by Jennifer McCabe & Justine Chasmar, Goucher College

Goucher College, a small private liberal arts college in Baltimore, Maryland, has in recent years focused curricular and co-curricular endeavors around metacognitive principles. Shortly after the appointment of Dr. Jose Antonio Bowen as Goucher’s President in 2014, he introduced a framework for all campus endeavors called the “New 3Rs”: Relationships, Resilience, Reflection. President Bowen charged all stakeholders at the college to enhance and highlight elements of the Goucher experience that already held these values; and to intentionally continue to build a community guided by the 3Rs on multiple interacting levels.

For this first blog about how Goucher College has framed the student experience around improving metacognition, we will focus on the 3rd “R”, Reflection, and discuss how this guiding metacognitive principle is embedded in our new curriculum and drove the creation of a new student and faculty support centers on campus.

Reflection is at the core of the Goucher Commons Curriculum, introduced in 2017 (https://www.goucher.edu/learn/curriculum/). Across the curriculum, and scaffolded over years spent at Goucher, students intentionally reflect in various ways, many of which would ideally lead to metacognitive development. In required first-year seminar courses, students are supported in considering their own place and privilege in society, and how this shapes their thought processes and views on the world. The newly developed “Center-Pair Explorations” courses form the breadth of general education study across non-major disciplines; in these courses, students are encouraged to reflect on how disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies lead to scholarly innovation. Indeed, the mission of these (and other) courses is for students to develop the skill of  collaborating on complex problems with others who are different from them (https://www.goucher.edu/learn/curriculum/student-learning-goals-and-outcomes/college-learning-goals); this inherently reflects elements of metacognition, with regard to identifying environments and strategies for successful goal-attainment, along with awareness of situations when additional information and/or a change in strategy is needed.

Reflection is a key embedded component in the required Study Abroad experience at Goucher as well – students are explicitly asked to frame their experience from multiple perspectives, to integrate it with their own knowledge and identity, and to think about what they are learning before, during, and after their time abroad. And, as a culminating experience at Goucher, seniors complete a Capstone project either through our Leadership Capstone program or through their disciplinary major. The key questions for the Leadership Capstone are: Who are you now? and Who were you four years ago? Students are asked to articulate this journey of change in an oral presentation. For example, a psychology major may discuss how the combination of coursework, internship experiences, faculty mentorship, and on-campus co-curricular activities shaped her academic and personal journey, and has led to a path forward from Goucher. The specifics of Disciplinary Capstone experiences vary by major (e.g.,  research project, critical literature review, performance piece, community intervention), but inherently the Capstone requirement involves reflective, integrative, and critical thinking. The processes involved in such advanced academic work are equally cognitive and metacognitive in nature.

Ultimately, we want Goucher students to show metacognitive sophistication in understanding their own learning and thinking. Through the use of newly implemented e-portfolios, which are begun and supported with explicit instruction in first-year courses, along the way students will be able to look back at various steps in their learning experiences to reflect on improvements and growth areas. And we hope that by recently changing the name and framing of our end-of-semester student surveys from the more traditional “Course Evaluations” to the metacognitively-focused “Student Reflections,” we are more explicitly encouraging students to think about their learning experiences from multiple perspectives. Instead of focusing on strengths and weaknesses of the course and instructor, the framing starts with the student perspective: what they brought to the course, what they thought they were supposed to learn, how well they think they learned it, and ways in which the course and instructor supported their learning.

In addition to the ways in which Goucher has embedded metacognitive principles into the curriculum and academic practices, structural change has also occurred through the creation of new centers for faculty and student support. Several years ago, the Provost and select faculty planned for two new campus centers – the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching (CAST) and the Quantitative Reasoning Center (QR Center). In the external search for directors, both position advertisements emphasized the desire for candidates who understood not only the pertinent content area (e.g., math and data skills for the QR Center) but also a nuanced understanding of growth mindset and metacognitive principles important to student (and faculty) success.

CAST opened its doors in January 2017, to support faculty in teaching and research endeavors. This center, led by Dr. Robin Cresiski, sponsors a variety of workshops, including those that help faculty develop the Center-Pair Exploration courses discussed above. In addition, CAST holds informational and interactive sessions to help faculty understand evidence-based practices for student learning, as well as how to support students in developing metacognitive skills – in particular, the essential lifelong skill of learning how to learn. For example, the popular Transparent Assignment Workshops invite instructors to bring existing assignment instructions, and then use peer feedback to improve with regard to clarity of purpose, directions, and learning measurements. In this way, CAST is helping the educators at Goucher develop more sophisticated metacognition about how to translate their own knowledge into effective and inclusive learning opportunities for students, built on understanding the conditions under which students (humans) learn best.

