Author: Hillary Steiner

Changing Campus Culture with the Ace-Your-Course Challenge

In the final post of the guest blog series on “Working with Faculty to Promote Metacognition,” Dr. Eric Kaldor discusses lessons learned from the implementation of a campus-wide metacognition program inspired by Saundra McGuire’s work. The associated research project was awarded the Robert J. Menges Award for Outstanding Research in Educational Development by the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network.

by Eric Kaldor, Ph.D.; Associate Director, Sheridan Center for Teaching & Learning, Brown University

For many faculty members, the “fact” that some students are just not capable of college-level learning remains part of the taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in the culture of disciplines and campuses. Despite significant efforts to share insights from the scholarship on metacognition and growth mindsets (e.g. Doyle & Zakrajsek, 2013; Dweck, 2016; McGuire, 2015; Nilson, 2013), campus cultures are slow to change, and fixed mindsets continue to dominate many institutions. This post describes efforts to change the culture at the University of Rhode Island, the communication strategy we used, and some lessons learned.

With approximately 14,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 full and part-time faculty, the University of Rhode Island is a challenging setting to advance culture change. Our story began with a conversation with Melvin Wade, former Director of the Multicultural Student Services Center (MSSC). I was working in the Office for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning (ATL) and planning for Saundra McGuire to visit our campus. I was particularly concerned to fill our 1,000-person auditorium with students for her “Metacognition is Key” workshop. When I asked for his advice, Melvin insisted we must ensure her visit had a lasting impact on our campus. Toward this end, we assembled a group of professional staff and graduate students from ATL, the MSSC, the Academic Enhancement Center, First-Year Programs, and Professional Advising. Over a series of conversations, this informal group conceived of something we came to call the Ace-Your-Course (AYC) Challenge. We assumed we would only run the AYC Challenge once as a companion to Dr. McGuire’s workshop. Instead, a snowstorm gave the Challenge a much longer life.

Building on the McGuire Model

We designed the AYC Challenge to extend students’ metacognitive experience and reflections beyond Dr. McGuire’s workshop. We developed the AYC Challenge as four weekly self-assessment surveys (for detailed description see Kaldor & Swanson, 2019) to create additional metacognitive experiences (Flavell, 1979) by encouraging students to:

  1. Test learning strategies relevant to them individually.
  2. Engage in key practices for metacognitive reflection: observation, description, evaluation, and action planning.
  3. Feel part of a larger community working to grow as learners.

When a snowstorm postponed Dr. McGuire’s visit to the next semester, our multi-unit team led her workshop twice using slides and talking points from her book (McGuire, 2015) and invited students to participate in the AYC Challenge. Of the 240 students attending a workshop, 50 completed all four weeks of the challenge. After we shared the positive results from our pilot with faculty members, many encouraged their students to attend Dr. McGuire’s rescheduled workshop in September 2017. Some went further and agreed to share grade data as part of an IRB-approved study to examine how participation affected grades. We specifically identified a set of gateway science courses from Chemistry, Biology, and Nutrition and Food Sciences that have large enrollments of first-year students.

Over 1,000 students attended Dr. McGuire’s workshop with some in remote viewing locations, and 202 of those completed the second AYC Challenge. The self-reported results for this larger group were strikingly similar to those from students in the pilot AYC Challenge when we led the workshops. Holly Swanson and I analyzed final grades for 979 students in the eight gateway science sections (347 attended the workshop and of those 55 completed the challenge) using OLS regression with controls for several predictors of academic performance including high school GPA and exam 1 z-score. Compared with their peers who did not attend the workshop or participate in the challenge, attending the workshop and completing the AYC Challenge was associated with a final course grade half of a letter grade higher (Kaldor & Swanson, 2018).

Inclusive and Extensive Communication

Much of our success originated from a spiral of communication that grew outwards from a core group of professional staff and graduate students who became involved in planning for Dr. McGuire’s originally scheduled visit. Our colleagues working in various student support services helped develop a plan to reach students and motivate them to attend the workshop and participate in the challenge. These colleagues advised us on when to hold the workshop, how to market our efforts, and what kinds of messages would appeal to students.

