Category: Resources

Assessing Reflective Writing with the Index for Metacognitive Knowledge

Reflection is a staple of contemporary writing pedagogy and writing assessment. Although the power of reflective writing has long been understood in writing studies, the field has not made progress on articulating how to assess the reflective work. Developed at the crossroads of research in reflection and metacognition, the Index for Metacognitive Knowledge (IMK) is designed to help writing researchers, teachers, and students articulate what is being rewarded in the assessment of reflection and to articulate the role of metacognitive knowledge in critical reflective writing.

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3dc6w4hg

Ratto Parks, Amy. (2023). What Do We Reward in Reflection? Assessing Reflective Writing with the Index for Metacognitive Knowledge. Journal of Writing Assessment, 16(1). DOI:  10.5070/W4jwa.1570


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Welcome to Improve with Metacognition!

Metacognition is the use of reflective awareness to make timely adjustments (self-regulation) to behaviors that support a goal-directed process (e.g. learning, teaching, driving, cooking, writing).

Through metacognition, one should become better able to accurately judge one’s progress, and select and engage in strategies that will lead to success.


Fostering Metacognition to Support Student Learning and Performance

This article by Julie Dangremond Stanton, Amanda J. Sebesta and John Dunlosky “outline the reasons metacognition is critical for learning and summarize relevant research … in … three main areas in which faculty can foster students’ metacognition: supporting student learning strategies (i.e., study skills), encouraging monitoring and control of learning, and promoting social metacognition during group work.” They then “distill insights from key papers into general recommendations for instruction, as well as a special list of four recommendations that instructors can implement in any course.”

CBE Life Sci Educ June 1, 2021 20:fe3

https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-12-0289


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.

photo of a hand holding a compass with a mountain scene background (by Devon Luongo)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.

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* 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.


How Metacognitive Instructors Can Use Their Learning Management System to Facilitate Student Learning

by John Draeger and Brooke Winckelmann

This essay explores ways instructors can be metacognitive about course design, including selecting tools in the Learning Management System (LMS) to support student learning. It offers strategies for being intentional about learning within the LMS and examples of online modules that can be directly incorporated into course instruction or can be self-contained, student-directed, and stand alone. These examples serve as a blueprint for creating predictable structures that offer guidance and opportunities for students to learn about their own learning. We also argue that purposeful use of LMS tools can provide opportunities for instructor to monitor student progress toward learning goals and make adjustments to their instructional method when appropriate.

Draeger, J., & Winckelmann, B. (2020). How Metacognitive Instructors Can Use Their Learning Management System to Facilitate Student Learning. Journal of Teaching and Learning With Technology, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.14434/jotlt.v9i1.29159

 


Learning in Pandemic Times

In this video, Dr. Stephen Chew shares a model about how people learn, and highlights key points about memory that will benefit students as they are trying to learn and cope, especially in stressful times like we are experiencing with the Covid pandemic. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOKG2LrnwYo&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3gTAiimRTNoNRNJiPGp4IdAQIH0-4JjlEd6iwd4mER1KeXQmQ3TAKEAFM

 


How can I help students become more expert learners, so they engage in active learning?

by Stephanie Chasteen, University of Colorado Boulder

“This chapter focuses on helping students engage productively in active learning classrooms by teaching students reflect on their learning and develop productive mindsets towards learning. It is part of a series on helping students engage productively in active learning classrooms.” It includes a list of tangible teaching and student metacognition strategies to use when working with students.


How to Get the Most Out of Studying

Dr. Stephen Chew has put together a highly lauded series of short videos that share with students some powerful principles of effective learning, including metacognition. His goal was to create a resource that students can view whenever and as often as they want.

They include

  • Video 1: Beliefs That Make You Fail…Or Succeed
  • Video 2: What Students Should Understand About How People Learn
  • Video 3: Cognitive Principles for Optimizing Learning
  • Video 4: Putting the Principles for Optimizing Learning into Practice
  • Video 5: I Blew the Exam, Now What?