The QR Center debuted as a student-facing center in August 2017, with Dr. Justine Chasmar (co-author of this blog) as inaugural director. The QR Center supports students with their quantitative skill and content development across all disciplines at Goucher, with a focus on promoting quantitative literacy (www.goucher.edu/qrcenter). To foster these skills, the QR Center offers programming including tutoring, workshops, and academic consultations, using peers (called Q-tutors) as the primary medium of support. Q-tutors complete a training course that combines scaffolded reflection and practical exercises. A major focus of Q-tutoring is on fostering independence through the use of self-regulated learning and study strategies. Q-tutors are trained to teach and model study strategies such as self-testing and metacognitive monitoring, and to support student reflection through “checking for understanding” activities in each tutoring session. Metacognitive reflection is a guiding principle for tutor training and all student programming at the QR Center. A second blog in this series will focus on specifics of Q-tutor training at Goucher (Metacognition at Goucher II: Training for Q-Tutors).

Taken together, these programmatic and structural campus initiatives help to form multiple levels of interacting metacognitive support for our community of learners. Indeed, President Bowen often states the goal that Goucher helps students become “voracious self-regulated learners” (https://blogs.goucher.edu/intheloop/9210/goucher-lauded-by-doe-for-helping-all-students-find-success/). By naming Reflection as one of the “New 3Rs,” metacognition has become an embedded part of campus life with the potential to benefit all constituencies.

Recommended Reading

Bowen, J. A. (2012). Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your college classroom will improve student learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bowen, J. A., & Watson, C. E. (2017). Teaching naked techniques: A practical guide to designing better classes. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bowen, J. A. (2020). A new 3Rs: Using behavioral science to prepare students for a new learning economy. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

By Jennifer A. McCabe, Ph.D., Goucher College

Just before the start of this spring semester, I decided to make a change in the structure of readings and discussions in my upper-level seminar course on Cognition, Teaching, and Learning. I had recently read James Lang’s (2016) book, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, and was inspired to include it in my class. Instead of jumping into a discussion of research articles, with a few popular press articles or book chapters included toward the end of the semester as examples of translational science writing, I flipped the order and instead started the course with three weeks reading, discussing, and applying the information from Lang’s book (syllabus available upon request).

As described in my previous blog post (Small Metacognition I) the premise of Small Teaching is that evidence-based, incremental shifts in how teachers structure and deliver educational experiences can have a large pay-off in terms of student learning and engagement. The book speaks to multiple aspects of teacher metacognition (knowing about (students’) knowing, thinking about (students’) thinking, and learning about (students’) learning), even though the term itself is never mentioned.

My students were assigned to read one Small Teaching chapter per class day. For each, they prepared ‘Reading Responses’ consisting of three short paragraphs – from the perspective of a student, an educator, and a cognitive psychologist. At the start of each class period, they completed a ‘Comprehension Check’ question meant to give them feedback on their own learning of the day’s readings. This was self-graded with a check-plus/check/check-minus system, and was low-stakes in that only effort and completion counted. I mostly led these class periods, administering the Comprehension Check, engaging them in some type of active learning activity relevant to the day’s topic, and facilitating a discussion of the reading based on their Reading Responses. This first portion of the class was designed to help them learn about effective teaching through Lang’s book, and also through modeling my own class design and delivery.

This became important because after we finished the nine book chapters, we then shifted into primary source readings of research articles related to applied memory and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. During each class period with an article assigned, two students took the role of Discussion Leader; using what they learned from Small Teaching, and in consultation with me ahead of time, they curated and led a class period that included a Comprehension Check question (which should be effective for learning based on findings from memory research on testing as described in Lang’s Retrieving chapter), an active learning exercise (known to be effective based on ideas from the Connecting chapter), and an interactive discussion (relevant to elaboration-based strategies described in the Self-Explaining chapter). Students engaged in conversation about how the current article related to their reading of Small Teaching earlier in the semester (which itself highlighted the usefulness of spacing and mixing of topics, as described in the Interleaving chapter).

During these student-led class periods, I essentially became a member of the class, participating in demonstrations and discussions as a contributor but not as a leader. The Discussion Leaders were empowered in their choices of how to make the class period effective and engaging for their peers. Following the class, I provided feedback to the groups, with a particular emphasis early in the semester on strategies for the next time they led the class. The Discussion Leader experience helped to develop their metacognition by thinking intentionally about the most effective learning experiences, and then how to design and deliver them. There were also times when they had to change teaching/learning strategies midstream, if something was not working well (another component of sophisticated metacognition).