One critical piece of advice was that students were more likely to attend if instructors offered extra credit. In the faculty development office, we knew that instructors of large enrollment courses would only offer extra credit if it did not add significant work. Using google forms, a mail merge add-on, card swipe readers, and course rosters, we developed a system for students to pre-register, receive reminder emails, and swipe their id cards after the workshop. With this system in place, instructors for over 30 courses received a list of student attendees within a week of the workshop.

To nudge students who attended the workshop to start the Challenge and complete all four weeks, we used two techniques. First, students were told that completing all four weeks would make them eligible for a drawing for ten $100 gift cards to the campus book store. Second, we started the Challenge at the end of the workshop with students selecting one or more strategies to try on a Google form at the end of the workshop.

photo of Ace Your Course Challenge winners
Four of the ten winners of a raffle for students who completed the Ace Your Course Challenge.

The next spiral outwards involved engaging more faculty in a conversation on the powerful ways they could help their students learn. Prior initiatives that had promoted Dweck’s (2016) insights on growth mindsets had primed many faculty and staff for these conversations. Specifically, they wanted to know what else they could do beyond promoting a growth mindset, and a metacognitive approach to learning strategies offered them concrete answers.

In addition, faculty members who had moved away from fixed mindsets about who could succeed in their courses shared their insights on how to approach their still skeptical peers. We developed a strategy of presenting quantitative data alongside student voices to describe the student experience (examples are available here: https://web.uri.edu/atl/ace-your-course-challenge/). Initially, our quantitative data was limited to student self-reports. With the benefit of a snowstorm, we had the chance to organize an IRB approved research project to answer important questions that skeptics raised.

As we shared this data on campus, we were asked to try different permutations of the Metacognition Workshop plus AYC Challenge in two different settings – a support program for conditionally readmitted students and two gateway chemistry courses. In addition, we were asked to offer workshops for professional staff and faculty so they could include McGuire’s approach in their programs and courses.

One of the most successful workshops, “Teach Your Students How to Learn in 50-minutes” provided an annotated version of Dr. McGuire’s slides with breakout discussions about the key messages to motivate students. This led many instructors to experiment with including different elements of her metacognitive approach to learning strategies into their courses.

Some Lessons Learned and Suspected

Each AYC Challenge has generated new data and insights into the potential for URI students to make significant gains in their metacognition. This new data has generated new conversations, which have led to variations on the McGuire workshop and/or the AYC Challenge. This has been a fruitful if unintended process.

Our skeptical internal voice continues to ask how we could nudge more students into participating. We noticed lower participation rates for students from historically marginalized groups in our gateway science course study. This led us to experiment with embedding the workshop plus challenge into courses, but our early experience raised many concerns around overloading instructors and maintaining fidelity with the core AYC challenge experience.

In a promising next iteration, my URI colleague Michelle Fontes-Barros has suggested a partnership with student organizations and clubs, particularly STEM affinity groups for students from historically marginalized groups. Convinced of the value, a student group might sponsor a workshop in a regular meeting space. Student leaders might promote peer commitments to complete the AYC Challenge. Past AYC Challenge participants might help present the workshop and send messages during the Challenge to encourage persistence. This next iteration has the potential to be much more student-centered, but it will be important to critically evaluate the student experience and share results with the wider university community to energize the campus conversation on metacognitive development.

Doyle, T., & Zakrajsek, T. (2013). The New science of learning: How to learn in harmony with your brain. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Dweck, C. S. (2016). Mindset: The new psychology of success (Updated Edition). New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906–911.

Kaldor, E., & Swanson, H. (2018, November). A campus-wide strategy to develop metacognition in gateway science courses. Paper presented at the POD Network Conference, Portland, Oregon.

Kaldor, E., & Swanson, H. (2019). How can you elevate metacognition on your campus? Try the Ace-Your-Course Challenge. The National Teaching & Learning Forum, 28(2), 5–7.

McGuire, S. Y. (2015). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Nilson, L. B. (2013). Creating self-regulated learners: Strategies to strengthen students’ self-awareness and learning skills. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.