Links to the videos can be found here:

https://www.samford.edu/departments/academic-success-center/how-to-study

Dr. Chew also provides an overview handout that summarizes the purposes of the videos, gives guidance on how to use them, and outlines the main points within the videos:

https://www.samford.edu/departments/files/Academic_Success_Center/How-to-Study-Teaching_Resources.pdf


Developing Metacognition with Student Learning Portfolios

In this IDEA paper #44, The Learning Portfolio: A Powerful Idea for Significant Learning, Dr. John Zubizarreta shares models and guidance for incorporating learning portfolios. He also makes powerful arguments regarding the ability of portfolios to engage students in meaningful reflection about their learning, which in turn will support a metacognitive development and life-long learning.

 


Developmental Framework for Teaching Expertise

A group of faculty at the University of Calgary share a framework for growth of teaching expertise that demonstrates that “teaching expertise involves multiple facets, habits of mind (or ways of knowing and being), and possible developmental activities.” They share this framework with the hope that others will share, adapt and use it in their own local contexts. The full paper is also available. Note that they also refer to it as a “framework for self-reflection” for faculty, which means it can be used to support metacognitive instruction.

 

Developing a Learning Culture: A Framework for the Growth of Teaching Expertise

 


Mind Mapping: A Technique for Metacognition

by Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe, Rusty Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University  Downloadable

Background

The Provost at Eastern Kentucky University invited Saundra McGuire to speak on metacognition as part of our University’s Provost’s Professional Development Speaker Series. Our unit was tasked with designing related programming both before and after McGuire’s visit.   Our aim was to provide a series of effective workshops that prepared the ground for our university’s Quality Enhancement Plan 2.0 on metacognition as a cross-disciplinary tool for cultivating reading skills. The following mind mapping exercise from one of four workshops was taught to over 50 faculty from across campus and the academic ranks. Feedback rated its popularity high and suggested its appropriateness for any level of any discipline with any size class.

Scientific Rationale

The Mind Map, a term invented by Tony Buzan in The Mind Map Book (1993), “is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlocking the potential of the brain” (9). For that reason, Buzan’s subtitle is How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential. A mind map provides a way for organizing ideas either as they emerge or after the fact. Perhaps the mind map’s greatest strength lies in its appeal to the visual sense.

We chose to share mind mapping with our faculty because according to Brain Rules (2008), rule number ten is “Vision trumps all other senses” (221). For proof, the author, John Medina, cites a key fact: “If information is presented orally, people remember about 10%, tested 72 hours after exposure. That figure goes up to 65% if you add a picture” (234). Because of its visual nature, mind mapping provides a valuable metacognitive tool.

How Mind Mapping Supports Metacognition

Silver (2013) focuses on reflection in general and in particular “the moment of meta in metacognition—that is the moment of standing above or apart from oneself, so to speak, in order to turn one’s attention back upon one’s own mental work” (1). Mind mapping allows thinkers a visual-verbal way to delineate that moment of reflection and in capturing that moment to preserve its structure. Because analysis is one of Bloom’s higher-order learning skills, mind mapping leads to deep thinking, which makes self-regulation easier.

Method

Essentially, a mind map begins with what Gerry Nosich in Learning to Think Things Through (2009) calls a fundamental and powerful concept, “one that can be used to explain or think out a huge body of questions, problems, information, and situations” (105). To create a mind map, place the fundamental and powerful concept (FPC) you wish to explore in the center of a piece of paper and circle it. If at all possible, do something with color or the actual lettering in order to make the FPC even more visual. For instance, if you were to map the major strategies involved in metacognition, metacognition is the FPC, and you might choose to write it as such:

M E T A
Cognition

Increasing the visual effect of the FPC are lines that run to additional circled concepts that support the FPC. These Sputnik-like appendages are what Buzan calls basic ordering ideas, “key concepts within which a host of other concepts can be organized” (p. 84). For example, if you were working with our metacognition example, your lines might radiate out to a host of also-circled metacognitive strategies, such as retrieving, reflection, exam wrappers, growth mindset, and the EIAG process of Event selection-Identification of what happened-Analysis-Generalization of how the present forms future practice (for a fuller explanation see our It Works for Me, Metacognitively, pp. 33-34). And if you wanted to go one step further, you might radiate lines from, for instance, retrieving, to actual retrieving strategies (e.g., flashcards, interleaving, self-quizzing).