In order to better understand the student experience of reading Small Teaching, which is not aimed at an undergraduate audience, and also to more directly connect to topics in metacognition, I gave the thirteen students in my class an optional free-response survey completed during our final class period. In the spirit of transparency, I had them read my Small Metacognition I blog post first, and explained my plan to write a follow-up post about the class experience with Lang’s book. Each decided whether or not to allow me to use their responses. Though I use names below, pseudonyms are used as needed to reflect my students’ preference.  (Students, if you’re reading this, thank you for contributing to this post!)

I first asked about the most important or memorable lessons from Small Teaching. Several mentioned specific topics or chapters that were impactful, namely retrieving, interleaving, practicing, motivating, growing, and expanding. Many wrote about using evidence to inform teaching in ways that are incremental rather than complete overhauls. For example, Elise wrote, “The current way courses are structured are pretty terrible for durable learning. In order to better structure courses, professors can implement small but impactful techniques to encourage better learning in class as well as guide students towards more empirically supported learning and study methods.” Though metacognition did not come up directly, several responses were related. Anna wrote, “The most important lesson is that learning is complex and that there are many factors at play in the classroom.” Megan commented that it is critical that “both parties (teacher and student) understand exactly why they are doing what they do to learn.” And Katherine noted, “It made me reflect on my own experience in academics and my growth as a learner.”

Next I asked in what ways they think that Small Teaching has (or will) changed the way you think or act in the world. Here students clearly referenced metacognitive development, with Addy saying it “introduced a more metacognitive approach in education to me,” and Samantha noting, “I now have this toolbox of ways I can implement effective strategies.” Noah said, “I feel I have a better understanding of how my mindset can affect my ability to learn.” Anna’s response captured multiple aspects of metacognition: “As a student, Small Teaching (and our larger course discussions) has already shifted the way I think about and articulate my learning experiences. I really think the metacognitive awareness of learning how to learn has helped me to think about the strategies I have used and would like to further implement in my future learning.” Two additional students commented on improved metacognitive awareness.

Finally students were asked whether they would recommend keeping Small Teaching as a core reading in this seminar course. Every student responded positively. They appreciated the book coming at the start of the class as a foundation for the research articles they would be reading, as a way to take an educator’s perspective on learning and memory research, and as an example of a translational piece (they created their own translational projects later in the semester).

I came away from this experience feeling pleased with my decision to incorporate Small Teaching into this class, and also feeling as though I myself had a significant learning (and metacognitive!) experience. Hopefully my students – most of whom were seniors, and some of whom will become teachers – will leave this course with a more sophisticated metacognitive perspective not only toward their own learning, but also toward purposeful and transparent design of educational experiences that effectively support others’ learning.

Recommended Reading

Lang, J. M. (2016). Small Teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

By Dr. Jennifer A. McCabe, Goucher College

I recently read James Lang’s (2016) book, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, which is framed by the premise that incremental shifts in how teachers structure and deliver educational experiences can have a large pay-off in terms of student learning and engagement. Each recommendation is grounded in what we know works for learning from memory research, and each is implementable without significant additional resources, time, or grading. Though Lang does not explicitly frame his book around metacognition (in fact, the word is not mentioned!), much of it supports the development of teacher metacognition with regard to several core components: knowing about (students’) knowing, thinking about (students’) thinking, and learning about (students’) learning.

In this first post (Part I), I describe Small Teaching through a metacognitive lens to support the development of teachers’ metacognition about course design and implementation. In Part II, I will discuss my experience of incorporating this book into a senior seminar in Cognition, Teaching, and Learning.

The first section of Small Teaching, entitled Knowledge, presents the idea that students do not necessarily know what strategies support durable and flexible learning. This gives teachers the opportunity (and responsibility) to structure experiences that support learning, even though these may feel harder, slower, or show smaller gains in the short term (i.e., desirable difficulties; see Yan et al., 2017 for a recent review). The Retrieving chapter discusses the testing effect, and the many ways teachers can encourage students to practice effortful retrieval of information from long-term memory. Predicting presents the value of pre-testing and predictive opportunities, which boost curiosity and aide subsequent learning. Interleaving discusses the spaced (or distributed) study principle, and the related strategy of interleaving (i.e., mixing instead of, or in addition to, blocking); these strategies help rectify the common metacognitive pitfall of forgetting we (and our students) forget. Student’s ability to produce knowledge at one point in time does not necessarily predict their future ability to remember. Incorporating frequent retrieval practice and cumulative assessments are concrete ways to counter-act the natural process of forgetting.