Using Communities of Practice to Support Online Educators in Fostering Student Metacognition in Virtual Classrooms

The second post in the “Working with Faculty to Promote Metacognition” guest series is from educational consultant Valencia Gabay, who writes about establishing communities of practice with faculty at a fully online institution to promote metacognition through the instructors’ own reflections on teaching.

by Valencia Gabay
Educational Consultant, Orlando, Florida
Doctoral Student, Organizational Leadership
Indiana Wesleyan University

In our society, the tides of change force students to be highly motivated, self-directed learners. However, authors Cameron and Quinn (2015) stated, “The implication in education is that we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, to use technologies that have not yet been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet” (p. 9). So, how do we prepare students to flourish in this brave new world? One answer: we inspire them to be intellectually curious and use their metacognitive knowledge.  But, we must first tap into our own metacognitive knowledge to support students in doing the same.

picture showing black and orange question marks on a black table

Metacognition is thinking about how you think and the ability to evaluate one’s use of knowledge in learning and decision-making processes (Halpern, 2015). And, like critical thinking, metacognitive skills can be taught even in a virtual learning environment. Our book, Group Coaching and Mentoring: A Framework for Fostering Organizational Change (Algozzini, Gabay, Voyles, Bessolo, & Batchelor, 2017) presented a unique professional development model in which the community of practice approach helped online instructors integrate metacognitive strategies into their instructional practices.

I use the study described in this book to illustrate how instructors, in collective learning spaces, can generate intellectual curiosity and metacognitive energy that is transferable to the virtual classroom (Algozzini et al., 2017). In this study, a faculty director at a fully online university placed 43 online instructors into six communities of practice, each facilitated by a mentor lead. Using web-based conferencing tools, communities of practice met weekly over approximately nine months to discuss information on metacognition and its value to their professional development. Communities of practice cultivated metacognitive energy in two distinct ways.

Using Self-reflection

First, leads used communities of practice to create moments for self-reflection. Instructors assessed their current teaching styles with their peers and examined ways metacognition could influence job performance. Reflection is paramount to enhancing metacognition, but it is essential to know how to question to prompt reflection. According to organizational psychologist and researcher Dr. Tasha Eurich (2017),

  • Why questions can draw us to our limitations;
  • What questions help us see our potential.
  • Why questions stir up negative emotions;
  • What questions keep us curious.
  • Why questions trap us in our past;
  • What questions help us create a better future. (Eurich, 2017, para. 13)

As such, our community leads used the following lines of questioning to encourage instructors to foster a stronger connection with metacognition.

  • In your own words, how would you define metacognition?
  • What does metacognition mean for you as an instructor?
  • What information from the resources about metacognition resonated with you the most?
  • How can you apply that information in the classroom setting to promote student success?

The reflective questioning sparked a renewed interest in intellectual wellbeing. Instructors saw themselves as learners, became aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and set attainable goals towards self-improvement. 

Creating Metacognitively-based Conversations

Second, instructors learned how to fashion metacognitively-based conversations. Those who question critically tend to be strong critical thinkers, and critical thinkers rely on metacognition to ensure their thinking processes will reach desired learning outcomes (Halpern, 2014). Therefore, the community leads challenged instructors to use open-ended questions to keep discussions robust when engaging with their colleagues in communities of practice meetings.  Additionally, instructors participated in exercises using Bloom’s Taxonomy to develop question stems that produced higher order thinking.

Impact for Online Instructors

In a survey, instructors reported that communities of practice provided a safe place for learning how to question and evaluate one’s skills. After working in communities of practice, instructors became more confident using metacognition to bridge gaps in their work performance (Algozzini et al., 2017). Most importantly, instructors possessed a model for generating intellectual curiosity and metacognition among their students. It started with teaching them the power of reflective questioning. This change in teaching style emerged through the prism of social, teaching, and cognitive presence (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2005).

Instructors increased their social presence and transformed their virtual classrooms into a community where students felt comfortable reflecting on what they learned. (Here is a collection of Tips for Creating Social Presence in Online Classrooms.) Instructors knew that students possess a teaching presence; they learn with and from each other. Therefore, instructors made learning content more relatable. They incorporated popular global or national issues relevant to the class discussion, so students could apply what they learned to real life examples. Finally, instructors strengthened their cognitive presence by using class forums to host metacognitively-based conversations. They challenged student thinking by asking open-ended questions and pushing them to support their claims with facts (Algozzini et al., 2017). As instructors demonstrated these tactics, students did the same among their peers.