Uses for Mind Maps

Mind mapping has many uses for both students and faculty:

  • Notetaking: mind mapping provides an alternative form of notetaking whether for students or professors participating in committee meetings. It can be done before a class session by the professor, during the session by the student, or afterwards as a way of checking whether the fundamental and powerful concept(s) was taught or understood.
  • Studying: instead of rereading notes taken, a method destined for failure, try reorganizing them into a mind map or two. Mind mapping not only offers the visual alternative here, but provides retrieval practice, another metacognitive technique.
  • Assessing: instead of giving a traditional quiz at the start of class or five-minute paper at the end, ask students to produce a mind map of concept X covered in class. This alternative experiment will demonstrate to students a different approach and place another tool in their metacognitive toolbox.
  • Prioritizing: when items are placed in a mind map, something has to occupy center stage. Lesser items are contained in the radii.

Outcomes

Mind maps are easy, deceptively simplistic, fun, and produce a deep learning experience. Don’t believe it? Stop reading now, take out a piece of paper, and mind map what you just read. We’re willing to bet that if you do so, the result will provide a reflection moment.

References

Buzan, T. (1993). The mind map book: How to use radiant thinking to maximize your brain’s untapped potential. New York: Plume Penguin.

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

Medina, J. (2008). Brain rules. Seattle: Pear Press.

Nosich, J. (2009). Learning to think things through. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Silver, N. (2013). Reflective pedagogies and the metacognitive turn in college teaching.

In M. Kaplan, N. Silver, D. Lavaque-Manty, & D. Meizlish (Eds.), Using reflection and metacognition to improve student learning (pp. 1-17). Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Sweet, C., Blythe, H., & Carpenter, R. (2016). It Works for Me, Metacognitively. Stillwater, OK: New Forums.

Appendix: How to Use Word to Create a Mind Map

  1. Click Insert.
  2. Click Shapes and select Circle.
  3. Click on desired position, and the circle will appear.
  4. Click on Draw Textbox.
  5. Type desired words in textbox (you may have to enlarge the textbox to accommodate words).
  6. Drag textbox into center of circle.
  7. Repeat as desired.
  8. To connect circles, click Insert Shapes and then Select Line.
  9. Drag Line between circles.

A ‘New Ear’ for Student Writers: Building Awareness of Audience

by Michael Young, Robert Morris University

 Downloadable

Motivation and Background:

A fundamental hurdle for most inexperienced writers is gaining a sense of their audience, and how a different consciousness may interpret the words, the organization, and the presentation that they (the writers) use to share ideas. It is different than knowing rules, techniques, or traditions of writing. It requires more than knowledge of the topic about which they are writing. Writers must be aware of their own individual thinking, their own choices, their motivations, and how these could be interpreted or misinterpreted by other people’s ways of thinking. This need for awareness of their own thoughts that could then support their writing efforts, i.e. metacognitive writing, led me to develop a new pedagogical process for the writing classroom that uses active presentations by others to convey audience interpretation.

I used this process for three years in creative writing courses, partially because students were already pursuing genres that often are interpreted orally, but believe it could be applicable to any writing course, especially with the following course characteristics: 1) upper division/at least sophomore level so the students are already somewhat experienced collegiate writers and 2) class size is small, ideally 20 or fewer students. No special materials, other than imagination and the means to convey ideas, are needed for the in-class exercises.

Nuts and Bolts:

This pedagogical process has several steps. To first prepare the students and get them thinking about how an audience might interpret their work, the students are given an initial survey on their then-current process of writing and concept of their potential audience. Consistently, three out of five agreed that they had a “mental picture” of their reader, but it was often no further developed than their college peers or even themselves. Most could not describe their readers any further and some said they had not considered a concept of a readership. Perhaps, for them, they had written only and ever with the teacher, and so a grade, in mind.

The second step involves having canonical examples of their genre, fiction or poetry, interpreted by others. During this step those others give a presentation / reading of the work in a manner that conveys their interpretation of the writing. Those others can be classmates or a more external audience. For example, the first two years I used this process, the others were members of the Forensics Team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, then led by Professor Ann Burnett.

A third step, which has evolved over the years, was to have others present the students’ own writing back to them. This third step was implemented as a cycle. The students wrote their piece (either individually or as a group) and then gave it to others (classmates or external individuals) for interpretation with no additional input from the writers. The presenters would convey their interpretation, which then could be used by the writers to guide their revisions based on a better understanding of possible audience interpretation. If revisions were made, then the cycle of interpretation could be repeated.

