently. As a quick example, imagine a student is reading a text and then realizes that they are several pages into the assignment and they don’t remember much of what they’ve read (awareness). If they are being metacognitive, they should come up with a different strategy to help them better engage with the text and then use that alternate strategy (self-regulation). Instead, many students simply keep reading as they had been (just to get the assignment finished), essentially wasting their time and short-cutting their long-term goals.

Why don’t most students engage in metacognition? There are several meaningful barriers to doing so:

Pausing to self-assess is not a habitual behavior for them
It takes time to pause and reflect in order to build awareness
They may not be aware of effective alternate strategies
They may avoid alternate strategies because they perceive them to take more time or effort
They are focused on “finishing” a task rather than learning from it
They don’t realize that some short-term reinforcements don’t really align with their long-term goals

These barriers prevent many students engaging in metacognition, which then makes it more likely that their learning choices are 1) not guided by awareness of their learning state and 2) not aligned with their learning goals and/or the learning expectations of the instructor. This misalignment can then lead to a breakdown of learning integrity with respect to the notion of “completeness” or “wholeness.”

For example, students often claim that they want to develop expertise in their major in order to support their success in their future careers. They want to be “good students.” But they take short-cuts with their learning, such as cramming or relying on example problem workout steps, both of which lead to illusions of learning rather than deep learning and long-term retention. These actions are often rewarded in the short term by good grades on exams and homework assignments. Unfortunately, if they engage in short-cutting their learning consistently enough, when long-term learning is expected or assessed, some students might end up feeling desperate and engage in blatant cheating.

Promoting Learning Integrity by Providing Support for Self-Assessment and Metacognition

Promoting learning integrity will involve more than simply encouraging students to pause, self-reflect, and practice self-regulation, i.e. engage in metacognition. As alluded to by the list of barriers above, being metacognitive requires effort, which also implies that learning integrity requires effort. Like many other self-improvement behaviors, developing metacognition requires multiple opportunities to practice and develop into a way of doing things.

Fortunately, as instructors we can help provide regular opportunities for reflection and self-assessment, and we can share possible alternative learning strategies. Together these should promote metacognition, leading to alignment of goals and behaviors and to increased learning integrity. The Improve with Metacognition website offers many suggestions and examples used by instructors across the disciplines and educational levels.

To wrap up this post, I highlight knowledge surveys as one way by which to promote the practice and skill of self-assessment within our courses. Knowledge surveys are shared with students at the start of a unit so students can use them to guide their learning and self-assess prior to the summative assessment. Well-designed knowledge survey questions articulate granular learning expectations and are in clear alignment with course assessments. (Thus, their implementation also supports teaching integrity!)

When answering the questions, students rate themselves on their ability to answer the question (similar to a confidence rating) as opposed to fully writing out the answer to the question. Comparisons can be made between the confidence ratings and actual performance on an exam or other assessment (self-assessment accuracy). For a more detailed example of the incorporation of knowledge surveys into a course, as well as student and instructor reflections, see “Supporting Student Self-Assessment with Knowledge Surveys” (Scharff, 2018).

By making the knowledge surveys a meaningful part of the course (some points assigned, regular discussion of the questions, and sharing of students’ self-assessment accuracy), instructors support the development of self-assessment habits, which then provide a foundation to metacognition, and in turn, learning integrity.

———————————————–

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

Learning. Design. Analytics. Post 4: Metacognitive Design To Support Metacognitive Learning Within Virtual Learning Environments

By Yianna Vovides, PhD and Marie Selvanadin, MS, MBA, Georgetown University

We see the process of design and development of products as very much a metacognitive awareness process given that designers and developers are engaged in cycles of reflection, planning, monitoring, and evaluation with every prototype produced. This is especially the case when embarking on the development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) because of the fact that the environment itself needs to enable and support engagement toward varied types of learning and meet the needs of both instructors and students. In this blog post we discuss the design and development process of a VLE, a web-based case analysis app developed by the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. We highlight how the metacognitive design process of planning, monitoring, and evaluation supports a reflective practice that enables metacognitive learning.

Context: Ethical Decision Making for Global Managers (GUX)

The case analysis app was designed to augment case-based teaching and learning techniques by providing multiple ways for students to reflect on their thinking in relation to how they make decisions. In collaboration with a faculty member and program director, we approached the design of the app by contextualizing it within the Ethical Decision Making for Global Managers professional certificate offered via edx. The main goal that the app was designed to support learners in achieving is the following: “how to analyze real-world ethical dilemmas using multiple frameworks, considering many possible choices, and selecting a “best choice” option.” The courses in the certificate program focused on rules- and results-based decision-making processes.

Teaching decision-making, let alone ethical decision-making, is not easily done and doing so online, especially within an open self-paced learning environment, is even more challenging (Sternberg, n. d.).

Sternberg emphasizes that:

“[l]earning how to reason ethically is a dialectical, back-and-forth process. Simply delivering content through lectures and readings are at best supplementary forms of instruction. The primary form of instruction needs to be interactive because students need to present ideas, get feedback on those ideas, and then try out re-formed ideas that themselves will be subject to further modification.”

With this in mind, we knew that we needed to design the app in a way that enabled individuals to engage in a back-and-forth process that could support ethical reasoning. We realized early on that in order to make the interaction within the case analysis app meaningful to individual learners, the app itself needed to provide guidance at both the cognitive and metacognitive levels. Therefore, we needed to consider how the app itself could “speak” to the learner. In other words, what interaction could we design as part of the app to provide feedback to the learners along the way so help them reflect about their decision-making process and how they were using the rules-based and results based ethical reasoning approaches.

Our collaboration with the faculty and program director in relation to this project took place over two years, so we had time to understand and internalize the ethical decision-making framework that was being used in the courses which focused on rules-oriented and results-oriented approaches. For enabling both cognitive and metacognitive interactions within the app, we used the reflective sensemaking model (Vovides and Inman, 2016) to guide our design decisions. Sensemaking as a pedagogical approach to teach ethics has been gaining attention (Brandt and Popejoy, 2020).

The following section breaks down the design of the app in relation to the reflective sensemaking process. It includes screenshots taken from the web-based app itself using a case study being used in the Ethical Decision-Making for Global Managers professional certificate available on edx.

Design: Reflective Sensemaking

The reflective sensemaking process begins by asking a learner to explore a real-world case. The example we show in the screenshots is related to Policing Terrorism.