Inspiring students to be intellectually curious begins with us recognizing that we as instructors are also learners who need to invest in our intellectual wellbeing to better serve the population we teach. We want students to know how to reflect and question as they develop into the thought leaders and global thinkers of tomorrow.  So, as you prepare your students for this brave new world, consider the following questions: How are you staying intellectually curious? In what ways are you using your metacognitive knowledge to support students to think and to question?

References

Algozzini, L., Gabay,V., Voyles, S., Bessolo, K., & Batchelor, G. (2017). Group coaching and mentoring: A framework for fostering organizational change. Campbell, CA: FastPencil, Inc. 

Cameron, K. S & Quinn, R.E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. San Francisco, CA:  John Wiley & Son, INC.

Eurich, T. (2017). The right way to be introspective: Yes, there’s a wrong way. Retrieved from https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/

Garrison, D. R., Anderson T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. Internet and Higher Education, 13(1), 1–2.

Halpern, D. F. (2014). Thought and knowledge, An introduction to critical thinking, (5th ed.). New York, NY: Psychology Press.


Who is Qualified to Teach Metacognition?

In the second post of the “Working with Faculty to Promote Metacognition” guest series, Dr. Nirmal Trivedi discusses several ways he helps a diverse set of instructors with varying metacognition experience integrate the topic into their first-year seminar courses. For his work with first-year seminars, Dr. Trivedi received the 2018 Excellence in Teaching First-Year Seminars Award from the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.

by Nirmal Trivedi, Ph.D.
Director, First-Year Seminars and Assistant Professor of English
Department of First-Year and Transition Studies
Kennesaw State University 

Who is qualified to teach metacognition? If we agree that teaching the concept often results in improved academic performance, shouldn’t all faculty members be trained on how, when, and why metacognition should be embedded into their courses, regardless of content area?

At Kennesaw State University, we’ve had a unique opportunity to redesign our First-Year Seminar course to include a heavy focus on metacognition. This 3-credit academic seminar, which is largely uniform in content and required of most first-time students, serves approximately 3,500 students each fall semester with anywhere between 65-80 part-time and full-time faculty teaching the course. The vast majority of these instructors do not have a background in psychology of human learning, and many have either never taught college students, or have only taught them beyond the first year.

Thankfully, student testimonials reflecting positive experiences with our seminar’s focus on metacognition have served to intrigue those who are new to metacognition and convinced skeptical faculty of the value of teaching the concept and its practice. Recent popularization of the concept by Professor Emerita of Chemical Education, Dr. Sandra McGuire, has helped to demystify the term for students and educators alike. Her two books, Teach Students How to Learn and Teach Yourself How to Learn, written for faculty and students, respectively, provide guidance for the uninitiated. McGuire effectively shows why metacognition is essential for all educators to know and teach. An answer to how one builds a local cohort of metacognition experts without the disciplinary expertise in educational psychology, however, can be elusive.

As someone new to teaching metacognition—a kind of “metacognition convert” myself—I can relate to the need of faculty for a clear rationale for changing teaching methods. In this post, I outline five steps that we have used at KSU to develop faculty to incorporate metacognition into their own teaching. In our First-Year Seminar, we train faculty on how and when to take each of the steps through an initial training session at the beginning of the semester and by providing template assignments with embedded reflection questions that call for metacognitive thinking. This approach has helped us build a growing cohort of local metacognition advocates.

Step 1: Make Student Learning Transparent to Faculty

Most faculty agree that they want to see more engagement in class material from their students. Most want to see their students read carefully, practice their writing skills, and to self-evaluate how and why certain learning strategies work or don’t work. Perhaps most of all, faculty want more time to discuss ideas and less time guessing how much or how little students have learned by the end of each class session.

In our program, we train faculty to make learning transparent by asking students to write two “takeaways” at the end of a class session. The questions are “what are two points you will remember from today’s lecture and what is one question that you still have about the topic?” The exercise demonstrates what students actually remember from a class session. In our faculty training, we incorporate the “takeaways” after each component of the training to showcase how the exercise works and to help the training presenters to clarify their own message. In seeing how the simple metacognitive exercise can assist faculty in their own learning by making learning transparent, faculty begin to ask about how much of what they themselves teach is actually absorbed by their students.

The takeaways also serve as a useful beginning of the next session’s lecture or discussion. Faculty have found that their own class preparation is significantly simplified since they are better informed as to what their students understand and don’t understand. It’s important that these takeaways remain anonymous to allow for authentic student responses.