Outcomes:

When this was done at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in a project funded by a grant from the university’s Teaching Council, 80% of the collaborative groups elected to revise their texts after hearing them interpreted. They noted the experience of hearing their stories being told by someone else, someone who was sharing their own understandings and insights into the words, heightened an awareness of qualities like the “flow and rhythm” of words or of “trying to make a picture in my head”, and an overall greater attention to what their drafts were able to communicate. For example, the potential hollowness of easy clichés might not have occurred to the writers or a lack of descriptions they had had in mind but which were not articulated were now more evident. Further, the majority of the class reported being much more aware of their own thinking (an aspect of metacognition) and the thinking of others.

By hearing, and sometimes seeing by the use of movements, how another person re-created the writer’s intentions, each writer had the opportunity to perceive how their audience understood what had been written down – in a way, to hear their own thinking – and to questions themselves. Is that what they had wanted someone else to feel, to think or had their expression fallen short of their conception? In other words, the process allowed them to “hear it (their work) with a ‘new ear’” and some of them realized they “should have found another way to get that (sic) message across.” That “new ear”, hopefully, was them more carefully listening to and questioning their own thoughts, i.e. being metacognitive about their own writing.


Participatory Pedagogy: Inviting Student Metacognition

by Nicola Simmons, Brock University, nsimmons@brocku.ca  Downloadable

Background

I teach higher and adult education, including adult developmental psychology, and like to invite my students to be aware of their cognitive processes. I see this as central to being an adult learner. One strategy I have developed is engaging students in creating course outcomes and content. I hope to help students become more aware of, more involved in, and better assessors of their own learning; in short, to examine their learning through a metacognitive lens.

This example is from a Masters of Education class, Exploring Approaches to Professional Development. The class is typically quite small (up to 20 students) but I have used it in groups of 50 students at the undergraduate level as well. 

The Approach 

The course follows Siemens’ (1984) participatory pedagogy (see syllabus excerpt) to invite students to co-construct the course process, including choosing course readings and creating grading rubrics:

As Biggs (2011) notes, student course co-ownership helps engage students in deep learning; it also builds their awareness of their learning processes. The first assignment, for example, asked them to:

Articulate your intended learning during this course, including a focus for personal and professional development. What will your development focus be? What will you do to realize your plan?

This engages students metacognitively as they take responsibility for their learning path and prepares them for the final assignment, a reflective ‘portfolio,’ in which they synthesize their learning over the term:

Create a creative and critical summary of your changing perspectives and reflections throughout the course, integrating readings (both assigned and others). Discuss your key learning, referring to course and outside experiences. Exemplary projects demonstrate critical analysis, synthesis, and self-evaluation. Can be any format (paper, song, performance, art; format negotiable). Addresses:

  • What theories help you?
  • What have you learned?
  • How can you use that?
  • How have you changed?
  • How do you know?

Each of these prompts invites consideration of the learning and development process and supports students in acquiring habits of mind that will allow them to approach future courses with a metacognitive lens. This has also led to their growth as scholars: One year, many of the students engaged in a self-study that included conducting a literature review and creating questions to guide our reflections. The result of that work was several conference presentations and a peer-reviewed paper (Simmons, Barnard, & Fennema, 2011) that outlined the transformative learning resulting from the student co-constructed course.

What was fascinating to me were the ways the course process built not only students’ metacognition about their learning, but also about their teaching. One wrote

I told my colleagues the story of this course and they were moved to consider new ways of doing culminating projects. Why isn’t there more choice? Why do we tell students what they must produce to demonstrate their own learning? Why don’t we add the additional layer of asking students to find the best way to demonstrate their learning?

Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Developing metacognition is not a pain-free process! One student described the transformation during the process from fear to increased confidence.

Activities were out of my comfort zone and there were times that I struggled with the unknown … I was able to see the value once I moved beyond the frozen fear of uncertainty to ask myself “What did I want to gain from this course? How did I learn when pushed out of my comfort zone?” I had to be transformed into a student who was open to this new concept and new territory for learning…[where] mistakes … would not be judged but instead used as stepping stones toward learning.