The learner is encouraged to read the case multiple times. A learner has the option to highlight and/or annotate parts of the case and to determine whether they want their annotations to remain private (visible only to them) or made public (visible to others interacting with the same case).

The learner is then asked a yes/no question about the key issue described in the case study In the Policing Terrorism case study, they are asked whether private high tech companies should develop and enforce their own standards to police terrorism on the internet.

Once the learner selects either yes or no, they are asked to write down the reasoning for their decision.

After this initial decision, the learner is presented with their own highlights and annotations from their reading of the case and asked to identify how important each highlight and annotation was in contributing to their decision.

4. Then, the learner is shown a summary of where their highlights/annotations fall within the Rules and Results decision-making framework. They are asked to consider the following questions:

- Which framework are you most aligned with? Perhaps you are closer to the middle.
- What values and assumptions did you bring to your fact selection and decision?

In addition, the app provides learners the option to see their highlights and annotations in context and explore how the instructor engaged with the same case. This aims to reduce the feeling of anonymity and isolation. We also see it as a way to enable further exploration of the case itself.

The learner is then asked to consider whether a rules- or results-based framework would lead to a “best choice” decision in the case they read. They are asked to use a slider to represent the degree to which they would prioritize rules- or results-based factors and then to explain their reasoning.

By allowing students to take the time to reflect on their learning and decision making, we believe that they are given the opportunity to think about their own thinking (which in simplistic terms is what metacognition is all about) and giving them an opportunity to reflect on their learning.

As a final step in the reflective sensemaking process, learners are asked the same yes/no question and given another opportunity to either keep the same decision or change it. In either case, they are asked to explain their reasoning. The focus in this particular example is related to ethical reasoning; however, the approach could be used for other types of reasoning.

Model: Where Learning Design and Analytics Align

This case analysis app presents one model for how learning design and analytics can come together to create a unique experience where reflection of the learning process is prioritized. Reflection is critical in developing metacognitive awareness (Schraw, 1998). We designed the app so that learners can go through multiple cases as they move through the Ethical Decision Making for Global Managers professional certificate program. Once learners complete one case then they continue to have access to it for review purposes in the app’s dashboard (shown here). Encouraging review of one’s completed cases enables learners to become more aware of how they reasoned through that case.

To align the learning design and analytics we began with a conceptual data model which we are still refining (see Sensemaking Process with Identified Variables diagram). We took the reflective sensemaking process and have started mapping the variables that could serve as proxies to better understand how learners are making sense of the case they are engaging with. We considered the number of different actions that a learner takes when reading the case itself. We also take into account whether the learner goes back and reviews the case, and more. This type of mapping of the data to the learning process will enable us to make the learner journey visible to the learner because we will be able to create a visualization of the reflective sensemaking process as they engage with the cases.

Therefore, our next step is to create the visualization of the sensemaking process for each learner who goes through a case that will be available as part of the learner dashboard in the case analysis app. Given that a learner could go through multiple cases, the visualization would also represent the learner’s sensemaking process across cases and over time. We envision that the dashboard itself could then become an active learning space that would support further metacognitive awareness as it would enable learners to interrogate how they reasoned through multiple cases over time.

Our Reflection so Far in relation to using metacognitive design to support metacognitive learning

Schematic of a spiral illustrating loops of before, during, after — Figure 2. Spiral – Before, during, after Model

To design a learner dashboard as an active learning space requires an adaptive learning design process so that we can account for changes from one iteration to the next as we gain a better understanding of how learners are engaging with the app. Given that adaptive learning design is a process that strategically modifies designs based on emerging learner needs (Bower, 2016), we incorporated from the start of this project reflective pauses to become even more aware of our own iterative approach. We planned what we would do before we developed a prototype, during our prototyping process, and after when conducting formative evaluations. Yes, it has taken two years so far!

The app launched in 2020 and we are currently in the process of collecting learner data from the platform and surveys to help us solidify some of the functionality that would be part of the active learning dashboard. We are also investigating options to introduce social learning opportunities as part of the active learning dashboard to reduce the sense of isolation and anonymity. Want to learn more, contact us!

References

Bower, M. (2016). A Framework for Adaptive Learning Design in a Web-Conferencing Environment. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, (1).

Brandt, L., & Popejoy, L. (2020). Use of sensemaking as a pedagogical approach to teach clinical ethics: an integrative review. International Journal of Ethics Education, 1-15.

Schraw, G. (1998). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional science, 26(1-2), 113-125.

Sternberg, R. J. (n.d.). Developing ethical reasoning and/or ethical decision making | IDEA. IDEA. Retrieved January 10, 2021, from https://www.ideaedu.org/idea-notes-on-learning/developing-ethical-reasoning-and-or-ethical-decision-making/

Vovides, Y., & Inman, S. (2016). Elusive learning—using learning analytics to support reflective sensemaking of ill-structured ethical problems: A learner-managed dashboard solution. Future Internet, 8(2), 26.

Learning. Design. Analytics. Post 3: Scripting Asynchronous Lectures: A Metacognitive Process

By Eleri Syverson, MA, Joe King, Yiran Sun, MA, Yianna Vovides, PhD, Georgetown University

In this post we’ll look at the process of scripting in the context of metacognitive awareness by walking through the processes and considerations we recommend for scripting. When we talk about scripting in this case, we are referring to the writing process of reflecting on a subject and drafting — as a word-for-word script, or at minimum a very detailed outline — a lecture to be delivered to a class of students. Most of our own experience with scripting is in developing asynchronous lectures for online courses (or similar online format) that are either entirely new or are being redesigned into an online format from an existing face-to-face course, and this is our focus in this post. However, many of the principles and practices we consider can be useful in designing face-to-face presentations and interactions too. We first address the conundrum of whether to script, and then we offer a script of our own in relation to how we guide faculty through the process of scripting.

To Script or Not to Script? Script, script, and script some more….

When we first meet with an instructor who is working to design an online course, one of the things we talk about is whether they have any plans to develop new content, such as a video, audio or text lecture, for the course. For the most part, the answer is yes. We recommend the instructor script out their lecture materials before we begin to record or build them for an online course. This might sound like the last thing an instructor wants to do for several reasons:

Perhaps they have been delivering lectures on this topic, maybe even for this very course, for many years. They may know these lectures very well, even without notes.
Perhaps they rely on spontaneity to keep the experience fresh and therefore fear they would lose that if they scripted.
Perhaps the time and effort commitment required to produce scripts seems daunting.