Step 2: Relate to the Student Experience

We train faculty to respond to the students’ desire to learn deeply by focusing learning outcomes not only on teaching content, but on how to learn the content. For example, we prepare faculty to show their students how to read the course textbook through strategic skimming, annotating, and self-testing. In one component of the training, each faculty member is taught a short lesson about how to read actively (as if the faculty were the students) followed by a series of student testimonials reflecting on the lesson’s impact.

From the student perspective, it matters less that the faculty member is a metacognition expert than if he or she truly cares about their learning. We know how underprepared many students are for college academics, but we often neglect to understand that many students crave to learn and just need appropriate challenge and support. As one student says in a takeaway after an active reading lesson, “why don’t they teach

Student quote: "Why don't they teach this earlier in the school system?"

Step 3: Conduct a Learning Demonstration

Faculty can be students too. In addition to demonstrating how to teach active reading, we introduce metacognition to faculty through common learning experiments such as the “Count the Vowels” Activity,” or a “Levels of Processing” activity. The goal of these exercises is to emphasize how memory is tied to our brain chemistry.

Faculty tend to value the impact of these exercises as they themselves are in the process of mastering the new content.

Step 4: Demonstrate Value of Process Alongside Content

Of course, it is essential that faculty understand that conceptual knowledge about metacognition is distinct from practicing metacognitive techniques (Pintrich, 2002). The distinction makes way for a productive discussion about the amount of content required for each course.

For some time, teaching scholars have been urging faculty to consider how much specific course content is necessary. The Association of American Colleges & Universities, for example, conceptualized their “Essential Learning Outcomes” (ELO) as balancing content knowledge with skill-based actions. With a course like a First-Year Seminar that makes metacognition and its practice very explicit, achieving an ELO like “developing skills for lifelong learning” quite feasible.

Each of our template assignments and rubrics include prompts for students to explain how they learned the material as well as what they have learned.

Step 5: Make the Case for Equity in Learning Skills

Ultimately, teaching students how we learn can bridge the gap between those who have had opportunities to explicitly practice these metacognition techniques in secondary school and those who have never encountered them before. The responsibility of educators is all the more important since even non-experts in learning theory can learn and disseminate the techniques with minimal training. Elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, and practice testing, for example, are among the most impactful learning strategies and least complicated to teach (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013).

In sum, faculty may at first feel like they have to learn a new field to teach metacognition. We tell them that they may already be teaching students these skills, and that once they see the scholarly basis for these techniques, they can teach them with confidence. In a post-semester reflection on the impact of incorporating metacognition and its practice for the first time with an assignment, one faculty member made a comment that was echoed by several instructors—that “it made more of a difference to my students than any other assignment I’ve ever taught.”

References

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest: A Journal of the American Psychological Society, 14(1), 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Pintrich, P. R. (2002). The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in Learning, Teaching, and Assessing. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 219–225. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_3


Promoting Metacognition Across the Institution through our Partnerships with Faculty: The Educational Developer’s Role

by Hillary H. Steiner, Ph.D., Kennesaw State University

Dr. Hillary Steiner is the Interim Associate Director for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, USA. She is our Summer 2019 guest editor for a blog post series that shares case studies across three institutions. These case studies demonstrate that educational developers can be agents of change within their institutions with respect to supporting the development of metacognition.

How can we ensure students know about metacognition? By promoting it to the faculty who teach them. My students often joke that “metacognition” is my favorite word because they hear it so often in the classroom. The faculty on my campus might be starting to think the same thing, as I integrate the concept into so much of what I do. In my dual role as an educational developer and a faculty member with research interests in the application of educational psychology to higher education, I consider myself a metacognition advocate.

My advocacy for metacognition branches out through all levels of my institution—featuring prominently in the activities of our Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and trickling into my own classroom through major assignments as well as everyday conversations with students. It is central to my own Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, as well as the SoTL of many of the faculty members with whom I work. In order for metacognition to take hold in an institution’s culture, we must ensure students and faculty know about its power.