Instructors should be mindful of the importance of support throughout the process. Just as the students are invited to be metacognitive about their processes, it helps if the instructor is transparently metacognitive about the overall course path. For me that looked like saying things like “this may be new for you, but I’d like you to consider trying it” and reassuring them that discomfort was a sign they were onto something good!

The course format continues to unsettle students but also transform them into metacognitive learners, and I finish with one student’s illustrative words:

I remember thinking at the time that the final project was the most difficult task that I had encountered … I really had to ponder … how my journey through the course could be effectively captured and conveyed … It continues to personify my journey through work/life, the choices we make when we meet resistance or the paths we take … how we travel the road is for our choosing.

References

Biggs, J. B., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at the university: What the student does. Maidenhead, UK: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.

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

Siemens, G. (2008). New structures and spaces of learning: The systemic impact of connective knowledge, connectivism, and networked learning. Paper Presented for Universidade do Minho, Encontro sobre Web 2.0, Braga, Portugal, October 10. Available online at http://elearnspace.org/Articles/systemic_impact.htm

Simmons, N., Barnard, M., & Fennema, W. (2011). Participatory pedagogy: A compass for transformative learning? Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, 4.


Make It Stick in Cognitive Psychology

by Jennifer A. McCabe, Goucher College,
jennifer.mccabe@goucher.edu

 Downloadable

 

Motivation and Background: I am a cognitive psychologist with a research program focused on metacognition and applied memory in education. I decided three years ago to structure my Cognitive Psychology course around the principles described in the book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014). Many memory-improvement principles are discussed in this book, including: practice retrieving new learning from memory, space out your retrieval practice, interleave the study of different problem types, elaboration, and reflection. Other topics include the fluency illusion, getting past learning styles, and developing a growth mindset. Adopting this book as required reading, and structuring the course to reflect these principles, dovetailed with my increasing commitment to prompt and support students’ metacognitive growth. I hoped that this would both enhance student learning on objective tests (in a notoriously challenging course), and also explicitly support a course learning outcome: Improve your metacognitive skills (knowing what you know, learning how to learn).

Context in which the activity or process has been used: This has been included in three sections of Cognitive Psychology, a 200-level course offered at Goucher College, a small liberal arts institution in Baltimore, Maryland. The class size is 25-30 students, and I have been teaching this course for 13 years.

Description of activity or process methods: The description of the activity is in my Cognitive Psychology syllabus (available through Project Syllabus:  http://teachpsych.org/Resources/Documents/otrp/syllabi/JM16cognitive.pdf). On the first day of class, I describe the Make It Stick” Reflection Papers. For each class period in which a chapter is assigned, students prepare and bring to class a 1-page, single-spaced reflection. Content and style is open, but they must demonstrate deep and careful thinking about the topic, and explicit connections to life experiences, habits and plans/intentions, and course material. They can also include questions and/or other personal reactions to the chapter. I note that this assignment requires elaboration and reflection, two effective learning strategies discussed in the book. Students submit 8 reflection papers during the semester (one per chapter), each worth up to 5 points. Out of a 500-point class, this assignment is worth up to 40 points (8%).

The first reflection paper is due early in the semester, typically the second week, then the subsequent seven chapters/papers are due approximately once per week. We take time in class on those days to engage in small- and large-group discussion. Most of these discussions are framed in terms of metacognition, particularly in light of research suggesting that college students do not always understand how learning works, and cannot always predict which memory strategies lead to the best retention (e.g., McCabe, 2011). I encourage them to consider their lives as learners, and how they can use information from the book to adjust their strategies.

We also talk about how this course is structured to reflect “best practice” learning strategies. For example, students take a self-graded “retrieval practice” quiz at the start of most class periods, because research shows that frequent, effortful, low-stakes, cumulative, spaced (distributed) retrieval practice: (1) produces the most durable learning; and (2) improves metacognitive accuracy of what you know. I strive to be transparent in the purpose for all course elements. In a sense, then, I see Make It Stick as a framework for the entire course – core content and topics for discussion, rationale for course design, and hopefully motivation for students to engage and feel empowered in their own learning.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned:

Since implementing this assignment, I believe that students’ knowledge about effective learning strategies has improved. They seem to enjoy the book as a required course component – on an anonymous questionnaire, 88% agreed that Make It Stick should be included in future classes. When asked whether this course had supported the learning outcome of improving metacognitive skills, 100% agreed or strongly agreed (71% strongly agreed). And when asked about one way this course has changed the way they think or behave in the world, 78% included a statement relating to metacognition. Some examples include:

“I now analyze the way I am absorbing and encoding information. I have never thought about the way I learn but now I am so grateful to accept the study strategies that work and throw away the ones that don’t.”