While these are valid concerns, a well-designed script will not take away from their inherent expertise on the subject or remove those elements of personality that make their lectures engaging. In fact, we emphasize that the value of scripting is less in the final product, but in the process itself which can help them plan, monitor, and evaluate their approach to each lecture anew.

During the design and development process for online courses we approach scripting, especially when working from existing materials or lectures, as a metacognitive act that relies on planning, monitoring, and evaluation about one’s own areas of expertise. By approaching scripting as a process that supports instructors in deepening their metacognitive awareness of how they teach and how their students learn, we encourage increased efficacy, coherence, and accessibility of lectures. By the end of the design and development process, instructors have accounted for the thinking of their students as well as their own and in fact have developed a lasting metacognitive practice.

A Script of our Own

In the first blog post of this series Yianna Vovides described a simple model we share with instructors to recognize the iterative process of design (see figure 1). When we think of the Before phase, we think of pre-production efforts, for During, we think of production efforts and for After, we think of post-production. Scripting is part of our pre-production efforts.

This section highlights the script we use in our process to guide instructors and we explain the thinking behind the process, our reasoning.

Script

Reasoning

If you are not sure whether or not to script your materials, you might start with a test recording to see how the lecture goes without a script.

In our process, we will often give faculty a rough cut of this initial test recording to give the instructor a chance to review this initial product and go over any concerns with them.

A common observation from instructors after this initial test recording is that lecturing to a camera or microphone can be a very different experience than lecturing to a classroom full of students.

In the classroom, students nod, ask questions, and make facial expressions that signal as to their engagement and understanding. Even the lack of such signals in the classroom would, itself, be a significant sign about the lecture, your students, or something else in the environment that is impacting your teaching.

This presents a unique opportunity to reflect on one’s own thinking while teaching, and to reflect on the experience of the learner. When lecturing in class, which moments typically brought about questions (or even were confusing to you as you learned it the first time)? Which examples do you find particularly impactful? What is essential to understanding the material? Scripting allows instructors to address these questions and plan the presentation of materials in the most helpful and more meaningful way, because it allows instructors’ time to reflect on both past and future deliveries of a lecture.

Through this writing process of reflection, planning, and drafting lectures as text, instructors can carefully consider meaning they intend to leave with their students, and work to ensure that their learning goals for a particular lecture are met. Writing itself is applied metacognition. “Every act of writing is an act of meaning production. Reading, re-reading, reflecting, and reviewing — processes traditionally associated with writing — serve as monitoring strategies to ensure that the production of meaning is in conformance with the author’s goals for writing…” (Hacker, Keener, Kircher 157). In scripting a lecture, instructors are not merely replicating a previously delivered lecture, but improving and adapting it for a new format. Keep in mind the following tips (and their reasonings) for writing for that new format.

Script	Reasoning
Keep your script brief and connected to learning objectives.	Remember that attention spans behave differently in the online environment than they might in face-to-face conversations. An ideal length for videos in online learning environments is 6-10 minutes, which comes out to about 2-4 pages of written text, single spaces. Audio only lectures can typically be longer, around 40 minutes to an hour. Consider the length of a typical Youtube video vs the length of a typical podcast.
Identify key terms or questions in advance. Include graphics in your script to illustrate key points. Please include the references! Once you send us the draft, we will then discuss with you how we pull all the pieces together.	By following these recommendations, post-production will be easier. It can also help you make sure that you are, in fact, addressing all of your learning objectives and covering all of the necessary topics in the video. This kind of metacognitive planning and evaluation of your student’s thinking increases the efficacy and coherency of your lectures.
In the same vein, this planning allows you to choose the most appropriate format for lectures.	You might script a lecture you have been giving face-to-face in the classroom for many years, only to realize that in the online format, the lecture may be more suited to a podcast format than a video. Different formats present other advantages to students as well — for example, an audio-only podcast lecture would allow students to listen on a walk around their neighborhood, as opposed to at home with the distractions of noisy family or roommates. Presenting content in a variety of formats, while letting the content direct the format chosen, provides students with additional flexibility. And choosing a format after planning the content, rather than as a first step, allows you this flexibility to present the content that is most suitable for the format itself.
Scripting and preplanning lecture materials not only forces you to consider the needs of your students and how they might interpret lecture material, it inherently addresses some of those needs by making materials more accessible	Transcripts not only benefit students with hearing impairments, but also students who may be listening to materials in their non-native language, students who are experiencing poor internet connectivity and cannot stream the video, students with learning disabilities who may need more time or alternate formats to process the lecture, or students who simply prefer to read or take notes on the transcript while listening along. Producing a transcript of a lecture can itself be time consuming or, if you outsource the effort, costly task. By creating a word-for word script and drafting it with your audience in mind, providing your script to students as a transcript eliminates the need to produce a separate transcript to address the accessibility concerns noted above.
It is important that you include your sources in your script to be incorporated into the video.	While a lecture video isn’t a peer-reviewed paper, it is more formal and more lasting than a face-to-face lecture or conversation, and it takes some additional effort to communicate corrections of any errors. Including sources also gives you an opportunity to review the sources and correct any errors, and gives interested students the opportunity to engage more deeply with the subject by exploring these sources.

Scripting lectures is a multi-layered metacognitive process. It requires the writer to think about their own thinking in reflecting on their own understanding of the material and past deliveries lectures. It also requires them to think about the experience of their audience, both in who they are and the context and channels which will affect the composition of their experience. Successful lecture scripting means making sure the material feels like it is for these students in this course.

Who are the students?
What they have already learned, what you hope they will learn, and where they are now?
Where might they be listening to these lectures?
How can the writer best facilitate their understanding?

These questions should be considered not just in regards to a specific group of current students, but future students or others who may view the lecture in a different context. A lecture might be relocated to a different part of a course, or sometimes a different course entirely. The social and historical context in which a lecture was recorded can change in just weeks. While the process of scripting might seem daunting, it should be thought of as a reallocation of efforts rather than an additional one: the metacognitive processes of reflection on self and audience, as well as the product of the script itself, contribute to a more robust and longer-lasting lecture that better addresses the needs of the audience.