Group picture at new faculty orientation at Kennesaw State University

Our university is one of the many who have invited metacognition advocate Dr. Saundra McGuire (McGuire, 2015; 2018) to speak to students and faculty, and the buzz that was created around her visit has generated considerable interest in the concept. Many other colleges and universities have experienced a similar ground swelling of support for the idea’s application to the classroom. Those of us who work in educational development roles can capitalize on this current attention to metacognition by helping faculty who are unfamiliar with the concept realize the importance of a reflective, goal-directed approach to one’s own learning and performance. Ultimately, this advocacy can change the culture of an institution by transforming, in small ways, the way instructors teach and students learn. In this guest blog series on “Working with Faculty to Promote Metacognition,” three authors offer their thoughts on promoting metacognition at the student, faculty, and institutional level through their partnerships with instructors.

First, Dr. Nirmal Trivedi, Director of First-Year Seminars at Kennesaw State University (KSU), writes about the ways in which he helps faculty—many of whom are part-time instructors from outside academia and initially unfamiliar with metacognition—infuse metacognitive practices into their courses, with a goal of changing students’ approaches to studying. First-year seminars at KSU have been transformed to include metacognition as a key focus, which has helped many students successfully navigate the college transition. This transformation earned the program the 2018-19 Momentum Year Award from the University System of Georgia, given to the program that best encourages student achievement in the first year of college.

Second, Valencia Gabay, educational consultant and doctoral student at Indiana Wesleyan University, writes about establishing communities of practice with faculty at a fully online institution to promote metacognition through the instructors’ own reflections on teaching. By focusing on ways the instructors themselves can be metacognitive and using a model from organizational development (Algozzini, Gabay, Voyles, Bessolo, & Batchelor, 2017), she modeled reflective practice in a way that is transferable from instructor to student.

Finally, Dr. Eric Kaldor, Associate Director for the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University and formerly at the University of Rhode Island (URI), describes the way in which URI took advantage of the buzz surrounding Dr. McGuire’s visit to his campus, creating an institution-wide program that changed the culture of the university at large. Particularly important to this effort was the support and communication provided by various campus partners that made it easier for faculty to understand and implement changes in their curricula.

Readers of this blog series will find useful suggestions to help them ensure that the word gets out about metacognition on their campuses. Educational developers can be agents of change within our institutions because of our relationships with many of the institution’s stakeholders. Through our partnerships with faculty, we have an indirect, but still palpable, influence on student learning (Condon, Iverson, Manduca, Rutz, & Willett, 2016). And as metacognitive practitioners ourselves, we can practice what we preach, engaging in reflective and purposeful analysis of our own messages to the academy about how people learn.

References

Algozzini, L., Gabay,V., Voyles, S., Bessolo, K., & Batchelor, G. (2017). Group coaching and mentoring: A framework for fostering organizational change. Campbell, CA: FastPencil, Inc. 

Condon, W., Iverson, E. R., Manduca, C. A., Rutz, C., & Willett, G. (2016). Faculty development and student learning: Assessing the connections. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

McGuire, S.Y. (2015). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

McGuire, S.Y. (2018). Teach yourself how to learn: Strategies you can use to ace any course at any level. Sterling, VA: Stylus.


In Remembrance of Dr. Gregg Schraw and Dr. Marty Carr

By Hillary Steiner, Ph.D., Kennesaw State University and Aaron S. Richmond, Ph. D., Metropolitan State University of Denver

In this first blog post of 2018 we remember two educational psychologists with interests in metacognition who recently passed away. Aaron Richmond and Hillary Steiner describe how their personal and professional interactions with these scholars influenced their own work.

From Aaron: In my career as an educational psychologist, I was more than lucky to work with Gregg—I was honored. On September 16th, 2016, Gregg passed away with his sweet wife Lori by his side. Gregg was a prolific researcher in metacognition and in other educational research fields. He published over 90 journal articles, 15 books, and 45 book chapters. He sat on several editorial boards including the Journal of Educational Psychology, Metacognition and Learning, Educational Psychology Review, etc. He was an active member of Division C (Learning and instruction) in the American Educational Research Association, and several other regional academic conferences such as Northern Rocky Mountain Educational Research Association (NRMERA).photo of Dr. Gregg SchrawYes, Gregg was a prolific scholar, however, his greatest gift was to his students and colleagues. One of my dear friends and fellow metacognitive researcher Rayne Sperling at Pennsylvania State University wrote, “Gregg’s confidence in me and steady, supportive guidance provided the self-efficacy boost I needed in order to believe in myself as a scholar with something to say. As co-chair of my dissertation, mentor throughout my career, and dear friend always, Gregg was a strong, positive force in my life. Now, my own doc students tell me I am a wonderful, supportive mentor, and I always tell them, “I am just doing what I was taught; mentoring as I was mentored.” Gregg taught me this too. His mentoring continues with the students he mentored (and there are a lot of us) who now have students of our own.” (McCrudden, 2016, p. 681).