“It has helped me to develop a better understanding of effective study/learning strategies. Improved my metacognitive skills!”

“When I study and am overconfident in my skills, I think about metacognitive skills and test myself. This class helped me study better.”

Of course the major challenge with teaching students metacognition is that it is only half the battle to acquire knowledge about how learning works. I still struggle with motivating students to actually implement these strategies. Many are desirable difficulties (Bjork, 1994), feeling effortful and error-prone (and even frustrating) in the short term, and only showing benefits due to this initial challenge at a later time. I encourage students to use the strategies regularly, so that they become habits of mind, but I’m not convinced they consistently do so after one semester of exposure to this material. Yet the fact that they make statements such as the ones above gives me hope that they are integrating the Make It Stick ideas about metacognition into their lives.

Though this assignment has been part of a highly relevant course, Cognitive Psychology, the book Make It Stick (or selected chapters) could enhance a number of courses in and outside of psychology – as well as first-year seminars and similar courses that focus on student skill development, with the goal of teaching them how to be better learners.

References

Bjork, R. A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of human beings.

In J. Metcalfe & A. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing about knowing (pp. 185–205). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University.

McCabe, J. (2011). Metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates. Memory & Cognition, 39, 462–476. doi:10.3758/s13421-010-0035-2


Teaching Transformation Through Becoming a Student of Learning

by Patrick Cunningham, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology,
Holly Matusovich & Sarah Williams, Virginia Tech

 Downloadable

Motivations and context:

I teach a variety of Mechanical Engineering courses at a small private undergraduate institution with approximately 2000 students. The courses I teach focus on the application of scientific theory and math to solve engineering problems. Since I started teaching I have been interested in how to help students to learn more deeply in my courses. This eventually led me to a sabbatical in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where I established a research partnership with Dr. Holly Matusovich, and later Ms. Sarah Williams, studying student metacognitive development. We have been interested in how to help students to become more sophisticated and lifelong learners and how to aid instructors in supporting this student development. This collaboration initiated a research-to-practice cycle, where my interest in enhancing student learning led to research on student metacognitive development, and research results have influenced my teaching practice.

Description of the process:

The research-to-practice cycle has transformed my teaching by helping me become a student of learning. For me the process has involved formal educational research, but it does not have to. My implementation of the cycle follows:

  1. Identify what teaching and learning issue you care about and develop partnerships.
  2. Plan the study.
  3. Implement the study and analyze the data.
  4. Interpret the results and use them to direct modifications to your teaching.
  5. Repeat steps 1-4.

I am interested in enhancing student learning and that led to collaborative metacognition research with Dr. Matusovich. Other possible partnerships may be with colleagues, your teaching and learning center, disciplinary education researchers (e.g., engineering or physics education), or even education researchers at your own institution (e.g., educational or cognitive psychology).

We planned the research through the preparation of a successfully funded NSF grant proposal. The process included establishing research questions, specifying study phases, determining what data to collect and how, and planning for data analysis. Even if you are not engaging in formal research, the quality and success of your study will depend on a well laid out plan. As a mechanical engineering professor, my collaborators proved to be indispensable partners for this.

Early in our research, we gathered baseline data through student interviews on how students approach learning in engineering science courses and how they define learning. We have found that students predominantly rely on working and reviewing example problems as a means of learning. This approach to learning falls into the category of rehearsal strategies, where students are seeking to memorize steps and match patterns rather than develop a richer conceptual understanding. While it is important to know facts, results from learning science show rehearsal strategies are insufficient for developing adequate conceptual frameworks that are necessary for transferring concepts to new situations and being able to explain their understanding effectively to others – key aspects of engineering work. To construct such rich conceptual frameworks students also need to engage in elaborative and organizational learning strategies, but students reported underutilization of these strategies. Students’ overreliance on example problems does not align with being able to apply course concepts to real-world problems.