Reference

Hacker, D. J., Kircher, J. C., & Keener, M. C. (2010). Writing is Applied Metacognition. In 1132034699 853417179 D. J. Hacker, 1132034700 853417179 J. Dunlosky, & 1132034701 853417179 A. C. Graesser (Authors), Handbook of metacognition in education (pp. 154-176). New York: Routledge.

Learning. Design. Analytics. Post 2: Utilizing Instructional Design Methodologies and Learning Analytics to Encourage Metacognition

By Zhuqing Ding, MA

What’s the interaction like in higher education between faculty and instructional designers? While faculty often have full autonomy in their course design and teaching methodologies (Martin, 2009), instructional designers play the role of a change agent. When instructional designers propose improvements in instructional strategies and recommend significant changes to existing courses, faculty may resist adopting their recommendations. With this in mind, the online course design team at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), Georgetown University, had implemented an adaptive approach to the course design process since 2018. During the pandemic, we were able to pivot and expand this approach to offer support to faculty across the university and not only to the ones who had been part of online programs.

So, what makes our process adaptive? The traditional ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) instructional design model, focuses on linear processes in content development. Compared to the traditional instructional design approach, an adaptive approach has distinct iterative phases where we use learning analytics as evidence to initiate faculty members’ metacognition, thereby inspiring changes to future iterations of the course.

Here is how our course design team implemented the adaptive approach for transforming an existing classroom-based law course to fully online. Before moving online, this tax law course was offered once a week through one 2.5-hour lecture, accompanied by reading assignments and graded only by one final exam. During the first phase of our adaptive process our team tackled the following questions:

How can we transform the passive learning experiences in the classroom (receiving information) into active learning (interacting with the course materials)?
How can we strike a balance between good practices for online course design and the traditional methods familiar to/preferred by law school professors?
What are some of the strategies we will use to encourage the faculty members to evaluate their own teaching strategies to become more mindful and intentional about their own teaching?

While lecturing has been proven to be the most used instructional method, especially in higher education, it is more suitable for a face-to-face traditional classroom than an online environment (McKeachie, 1990). In an online course, passively receiving a large amount of information by watching a series of 2.5-hour lectures can be challenging for students. Following an adaptive process allowed us to guide faculty toward an awareness that designing an online course is more than recording lectures and that students need to interact with the lectures in order to be able to recall and retrieve what they are learning. The following image shows the metacognitive activities that we incorporated in the adaptive design approach. During the first phase of the course, our course design team introduced activities that support reflective practice to enable faculty members to become more self-aware about their own teaching and learning. Then, in the second phase we introduce activities that encourage a deepening of the reflective practice to spark creativity.

Interactive and short lectures

In order to collect data that can help us understand the students’ learning experience, we proposed to the faculty to create interactive and short lectures to replace the 2.5-hour long lectures in each module. To demonstrate to faculty the types of interactive elements that can be inserted into lectures, we introduced a storyboarding method. In the script, the faculty broke their long lectures into subtopics. Our instructional designers highlighted the keywords and areas that could be illustrated by graphics or animations. Then, the faculty confirmed the highlights and the graphics, and added/deleted as needed.

The resultant, short, subtopic videos were presented as playlists in the course. Within each video, the professor is shown lecturing on the right side of the screen, and on the left, relevant animated keywords, charts, and graphics appear. Certain parts of the charts were highlighted as the professor talked through certain elements within the charts. Such interactive elements within the lectures are designed to help students make a connection to the professor while also focusing on important keywords and short summaries of the lecture topics.

The analytics report provided by the video hosting platform that became available after the course launched helped with the faculty’s meta-thinking. Based on the total views, total minutes of content delivered, unique viewers, and the percentage of completion data for each video, the course team was able to understand important aspects of the students’ learning experience: the videos that had the highest views, the videos that students were not able to finish watching, and the videos that students watched again and again. Such evidence helped the faculty identify knowledge areas that students were not able to understand right away and recognize times when students’ participation dropped.

In the second iteration/phase of this course, the faculty took several actions to not only improve the course design, but also improved his teaching presence in this online course. First, during the low-participation time observed from the analytics report of the first iteration, reminders were sent to students to encourage them to keep up the pace. Additionally, more office hours including one-on-one and group office hours were scheduled, allowing students to clear up questions with the professor if they got stuck. The faculty was able to address common questions during the recorded office hour sessions, and made these sessions available to students. Overall, the student-faculty interaction was improved since, due to metacognition, the faculty became more aware of the importance of building interactive touch points to keep online students on track. The metacognition has initiated his awareness of the importance of the teaching presence in the online courses.

Weekly Activities

The law school has a long-standing tradition of using final exams as the only assessment in a given course. In face-to-face classes, interactions such as small talk among peers before and after the class and question-and-answer sessions after each lecture help students confirm whether they are on track. For online students, such checkpoints are missing and, therefore, it is necessary to periodically build them in so students can make sure they are following along.

In the first iteration of the course, we introduced weekly, ungraded quizzes, allowing students to practice, experiment, and reflect on their learning. Since this particular course is related to tax law, the quiz questions — most requiring calculation in Excel — were extracted from previous exams. Correct answers and short explanations were provided for each question at the end of the quiz. Students were allowed to take the quizzes multiple times. Such low-stakes activities provided the space for students to explore and discover the answers during their learning.

After the first iteration of the course, the professor was able to review the quiz analytics report provided by the quiz tool in Canvas, which allowed for metacognition on the activity design. There was a correlation between students’ performance on the weekly quizzes and the final exam. Students who didn’t participate in the practice quizzes at all achieved lower scores than students who did. Students who completed practice quizzes were also more active in the online office hours and found more opportunities to engage with the professor throughout the semester. Based on this finding, the professor realized the importance of motivating students to practice on a weekly basis in order to assess their understanding and ask questions before they fall too far behind.

By the second iteration of the course, a few actions were taken to improve students’ engagement in weekly quizzes. The professor improved the design of the quiz questions by adding downloadable Excel spreadsheets with formulas to the provided explanations of the quiz answers, allowing students to tinker with formulas and reflect on their own calculations. He also offered additional office hours following the quizzes in each module to make sure students had the opportunity to ask questions.

The professor moved from reluctance to including weekly quizzes at all, since they didn’t exist in the face-to-face class, to encouraging active learning processes by improving the quiz question design and proactively providing space for students to reach out to him with questions. Quiz analytics served as evidence that drove the faculty member to metacognition and improved the way he teaches online.