I had followed Gregg’s career, seen him at conferences—in awe of course with a star-struck gaze and for me, Gregg was a research icon. He was a mega-god for which I was not worthy. However, when I first met Gregg at NRMERA in the fall of 2003, I was a dewy-eyed graduate student who had plucked up the courage to introduce myself to discuss metacognitive research. I quickly realized that yes—he was a research god, but more importantly he was a kind, generous, supportive, and inclusive person / human. He listened to my good ideas and listened to my half-cocked ideas that needed serious fine-tuning. After that fateful day in Jackson Hole, Wyoming I knew that I had gained a mentor of all things. Gregg supported me through my career in both research and teaching. We published together, and he was one of my advocates. He advanced my career like so many others. He doled out sound and sincere professional advice willingly. For example, Gregg, Fred Kuch, and I were working on some metacognition research together and my students were working quite hard and doing a great job on the project. Mind you, I am at a large state university with no graduate students so these were undergraduate students. Gregg was so impressed with one of my students (because of the mentorship he and his students had provided me which I had passed on to my students) he offered to write her a letter of recommendation for graduate school. I found this simple but powerful and impactful gesture to be astonishing and yet typical of Gregg’s passion for advancing high quality scholars in the field of metacognition and educational psychology. This was just one simple example of how Gregg went out of his way to help people and support their goals and pursuits.

In the end, Gregg didn’t have to be, but he was my mentor like so many others. Gregg am I indebted to you and you will truly be missed. The field of metacognition lost a great scholar, mentor, and friend.

From Hillary:

On July 30, 2017, the field of metacognition lost another great. Dr. Martha “Marty” Carr, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Georgia, passed away at the young age of 59. A prolific researcher who mentored countless students to become scholars in their own right, Marty combined her interests in metacognition, motivation, giftedness, and mathematics achievement to impact the field of educational psychology in a unique way, asking big questions about how children’s metacognitive strategies influence the gender differences that emerge in mathematics achievement, and how metacognition differs in gifted children.

photo of Dr. Marty Carr

Marty began her career in developmental psychology at the University of Notre Dame under the tutelage of John Borkowski, followed by a postdoctoral stint at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Germany, where she quickly made important contributions related to the influence of motivation and metacognition on children’s learning strategy development. After joining the faculty of the University of Georgia in 1989, where she remained for her entire career, she began to cultivate additional interests in giftedness and mathematics strategy development. These varied interests dovetailed throughout the years, as she wrote about metacognition in gifted children, motivational and self-regulatory components of underachievement, and metacognitive influences on gender differences in math. Marty’s work was known for its methodological rigor, its unique application of developmental models and methods to learning processes, and its applicability to the classroom. She was recognized in particular for groundbreaking work on the predictors and influential factors of gender differences in mathematics. Her contributions led to national recognition and leadership, including presidency of the American Psychological Association’s Educational Psychology Division (Division 15), presidency of the Women in Mathematics Education division of the National Council for Teachers in Mathematics, and numerous awards, including the American MENSA Education and Research Foundation Award for Excellence.

As my dissertation advisor in the early 2000’s, Marty was the first person to make me feel like a scholar. She recognized my interests in giftedness and cognitive development and provided the perfect combination of support and encouragement that helped me craft a line of research that continues to this day. And I am not alone. At her memorial service, several students commented on how much her mentorship had meant to them. According to student Kellie Templeman, “her skill in striking the balance between technical knowledge, compassionate guidance, and tireless work ethic was what separated her from any other professor I have worked with.” She promoted metacognition in her own students by asking them to reflect constantly on the “why” questions of their individual projects and to remain goal-driven. As another former student noted, Marty pushed us to “keep going, get busy, and keep writing,” learning from our mistakes as we went. Yet, as a devoted mother who had many outside interests, including marathon running and working with animals (especially cats and horses) Marty was also an excellent model of work-life balance.