The second section is focused on Understanding, or deep comprehension. In Connecting, Lang discusses strategies to link and expand knowledge, including the intentional activation and use of students’ prior knowledge, use of explicit frameworks (e.g., outlines, concept maps), and writing exercises that support students in the challenging task of creating new connections. Practicing stresses the metacognitive component of knowing about (students’) knowing; that is, intentionally assessing cognitive skills needed for a large assignment, then making space for practice of those skills to scaffold toward successful assignment completion. Self-Explaining describes the strategy of having students explain what they are thinking and doing during a task – another example of a desirable difficulty.

The third and final section of Small Teaching is framed around Inspiration. This includes Motivating, focusing on the role of emotions in learning. Even teachers who have metacognitive knowledge about the basics of learning from a cognitive perspective, may have low awareness of the impact motivation has on learning, and the ways in which we can intentionally utilize students’ emotion (e.g., cultivating positive rapport, showing enthusiasm, using story-telling and narratives, and supporting the development of self-transcendent purpose). Growing helps teachers understand the value of a growth mindset as connected to student success, and how to create classrooms that model and reward growth. Finally, Expanding offers a discussion about “big teaching” – new frontiers for major shifts in how college courses are structured and offered.

Ultimately, the take-away message from Small Teaching is that relatively minor changes can bring big rewards in our classrooms. As an added bonus, many techniques give teachers tangible feedback about how students are progressing toward course learning goals. Viewing this book from a metacognitive framework encourages teachers to examine their own beliefs about learning, which can lead to an enlightening appraisal of why we make the decisions we do. Metacognitive questions abound: What is the learning goal here? How does the structure of this assignment get students to the learning goal? What cognitive processes am I expecting students to engage in (and how do I know they know how to do them)? Does this assignment have an explicitly stated purpose? Do my assessments engage cognitive processes that support durable and flexible learning? Am I being transparent in communicating the rationale for my pedagogical choices to my students? How are my own learning beliefs and biases influencing my students’ experience?

These “small” principles provide great opportunity, but also potential hazards. Teachers need to consider the line between desirable and undesirable difficulties, ensuring that the work we assign for students is difficult in a way that encourages effort in support of learning, and not in a way that overwhelms or otherwise detracts from learning. That is, paying mindful attention to the cognitive processes involved in coursework, and the ability of students to engage in them, is critical. An effective assessment will be challenging in the manner of engaging processes such as retrieval or elaboration that we know support learning. An undesirably difficult assessment will be challenging in a non-productive way. For example, to make students work harder, teachers may give repetitive busy-work that requires time and energy, but does not aid learning. Or consider assessments so difficult that learners do not have the cognitive (or metacognitive) scaffolding in place to engage effectively, even with great effort. Overly difficult assessments can result in feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, and even anger – all of which are counter-productive to learning. Enter the value of teacher metacognition: A teacher skilled in thinking about how learning works, and what their students know (along with skills they bring to the course), will be better able to navigate their assessments to keep them on the side of desirable difficulties.

In sum, metacognitive awareness and self-regulation are both key components to effective translation of memory principles into effective educational design. Lessons from Small Teaching connect to “small” adjustments toward increased metacognitive awareness in teachers. In Part II I will explain and reflect on my, and my students’, experience with Small Teaching in my seminar course.

Recommended Reading

Lang, J. M. (2016). Small Teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Yan, V. X., Clark, C. M., & Bjork, R. A. (2017). Memory and metamemory considerations in the instruction of human beings revisited: Implications for optimizing online learning. In J. C. Horvath, J. Lodge, & J. A. C. Hattie (Eds.), From the Laboratory to the Classroom: Translating the Learning Sciences for Teachers (pp. 61-78). New York: Routledge.

By Jennifer A. McCabe, Goucher College

Five years ago, I radically changed the assessment format of my undergraduate Human Learning and Memory course, from a more traditional model with three big exams to a frequent low-stakes testing approach, which involved administering a short quiz to start most class periods (and nixing big exams). This choice came on the heels of a shift from a content-driven focus to an elaboration and integration emphasis in this course, and a shift from a textbook to five popular press books about learning and memory (syllabus available by request). I decided that the assessments should more intentionally reflect a central goal for the course that students would come to class each day prepared to actively engage with and discuss the assigned material. When I first made this change, I gave little explicit thought to metacognitive development in my students; as I describe in this blog post, along the way I tweaked the way the quizzes were framed and administered to more transparently support metacognition.