Summary

Metacognition is implicitly part of faculty development programs across disciplines. However, while working with law faculty, the adaptive approaches our course design team followed led to new reflections about their teaching practice. It was challenging to find the balance between traditional ways of teaching in the law school and an interactive online course that would allow students to succeed in a virtual environment. The adaptive approach allows the instructional designers and faculty to reach more agreements with iterative efforts. We used the analytics provided by the media-hosting tool and the quiz tools as evidence to encourage meta-thinking about the faculty’s teaching practice. This led to minor changes to the course with significant impacts. With such evidence, faculty are more open to adapting their long-standing teaching practices and embracing new ways of designing online courses. Sometimes these metacognitive approaches to teaching online also inspire faculty to rethink their teaching practices in traditional classrooms, such as providing more measurable learning goals or diversifying assessment methods.

References

McKeachie, W. J. (1990) Research on College Teaching: The Historical Background, Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 2, 189-200.

Martin, R. E. (2009). The revenue-to-cost spiral in higher education. Raleigh, NC: John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED535460.pdf

Learning. Design. Analytics. Post 1: A Faculty Development Approach To Support Metacognitive Awareness During Course Adaptation

By Yianna Vovides, PhD (Series Editor), Georgetown University

I once worked with a faculty member who was skeptical about teaching an online course, let alone spending time working with a designer on it. So, after my first meeting with him, realizing his hesitations, I created a prototype based on his course syllabus to show him what was possible. I remember him saying, I couldn’t see how to teach my course online, I am not a techie, but maybe I can if you help me.

He now saw me as his coach and partner, helping him plan how to engage students, helping him put in place assignments that he could manage within the course management system, helping him during his teaching. All along, during the four months we spent on his course, I would ask him about his teaching philosophy and his approach to teaching in his discipline. About a month before the course was ready to launch, I asked him if he could write a few paragraphs to explain to his students what he was sharing with me about his choices in the readings, his expectations in relation to how students approached a text and what he looked for in their assignments. He did.

We ended up recording these (only audio) and adding them to his week-by-week course structure. I then asked him if he was up for doing some more recording that focused on the selection of texts in his courses. I asked him to share his study of the authors themselves. He did. I then created an e-book that students would use to explore a bit more about the authors from their instructor’s perspective.

When the course opened, I spent an hour on the phone walking him through how to respond to student posts in the discussion board. He said, Thank you, I think I can do this! And he did. During the first run of his course, I sent him weekly emails to check in and point out the student monitoring/analytic features for making sure his students were keeping up.

What does metacognition have to do with it?

Because the process of online course development takes time, the relationship between the designer and the faculty tends to result in one that lasts past that one course experience. It is usually after the first course design and the first time faculty teach their course when they realize how much they learned about teaching and learning. They then go on to adapt their other courses. They are more metacognitively aware. They are aware of their own approaches to teaching and learning, aware of what it takes to design and teach a course in another mode, and are aware that good design and teaching involves planning, monitoring, reflecting, evaluating, and adapting existing practices. This is how I define the process of course adaptation that we will explore further in this post.

Let us dig a bit deeper into course adaptation.

In this post, I describe the adaptive approach we have implemented as part of our online programs efforts at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), Georgetown University. The approach connects instructional design practices with a faculty development focus that encourages metacognition (planning, monitoring, evaluating). I started with the following overarching question: How should instructional designers guide faculty to rethink their approach to course design to follow an adaptive faculty development process? I then identified the following sub-questions that formed the basis of the approach and operationalizing the process:

What techniques can instructional designers follow to engage faculty in design thinking?
What techniques can instructional designers follow to engage faculty in meta reflections about their teaching methods?
How can instructional designers use learning analytics to help faculty continue engaging in meta reflections during their online teaching?

The questions I listed above offered the CNDLS online programs team a way to problematize our approach to design. I realized that we needed to make visible the levels (macro, meso, micro) that we address during the design process and enable faculty to navigate these successfully. We implemented a model that enables conversations about design and development at all levels by following a before, during, after approach (see Figure 1).

circle schematic with three equal components: before, during, after — Figure 1. Macro – Before, during, after model

The guiding questions start at the course level and move to sessions and sequence of engagement exploring the teaching and learning experience across time. These questions include but are not limited to the following:

Tell us about your course. What do you love about this course? What do you think the students love about this course?
What are the things that you think about when you prepare to teach this course?
How do you engage your students before the semester starts?
What do you do during that first class session?
What do you expect students to do during the first class session?
What do you do after the class session?
What do you want students to do after the class session?

These questions help faculty reflect about their approach to teaching and learning. By asking these questions up front and throughout the course adaptation process we are embedding metacognitive instruction within the course design model itself. In addition, throughout the design process we include check-in sessions that allow both the designer and faculty to pause and ask:

Is our design plan still valid?
Is our choice of technology going to support students in their learning process?
Do we need to do anything differently?

What these check-in questions do over the span of four to six months of engaging with an individual faculty on the course design and development process is that the conversations become connected across time and merge into a spiral design model. Figure 2 visualizes the spiral model that supports the faculty development approach that instructional designers take. Once faculty members experience this model, they continue to follow this design approach as they envision their other courses. In addition, they tend to re-visit their approach to their teaching shifting from an instructor-centered to a student-centered approach.

Because the model is based on time, it easily communicates across the various disciplines. What do I mean by that? Because the conversations that surround this model are related to teaching practices, it is also a way to account for contact time (faculty-student interaction) and learning time (student effort). We refer to the combination of contact time and learning time as instructional time in conversations with faculty. In remote teaching and learning, instructional time is an entry point to envisioning how learning can happen in different ways.

The rest of the mini-series on Learning. Design. Analytics. includes examples using this approach that highlight strategies used to activate metacognitive awareness during the course design and re-design process through the designer-faculty interaction. In addition, the series highlights how technology interventions and learning analytics are integrated as part of the process.

Some background about instructional design and online education to frame the approach

Adapting traditional classroom-based courses to online may sound simple given that online education has been around for more than two decades. In fact, instructional design, a field of study that is over 80 years old, offers theories, models, and processes that guide designers to make this adaptation from traditional classroom-based teaching to online. This is a technical challenge – solutions are available and are knowable. However, in higher education, the instructional design process, when framed to support faculty development, introduces complexity. The challenge is no longer technical because the focus of the challenge is no longer about the course adaptation from traditional to online but the people involved in making the adaptation happen (faculty, designers, media specialists, students, and other members of the team that supports this process). It is a process of transformation.