When I attended the American Educational Research Association conference as a graduate student, Marty introduced me to Gregg Schraw, who was to be my assigned mentor for the week. I was starry-eyed at meeting such a great figure in my field, but later realized that others were equally starry-eyed to meet Marty. Marty and Gregg were truly giants in educational psychology whose contributions have transformed the way we think about metacognition. May we continue to honor their memory in our own work.

References

McCrudden, M. T. (2016). Remembering Gregg Schraw. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 673-690.

 


Introducing Metacognition to Students

by Hillary Steiner, Ph.D., Kennesaw State University

The students in my first-year seminar were engaged in a small group activity, which had spread outside of the classroom into the hallways. It was my first semester teaching this seminar, and we were approaching midterm. “Adam,” a good student who normally acted as a leader during group activities, sat alone, trying to stifle tears. He seemed grateful that I cared to ask what was wrong, but doubtful that I could help. His story was one I’d heard before. After years of straight As in science classes, he was encountering his first failures in an important chemistry course that was a gateway course to his major. His plan was to drop the course and rethink the career plans he’d first made as a child. Could I explain why “studying like crazy” wasn’t working? His chemistry professor couldn’t. While I had introduced good study strategies to the students a few weeks prior, this touching conversation caused me to rethink the way I approached the topic. Drawing on my background in educational psychology, I came to two conclusions: 1) I needed to make sure students understood the why behind study strategies so they’d be better prepared to implement them, and 2) I needed to reach out to other faculty to encourage the application of these strategies in the context of content-area courses. Since that time, I’ve written about these activities for a faculty audience (Steiner, 2014; 2016; Steiner, Dean, Foote, & Goldfine, 2013; 2016) and changed the way I approached metacognition.

Lately there seems to be a buzz about metacognition at my institution. Dr. Saundra McGuire, Director Emerita of the Center for Academic Success at Louisiana State University and author of a popular book on the topic (McGuire, 2015), visited our campus recently to speak about the importance of metacognition. Unlike me, who first learned of metacognition in my graduate training, McGuire discovered metacognition from outside educational psychology. As a chemistry professor, she saw the powerful ways her students’ learning was transformed when they used metacognitive strategies. Inspired by her campus visit, many faculty began requesting more information about how they could use metacognition in their own classes. At our teaching and learning center where I currently serve as a faculty fellow, my colleagues and I responded by offering more workshops and consultations on how to put the concept into practice. In these interactions, most faculty easily grasped metacognition, understood its importance, and were able to generate some strategies for their courses. However, what they needed was a quick and easy way to promote the idea to students—a concise primer for how (and why!) to become a metacognitive college student. I realized that such a document could also serve as a jumping-off point for discussion with my own students.

The handout was developed with this in mind. Keeping in mind students’ motivations for using such a document, I kept the language brief, encouraging, and jargon-free. I did not include scholarly references, but I did include a short list of resources students could access for further reading. My intent was to provide students enough of an explanation and rationale for metacognition that they’d have sufficient motivation to put the suggested strategies to use in an authentic context. Many faculty with whom I’ve worked feel they lack adequate time to introduce metacognition in their content-area courses. However, while first-year seminars and learning-to-learn classes offer a great opportunity to talk at length about metacognition, students especially benefit when content-area faculty encourage it in their individual disciplines. I am hopeful that this handout can serve as a resource for time-strapped faculty to distribute to their students who, like Adam, are searching for that life hack that will help them succeed in college.

References

McGuire, S. Y. (2015). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Steiner, H. H. (2014). Teaching principles from cognitive psychology in the first-year seminar. E-Source for College Transitions, 11, 14-16.

Steiner, H. H. (2016). The strategy project: Promoting self-regulated learning through an authentic assignment. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 28, 271-282.

Steiner, H.H., Dean, M. L., Foote, S. M., & Goldfine, R. A. (2013). Applying TLC (a targeted learning community) to transform teaching and learning in science. Learning Communities Research and Practice, 1(3), Article 5.

Steiner, H. H., Dean, M. L., Foote, S. M, & Goldfine, R.A. (2016). The targeted learning community: A comprehensive approach to promoting the success of first-year students in general chemistry. In L. C. Schmidt & J. Graziano (Eds.), Building synergy for high-impact educational initiatives: First-year seminars and learning communities. Columbia, SC: National Resource Center.