The first iteration of the daily low-stakes assessment was described as a “KCA Quiz,” designed to assess (and improve) students’ Knowledge, Connection, and Application (“KCA”) of course topics and readings. At the start of most class periods, students had about 10 minutes to complete a 5-item open-book and open-notes quiz, which could include factual questions, connection questions, application questions, and thought/opinion questions. These would mainly focus on the reading assignment for the current day, but could also draw from prior assigned readings/topics. Students were expected to bring all their notes and books to class each day in hard copy (no electronics allowed), for reference. After collecting the quizzes, we discussed the answers as a large group, and then the quizzes were graded on a scale of 0 (absence) to 1 (0 or 1 correct) to 2 (2 or 3 correct) to a maximum of 3 (4 or 5 correct).

Certainly some elements of this assessment strategy had the potential to impact metacognition. For one, there was a consequence for lack of preparation if students could not find the answers in time. Also, receiving immediate feedback in class about whether their answers were correct should have given them insight into their learning. Yet, given what we now know about the power of retrieval practice (i.e., the testing effect; see recommended reading below), namely the inherent memory and metacognitive benefits, I was dissatisfied with the low (or no) expectation that students would retrieve the information from memory without using external sources. Therefore, I worked toward developing a modified version of “KCA Quizzes” that would better support retrieval practice and metacognition, yet preserve the low-stakes and frequent-testing components.

Starting in Fall 2016, I made several changes to this component of the course. First, I started calling them “KCA Assessments” instead of “KCA Quizzes.” Previously, I would get some complaints – in person and on course evaluations – about the pressure and stress of having a quiz every day. Simply shifting the language from “quiz” to “assessment” completely eliminated those complaints. I think that being “assessed” rather than “quizzed” activates a different schema for the students – perhaps representing a metacognitive shift from a performance focus to more of a learning focus.

This is particularly striking given that along with the name change, I made the assessments more challenging. Now they are a hybrid of closed- and open-books/notes, with a unique metacognitive twist. Students start by dividing their paper into left and right columns. For the first five minutes, they answer the five questions from memory (closed-book) in the left column. Then, I announce they can open their books and notes, and anything they want to add or modify about their answers is written in the right column. They know that I grade their answers (using the same generous scale described above) based only on whether they got them correct through the combination of closed- and open-notes. Yet using the left-right column method, they are forced not only to spend time effortfully retrieving the information (or even just trying – which as we discuss in class, still benefits memory), but also have a clear record of how easily and accurately they could arrive at correct answers from long-term memory, without consulting external sources. This supports metacognition by building students’ explicit awareness of their level of learning, which can then be used to guide their further learning behaviors. I encourage them to strive to be able to answer all the questions in the left column, but the pressure of testing is relieved by the back-up plan to consult course materials.

Recently, I administered a brief anonymous feedback survey about the KCA Assessments. Of the 21 students who responded in a class of 25, 86% agreed or strongly agreed that the assessments “improved my metacognition – that is, they helped me think and know more about my own learning and memory.” When asked an open-ended question about which aspect(s) of the assessments supported metacognition, 65% identified the closed/open-book hybrid approach, with comments such as:

“You couldn’t be convinced you know something if you couldn’t get it during the closed- book portion.”

“Helped me see what I actually remembered and what I needed help with or didn’t encode or couldn’t retrieve.”

“This allowed me to use my own memory to remember answers and gave me an idea of what I need to focus on more for when I read for the next class.”

“Having the closed then open note format really obviously shows what you processed more deeply than others.”

Other answers described the focus on deeper processing and application to real-life issues, learning to be more interactive and engaged with course reading assignments, getting immediate feedback after the assessments, and the reduced-pressure grading scale. The majority (90%) probably or definitely “would recommend keeping the KCA Assessments for future classes.”

The current iteration of this in-class assessment strategy grew from my own metacognitive insight as an instructor, with regard to balancing student learning, engagement, and incentives for examining and potentially changing learning strategies. Based on observing student performance, and on student feedback on course evaluations and from this survey, this approach is palatable (even enjoyable) for students, encourages deep and elaborative reading, supports durable memory for course material, and – at least by way of self-report – boosts metacognition in undergraduates.

Recommended Reading

Putnam, A. L., Sungkhasettee, V. W., & Roediger, H. L. (2016). Optimizing learning in college: Tips from cognitive psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 652-660. doi: 10.1177/1745691616645770

Roediger, H. L., & Pyc, M. A. (2012). Inexpensive techniques to improve education: Applying cognitive psychology to enhance educational practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 1, 242-248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2012.09.002