Let us pull this apart a bit more. Higher education as an institution has been described as lacking innovation and flexibility for promoting impactful teaching and learning (Rooney et al., 2006). That was in 2006. Between 2006 and 2016, we have seen online education grow and thrive with over 6 million students (approximately 30% of all higher education students) enrolled in at least one distance education course in the United States (Allen & Seaman, 2017). Then COVID-19 happened. Remote teaching and learning is happening across the globe and is now the new normal. Given the speed of the changes, some schools have been able to pivot and put in place the needed support for their instructors while others are struggling to determine what that support needs to be and how to operationalize it.

There are many factors that contribute to these decisions besides resources such as institutional, departmental, and individual cultural norms. For example, the institutional culture may be known by those who are in it but much of it is hidden from those new to it which may lead to actions that are oftentimes driven by assumptions rather than visible evidence (Halupa, 2019). Many academic departments tend to value individual contributions and can propagate a competitive rather than a collaborative environment. This may then lead to a less cohesive curriculum online. Individual faculty members are experts in their discipline but not necessarily in the discipline of teaching and learning. Therefore, within this complex network of needs, faculty development efforts in higher education try to balance group and individual engagements to provide opportunities for faculty to get the support they need in their teaching.

Recognizing that there are different instructional development needs necessitates that we offer different entry points and pathways in our faculty development programming. Within the online course design efforts, we work with faculty to help them see their teaching challenge from a design thinking perspective that begins with an exploration of what individual learners will experience. By doing so, we are no longer facing a technical challenge but rather an adaptive one because we are now focusing on individual learner needs. To tackle this adaptive challenge that is implicitly dynamic because of the focus on humans, we argue that the approach requires that planning, monitoring, and evaluation become an integral part of the process at both the cognitive and metacognitive levels.

References

Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2017). Digital Compass Learning: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017. Babson survey research group.

Halupa, C. (2019). Differentiation of Roles: Instructional Designers and Faculty in the Creation of Online Courses. International Journal of Higher Education, 8(1), 55-68.

Rooney, P., Hussar, W., Planty, M., Choy, S., Hampden-Thompson, G., Provasnik, S., & Fox, M. A. (2006). The Condition of Education, 2006. NCES 2006-071. National Center for Education Statistics.

Using Metacognition to Facilitate Scholarly Identity

by Anton Tolman, Ph.D., Guest Editor

This is the final and concluding blog for our series. I want to thank my colleagues for their time and effort in this project: Steven Pearlman, Christopher Lee, and Benjamin Johnson. Speaking for all of us, we hope you found our thoughts helpful in enriching your own thinking regarding metacognition and its importance in student learning.

The topics of this series, critical thinking, inclusive classrooms, student motivation, and succeeding with collaborative learning, are all essential themes in local and national discussions right now concerning student engagement and effective teaching. Each of the blogs in the series also touched on resistance to change (faculty or student), either explicitly or implicitly, the role of humility, and the development of metacognitive skills in achieving successful outcomes. Enhancing metacognition in ourselves and in our students is an ongoing progression, a journey, and we are happy to be walking it with you. In this last blog, I address the connection between metacognition and development of students’ personal narrative, their identity as scholars or educated persons. I believe this is the true heart of higher education and the core of its value to society.

You Can’t Change What You Can’t See

This phrase is an axiom in clinical work with clients. Clients often come to see a therapist knowing that things are wrong in their lives, but they don’t understand the reasons why or do not see a path forward to healing. They can’t change their lives for the better until they begin to “see” the nature of their problems, accept responsibility for their own role in those problems, and imagine and start to walk the road ahead.

This axiom applies to students. They usually come to college based on the promise of an economic benefit like higher paying jobs, or because they see a degree as a requirement for future goals. Many, if not most, see the purpose of education as learning facts or information and therefore, see the role of professors as experts who teach them content. When they are confronted with assignments that ask them to use critical thinking, solve problems, or work together, they can become easily frustrated. Thus, the terms “jumping through hoops” and “busy work” are commonly found in student conversations about their classes. These forms of resistance (Tolman & Kremling, 2017) are understandable because many students can’t see that the real goal of higher education is skill development, not content; it is not easily visible to them. Like the therapist’s clients, they won’t make progress until they develop the capacity to recognize the underlying issues and see the path ahead as one of purpose and value.

Student resistance to learning begins to diminish when students evaluate their own attitudes and behaviors and connect those behaviors to their academic performance. When they learn to develop metacognitive skills they can “see” previously unseen patterns in themselves and others: they recognize their own complicity in their academic struggles and begin to grasp that they are not just consumers of external information or persons being judged by some authority figure. This empowers them to assume responsibility, take action on their own, to succeed, to grow, and to become part of a community of learners.

Seeing is Believing: Shifting Identity in Higher Education

In his recent blog, Taraban (2020) describes identity as an ongoing form of development grounded in episodic memory: the story we tell ourselves about who we are. This self-narrated story is strongly shaped by the boundaries of what students “see” as the purpose of education, their personal goals, and how they approach learning. If students’ sense of identity about who they are does not change from that of being consumers of content or “students”, then we have failed them.

If we were to adopt the model of cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1987) in our teaching, seeing ourselves more as mentors to students, then our major task becomes to shift their story, their identity, to that of being apprentices, not students. As apprentices, they are learning new skills under the guidance of an expert who cares for them, and who asks them to constantly re-evaluate what they are learning, consider how they are learning it, and when and how to use what they are learning. This entails a transition towards seeing themselves as participating members of the academy, as scholars and educated persons who contribute to society; metacognition is at the core of this identity shift.

Undergraduate research is a great example of this as articulated by Charity-Hudley, Dickter, and Franz (2017). They explain that the mechanism of action of this “high impact” practice on student success and retention, especially for minority or under-represented students, begins as students enter into a mentored relationship with a professor. Moving away from the traditional “student” role enables them to realize there is more to learning besides getting a grade or completing course assignments. Metacognitive activity like learning to reflect and ask their own questions, carry out their own research, generate new data, challenge their own ideas as well as existing ideas in the discipline, and create new understandings, makes them a contributor to knowledge, not just a consumer. They are a scholar, or at least a scholar-apprentice, and those episodic memories begin to shift their own narrative identity — who they see themselves to be, how they interpret their own life and future. Of course, participating in research is not the only path available to this outcome.