In reviewing the data, I also realized that I might be part of the problem. My teaching and assessments had been primarily organized around working problems with little variation. The research helped me change. I decided to scaffold students’ use of a broader range of monitoring, elaborative, and organizational strategies by changing my approach to teaching. I realized that I could empower my students by helping them learn about and refine their learning skills – even as I teach the content of the course.

I made significant changes to my course. I changed the grade category for “homework” to “development activities” to include the regular homework, and new homework learning check quizzes and video quizzes. These quizzes provided low-stakes opportunities for formative feedback to students about their conceptual understanding. I also changed my classroom activities, engaging students in evaluating and explaining given solutions with errors, recall practice, interrogating examples with “what if” questions and answering them, and creating problems for specific concepts. For the next project steps, we are collecting data on these implementations so the research-to-practice cycle can begin again.

Outcomes:

My students performed at least as well on traditional problem solving exams as students in other sections of the same course. Importantly, they reported feeling more responsible for their learning and that they had to exert more effort in their learning than in other engineering science courses. For me, this has been a more fulfilling teaching experience. Not only have I found that students asked better questions about course content, but I also had more conversations with students about how they can learn more effectively and efficiently. It has added rigor and a clarity of purpose in my teaching that reaches beyond course content.

Lessons learned:

I learned to articulate the differences between my course and other courses and to get buy-in from students as to what I was trying to do. As a teacher, student resistance to change can be hard but it is worth it to improve teaching and learning experiences. Collaborative partnerships help!

Acknowledgement:

The metacognition research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1433757, 1433645, & 1150384. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


Utilizing a Metacognition Chart for Exam Review and Metacognitive Skill Development

by Dana Melone, Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School

 Downloadable

Motivation and Context:

I teach AP Psychology at a Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My students range in age from 15-18 years old. They also come into my classroom with a variety of grade point averages ranging from below a 2.0 to above a 4.0. While some students have excellent, note taking and study skills as well an understanding of what they need to study, I find that most of my students (even the top ones) tend to try to study everything and get overwhelmed. They also do not utilize review time to their advantage.

At the same time my students love review games and in class review time. However, for years I was hesitant to play them or give them time to review in class because they would be so actively engaged in the game or review activity that they would not take the time to consider what they knew and what they did not know, and how this should effect their studying (i.e. practice metacognition about their learning). I wanted to engage them in demonstrations and games but I also wanted them to use those activities to guide their studying and develop effective learning strategies that could be used beyond my course. In response to this dilemma, I developed the metacognitive prompt chart below.

Nuts and Bolts:

In order to help students gauge how much they know, I have started requiring them to complete the metacognitive chart as they are reviewing in class or playing a review game I have also pointed out that they can use the chart even when they are working on current content. The chart consists of 4 columns that help students categorize their understanding of the concepts.

Students use the chart by putting the concept names in the column that best describes their understanding of each concept as we move through review activities or games. There are also two questions at the bottom that ask them about the focus of their studying and patterns they have seen over time. In the end, they have a chart that allows them in one glance to know what they need to study and what they have knowledge of.

  1. What concepts need to be the focus of your studying? How will you make sure you are studying them actively?
  2. Look at your past charts, what concepts seem to remain a problem? How will you address this?

My students have this chart out any time we are going over previously learned content or reviewing (multiple times a week). I encourage my students to re-examine their charts once a week to look for patterns over time and reflect on what they need to get help with or review. I also encourage them to combine any charts as we near assessments that are cumulative. Multiple times a month I collect the sheets and can visibly see areas that all my students are struggling. I have been able to use it for my own personal metacognition in planning review, re-teaching, and remediation times.

Outcomes:

This chart has proven its effectiveness on many levels. Students have been able to visibly see the areas that they need improvement in and should focus on. They are also able to examine these sheets over time to see patterns in the content that they are struggling with and doing well with. An unintended outcome has been the ability to use it as the teacher for ongoing formative assessment of my classes.


Metacognitive Time Capsule Assignments for Reflection on Writing Skills

by Sarah Robinson*, U. S. Air Force Academy
sarah.robinson@usafa.edu

Downloadable

Motivations and Context:

I teach upper level Geoscience courses on Remote Sensing and Imagery Analysis—essentially using satellite imagery to study earth surface materials and processes. In addition to the course objectives on imagery analysis, I also have a course objective on communication. Specifically, I want my students to be able to construct a convincing, clear, and concise written argument that communicates their analysis choices and subsequent results. Using imagery to analyze a geospatial problem is not enough; students also need to be able to write a convincing technical summary that communicates their analysis and results to others.

One of the challenges with communication course goals is that writing is often approached with a fixed mindset (Dweck, 2007), meaning it is viewed as some innate quality that you either have or you don’t. With a fixed mindset, it simply doesn’t make sense to expend effort on writing (ex. write drafts or read feedback) because there is no clear path for improvement—it is a fixed skill regardless of effort. However, if students alternatively view writing with a growth mindset they see writing as a skill that can be improved with practice and use of specific actions/strategies to make progress. Engaging in a growth mindset requires reflection on abilities and progress (self-awareness) and identification of strategies for improvement (self-regulation). In terms of writing, this translates into effort expended on practice in multiple assignments/drafts, reflection on progress and feedback, and identification of strategies to improve future writing assignments. Course design and assignments that promote metacognition through self-awareness and self-regulation can help students develop this growth mindset. Specifically, I incorporate systematic practice, actionable feedback and a time capsule reflection assignment in my course design.

Nuts and Bolts:

Systematic Practice:

Students have 3 lab assignments and a final project where they are asked to analyze geospatial problems using imagery and then summarize their analysis and results in 1-2 paragraphs. Each lab assignment has different geospatial problems, but the writing expectations and format are the same—for each geospatial problem, students write a summary that includes an introduction to the research problem, an explanation of their analysis choices in solving the problem, and an evaluation of their results. By having the same format (but different topic) for each writing assignment, students get systematic practice in writing a convincing, clear, and concise written argument.

Actionable Feedback:

The consistent format and expectations across writing assignments allows me to use the same rubric for every assignment. While the content changes with each assignment, students can reflect on their progress by looking at their rubric scores across the semester. For the first assignment, the rubric is the same, but a multiplier is applied to the score to compensate for their initial lack of familiarity with the format. In addition to rubric scores, I provide comments in the text (students submit electronic copies of their assignments) that provide actionable feedback on how to improve the next submission. Because the comments are relevant to a future assignment, students report that they engage in self-regulation by reading and using the feedback to improve their next assignment.

Metacognitive time capsule assignment

To support student self-awareness of their progress over the semester, I created a time capsule assignment where students compare their writing on the first lab with their writing on the final project. This assignment supports student metacognitive development because it asks students to develop self-awareness by reflecting on the changes they see in their writing. As all of their submissions are digital, students have copies of all their assignments and feedback across the semester. This assignment asks students specific questions to guide their reflection and asks them to provide example text from their assignments to support their statements. I am very clear in class that they receive full credit for participating in the assignment—they are not graded on what is in their answers, only on whether they provided complete answers.

There are two keys to this assignment for effective student reflection: the “time capsule” aspect and the consistent assignment format. Having students preserve and read their actual first writing assignment is critical—this first assignment essentially captures who they were at the beginning of the semester and preserves it, as in a time capsule, to be revealed intact at the end of the semester. The time capsule aspect allows for unfiltered, direct comparison by students of their skills then vs. their skills now that is not overwritten by their experiences during the semester.

The other key component is having a consistent assignment format to make comparison easier. This assignment would not have worked as well if students were comparing writing assignments that had very different formats or expectations. By keeping the format/expectations consistent, students are better able to see and explain their progress.

Outcomes:

I had trepidations about giving this time capsule assignment the first time I used it—I honestly didn’t know how students would respond. I was pleasantly surprised to see how engaged they were—instead of just writing their answers during class time, they were sharing with each other their comparisons between their first paragraphs and what they were then able to write for their final project. Their written answers documented their reflection on the changes they saw in their technical writing skills (self-awareness) and identified writing habits that they could continue/change in future classes (self-regulation).

Lessons Learned and future directions:

This type of time capsule assignment is something that I will continue to build into my courses. The planning required to design a consistent format and preserve early assignments is a small cost for the benefits of having students develop self-awareness and self-regulation and supporting a growth mindset.

Reference

Dweck, Carol S. (2007). “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” New York: Ballantine Books.

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