This student progression requires creating opportunities for students to develop and use their metacognitive skills. In both Steve Pearlman’s (this blog series) and Hale’s (2012) potent arguments, the development of metacognitive and critical thinking skills is integral to development of a “personal intellectual narrative”; you cannot discuss metacognition without referencing aspects of critical thinking, and you cannot explain critical thinking without referring to the metacognitive processes involved. As Hale (2012) says, cultivation of an “intellectual language” is a key process in this development; it inducts students into the “Great Conversation” and it becomes part of their own personal history of intellectual development. The more we integrate metacognitive opportunities in our classes, and across the curriculum, the more likely we are to observe this transition occur.

Suggestions for Teaching

Here are some thoughts about ways to incorporate metacognitive practices that promote personal narratives in students:

Emphasize transparency and relevance. Explain the purposes of our assignments not just for short-term outcomes (learn something for a grade), but for the long-term (learn something to enhance a career and personal life, contribute to society); define and set expectations about the value of metacognition and its role in professional thinking within your discipline.
Assign metacognitive tasks that require students to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses as learners, identify learning strategies they are using and those they are not, and ask them to connect this information to their personal and career goals. Benjamin Johnson’s description of the Personal Learning Plan (this blog series), based partly on completing practical metacognitive inventories and evaluating how to improve is an example.
Emphasize the value of students thinking about their own development over time and their personal histories; reflective writing assignments, in all fields, are useful for this.
Use inquiry assignments requiring students to develop their own questions, do their own research, and apply it to course content and their lives.
Create opportunities for students to make their own thinking visible to themselves. Encourage them to question their learning, their assumptions, and acknowledge their areas of confusion as a community of learners. Hale (2012) suggests learning logs, real-time student writing of their thinking, questions, and descriptions of how they are approaching content, assignments, and preparation.
Shift your role from “sage on the stage” to a mentor of cognitive apprentices. Model professional thinking; demonstrate metacognition and critical thinking and help the students recognize it and practice it. One way I do this is to ask, and continuously reinforce, that students call me Coach T. In my syllabus I explain the rationale for this: my purpose is to facilitate their learning, give them exercises to improve, and to clarify or assist, but the basic responsibility for their learning, as with any athlete, actor, or musician, lies with themselves.
Evaluate your course design: what are the memories and personal experiences your students will take away relevant to metacognition? Do your assignments focus primarily on content acquisition or do they promote skill development, a sense of growth and progress towards becoming a scholar, ability to speak the intellectual language of the discipline and to reason within its context? What are your course objectives and where do they point your students: towards content, or towards becoming scholars?

These teaching practices help students “connect the dots” and see patterns they did not know existed: how they approach learning, how well they are learning, the purpose of education, and their own intellectual growth and development. Doing this reduces resistance and shifts their understanding of learning and of themselves. When we move our perspective from content to skills and weave metacognitive development into the fabric of our class, we create an environment encouraging the exploration of new personal narratives and identity for our students. This brings us closer towards achieving the potential that higher education has to offer. If you are already doing these things, hone your work, expand your empathy, and become more transparent. If you are not, you can see the road ahead, and you don’t have to travel it alone. Reach out, learn from others, and find greater joy in what you do.

References:

Charity-Hudley, A.H., Dickter, C.L., & Franz, H.A. (2017). The Indispensable Guide to Undergraduate Research: Success In and Beyond College. New York: Teachers College Press.

Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1987). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics (Technical Report No. 403). BBN Laboratories, Cambridge, MA.

Hale, E. (2012). Conceptualizing a personal intellectual history/narrative: The importance of strong-sense metacognition to thinking critically. In M.F. Shaughnessy (Ed). Critical Thinking and Higher Order Thinking. Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Taraban, R. (2020, June 25). Metacognition and the Development of Self. ImproveWithMetacognition.com. https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognition-and-self-identity/

Tolman, A.O. & Kremling, J. (2017). Why Students Resist Learning: A Practical Model for Understanding and Helping Students. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Boosting the Effectiveness of Collaborative Learning Using Metacognition

by Anton Tolman, PhD, Guest Editor, Utah Valley University

The introductory blog for this series included a figure of the Integrated Model of Student Resistance (IMSR; Tolman & Kremling, 2017). That image (shown below) illustrates that student resistance is the outcome of systemic factors, including lack of metacognition. The IMSR demonstrates that family and the larger culture (including institutional culture) may promote consumer expectations and that these elements (poor metacognitive skills and culture) often intersect with instructor behaviors and attitudes, leading to negative experiences in education. This, in turn, increases student resistance, especially towards active learning.

These elements are also exacerbated by student cognitive development, which is overlooked by many instructors as a relevant element in metacognition, classroom experiences, and resistance. For example, Nufher (2014) summarizes the work of William Perry (1999) who carried out longitudinal studies of college student cognitive development. Students react with varying degrees of resistance to education depending on their level of cognitive development. Progressing in cognitive development can take time, but several authors have noted that effective use of metacognition and other strategies may accelerate this process, including careful metacognitive exercises (see Nuhfer, 2014; Nelson, 2015; Kloss, 1994).

The IMSR was created to help instructors begin to see resistance differently than they typically do; it is a communication signal from students that something is not working and, rather than dismiss it or try to assert their authority, the solution lies in addressing the underlying causes, including lack of metacognition. A recently published study in nursing (Stover & Holland, 2018) reported that use of the IMSR to redesign a collaborative learning-based course resulted in reduced resistance to collaborative learning, a greater sense of belonging to a community of inquiry, higher student satisfaction, and less negative comments or concerns. For a full explanation of the model, see Tolman and Kremling (2017).

Students not actively using metacognitive skills are more likely to resist active teaching efforts because they see themselves as passive consumers of information whose main concern is to meet requirements set by an authority figure in order to graduate. My experience is that student resistance is greater in courses requiring collaborative learning because students are expected to work together on activities important to their grade. Now, imagine the level of resistance to collaborative learning in my online Abnormal Psychology course! When students see the syllabus, the most common resistant comment I receive is “I took this course online so I would not have to work with others.”

We should acknowledge that some of that resistance is justified. Collaborative learning pedagogies are not simple, and unfortunately are sometimes implemented ineffectively, leading to negative experiences for students. U.S. culture is highly individualistic and emphasizes personal success rather than group efforts despite the fact that society depends on the ability of people to work effectively together. Students often see collaborative learning as either a potential threat to their grade, or often based on prior experiences, as an added burden due to social loafing by peers. Many students have never been explicitly taught how to manage conflict, work with others, seek understanding of alternate viewpoints, and are unaware of the data indicating that diverse groups usually reach more effective problem solutions.

Thus, we have a storm of interacting elements here of culture/consumerism, negative prior experiences (with both peers and instructors), student lack of awareness of their own level of communication and collaboration skills and how to monitor and improve collaboration, and usually cognitive development where some students on the team see collaborative assignments as about “getting the right answer” rather than being about enriching their understanding of the material and promoting critical thinking (see Nelson, 2015). Let’s use the specific example of my Abnormal Psychology course to illustrate these issues and how promoting metacognition can help.

Example of Incorporating Metacognition: An Online Abnormal Psychology Course

Students know from the syllabus that the class will involve working in teams; they also know that course objectives are weighted towards development of professional skills as well as content learning. They begin to engage with metacognitive assignments by completing two instruments¹:

the TTM-Learning Survey (TTM-LS) assesses the student’s degree of readiness to change how they learn and their readiness to engage with a collaborative team, and
the Learning Strategies Self-Assessment (LSSA) measures how often they use known effective learning strategies and engages them with reflective questions.

These assignments are due the first two weeks, before team activities begin.

A comparison of typical responses across two particular LSSA questions reveals some helpful insights on student thinking about collaborative learning. One LSSA reflective question asks them about their personal goals for the course. Despite knowing the class will involve teamwork, only 5% of the students indicated any related personal goal for improving their teamwork skills and learning (Fall, 2018 class). However, when the LSSA asks students to review their learning strategy scores and identify their strengths and weaknesses as a learner, 39% of them acknowledged weakness in collaboration or a reluctance to work with others. For instance,

Student A wrote, “I have a hard time asking for help when I get frustrated or confused. I feel like it is my responsibility to learn the material and do not want to put someone else out by making them take the time to teach me a concept I should be able to learn on my own.”
Student B replied, “I noticed that I’m very good at doing things on my own but when it comes to asking for help or working in groups, I don’t do it as often.”
Student C said, “I have learned many strategies throughout my academic experience on working with teams and they were mostly negative.”

At the beginning of the semester, these instruments opened the door for students to own these emotions and experiences, to think about how they could do better, how ready they were to change, to take responsibility for their own skill development, and to at least be willing to consider the value of collaborative learning. Instructors using instruments like this have the opportunity to provide feedback, lower resistance, and engage with these students in productive ways to prepare them to do well in a collaborative course, even if it is online.

Sibley and Ostafichuk (2014) describe some interventions instructors can take to help students “buy in” to the value of Team-Based Learning (TBL) including explaining the purpose and relevance of TBL, acknowledging negative experiences, and demonstrating the difference in quiz scores by teams compared with individuals (teams do better). These efforts are useful, but they are not inherently metacognitive and could be seen as just more instructor justification. The critical task for the instructor is to foster, across the semester, metacognitive thinking and evaluation of how collaborative experiences enhance their learning and strengthen their critical thinking and communication skills. Other aspects of TBL such as self and peer evaluation, if done well, also promote metacognitive development and learning.

Making Metacognition Pervasive

To be effective, metacognitive activities in collaborative environments must occur across the semester; single assignments or events will be insufficient. For example, a week after completing the two instruments above, students complete a Personal Learning Plan. They are asked to reflect on their TTM-LS readiness to change stages and to explain their next steps to become more effective learners and team members. They also create a personal study plan for the semester.

As students launch their teams, they engage in readings about the value of professional team skills in the workplace and engage with sites like Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (https://teamwork.umn.edu/) to identify common myths contributing to negative experiences and devise a plan for working together. A later team workshop asks them to evaluate team progress and identify areas for improvement. Online videos and class discussions on these topics, connecting the themes to professional practice in the field, are also vital. These metacognitive “boosters” help them continue progress in the development of these skills.

Wirth and Perkins (2013) note that metacognitive skills must be developed in the disciplinary context, with students questioning their own mastery, progress, and applying relevant concepts. Designing collaborative learning courses to engage students in metacognitive activities from the very beginning and then continuing that dialogue can lead to significant gains in learning content and development of metacognitive, critical thinking, and collaboration skills.

At the end of the semester, my students complete the TTM-LS and LSSA again. Some questions ask them to identify activities that enriched their learning and how they will use what they learned in the future.

Student A stated, “I will try to form a study group or a team to try to learn the material, because I felt the more I taught the others the more I learned for myself.”
Student B noted, “…Meeting in a group was probably the most beneficial way for me to learn the course material. Looking back, it’s kind of ironic that that is my favorite aspect because I fought it so hard in the beginning”, and
Student C, who had a difficult semester, reflected, “[My] attitudes have been changing and so [has]my way of dealing with group work. I learned I had to change my attitude in order to change the way I think about an issue…”

In total, 80% of the students made statements positive about team work and how it benefitted them in response to these questions. Building ongoing metacognitive activities into collaborative learning environments makes a significant difference to student success.

References

Kloss, R.J. (1994). A nudge is best. College Teaching, 42(4), 151-159.

Nelson, C. (2015, February 15). Fostering Metacognition: Right-Answer Focused versus Epistemologically Transgressive. ImprovewithMetacognition.com. https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/fostering-metacognition-right-answer-focused-versus-epistemologically-transgressive/

Nuhfer, E. (2014, July 15). Metacognition for Guiding Students to Awareness of Higher-level Thinking (Part 1). ImprovewithMetacognition.com. https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognition-for-guiding-students-to-awareness-of-higher-level-thinking-part-1/

Perry, W. G., Jr. (1999). Forms of intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. (Reprint of the original 1968 1st ed). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sibley, J. & Ostafichuck, P. (Eds). (2014). Getting Started with Team-Based Learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Stover, S. & Holland, C. (2018). Student resistance to collaborative learning. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 12(2), Article 8. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2018.120208

Tolman, A.O. & Kremling, J. (2017). Why Students Resist Learning: A Practical Model for Understanding and Helping Students. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Wirth, K.R. & Perkins, D. (2008). Learning to Learn. Retrieved from: http://www.macalester.edu/geology/wirth/CourseMaterials.html

¹ These instruments are available under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to contact me (Anton Tolman).