How a Metacognitive Card Game was Born

by John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

I have developed a variety of metacognitive exercises over the years, but I never thought I’d develop a card game. The nerd in me likes the fact that a metacognitive card game now exists. While I want to tell you about how the game came about, I am also writing because the story includes an important metacognitive moment.

Promoting metacognition in traditional educational settings

Most of my metacognitive exercises have been designed for classroom settings where students are asked to become aware of their various learning processes (such as reading, writing, ethical reasoning) and their experience with their process (such as feeling stuck). If students can become aware of what’s working and what’s not, then they can better recognize where they need to make adjustments and find ways to improve.

As a small part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project, I developed metacognition exercises to support students doing course-based undergraduate research (EvaluateUR-CURE).[1] These efforts yielded a collection of twelve exercises that provide students with opportunities to build metacognitive habits as well as a guidebook for instructors (Metacognitive exercises and Guides). These exercises provide students with opportunities to practice metacognition in ways that support the broad elements of EvaluateUR-CURE (E-CURE for short).

Each metacognitive exercise helps students attend to various elements of their research process (such as reading for research, developing good research questions, managing projects, building resilience, and effectively communicating results). Once aware of their process, students can then decide whether they need to make adjustments to their process or perhaps seek out additional resources. The guidebook provides instructors and mentors with quick ways to integrate student metacognition into the conversations that they are already having in the classroom. While not specifically designed to support the version of the EvaluateUR method for students conducting independent research with a faculty mentor, the exercises developed for E-CURE can be very useful in a variety of settings.

Time for an adjustment?

My design challenge changed dramatically when working on another NSF funded project aimed at developing a variant of the method – called Evaluate-Compete – for students participating in engineering design competitions. The goal was to help students develop and become aware of academic and workforce skills through their involvement in these competitions. The NSF project initially focused on the MATE ROV competition where high school and college students build underwater vehicles to simulate solving various real-world marine challenges. Teams work all year on their vehicles and then compete in a series of regional competitions in hopes of qualifying for the World Championships. As with the course-based research projects, I was tasked with designing exercises to support metacognitive growth.

I quickly encountered a problem. Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are fun. I had the good fortune of attending the MATE ROV world championships in 2021 and 2022. It is easy to see why teams spend countless hours designing, testing, and tweaking their ROVs. It’s fun. Therein lies both secret to student engagement and flaw in my plan to use worksheets to promote metacognition.

Before, during, and after the competitions, the focus is on the vehicles, vehicle systems, and vehicle performance. The students creating these vehicles are learning all sort of things (and that’s ultimately the point), but it surely seems like it is all about the vehicles. In the previous NSF project, metacognitive exercises encouraged students to pause long enough to consider where they might need to make adjustments in their process and how they might take those lessons into the next learning context. Hands-on research was the secret to student engagement, but the classroom or the structured mentoring setting was the secret to students completing and discussing the metacognitive exercises.

Unlike those settings, students building ROVs were not always tied to formal classes and often work as part of a club, student organization, or a group of friends seeing if they were up to the challenge. The goal in designing the exercise was to promote skill building and reflection on their learning process as they design vehicles and solve problems. But why would anyone do metacognitive exercises when there is no grade attached, especially if you could be focusing on an ROV instead?

Why Cards?

It was time for me to take my own metacognitive medicine. Metacognition refers to an intentional awareness about a process. My process for designing metacognitive questions was going well enough and it worked in other settings, but my initial attempts to pitch worksheets to eager young engineers fell flat and it was quickly obvious that the strategy was never going to work.

Metacognition reminds us to make adjustments when a particular strategy isn’t working. My strategy was doomed. I needed an adjustment. If I could get students to pause and reflect on their process, then the prompts had a chance of helping them build better habits. But how to get them to pause long enough to engage the prompts? I needed a fun way to engage students in reflection about their learning that could be done anywhere, anytime, with any number of people. Because regular practice is important to habit formation, I further hoped that something fun could improve frequency of use and aid habit formation. I shifted strategies and designed a metacognitive card game.

Want to play?

The resulting metacognitive cards can be used at any time, in any order, or in any combination. They can be played by individuals or by a team. Each contains a series of “fun” prompts organized in three categories – problem-solving, persistence, and working with people. Ways to play can be found within each deck, including on planes, trains, at team meetings, and pizza parties. For example, the game can be played individually or in a group. When teams play, individuals can answer from the point of view of someone else in the group, pass a card to someone else for them to respond, or shift perspective by answering from the point of view of someone outside the group. Early feedback on the cards is positive and feedback collection is ongoing. I’ll have more to say future posts. For now, if YOU would like to play the Better upon reflection: building metacognitive habits ONE card at a time card game, you can request a deck or print out your own deck. And if you play, I’d love to hear how it goes.

[1] Special thanks to the EvaluateUR-Method team – Jill Singer, Sean Fox, Daniel Weiler, Jill Zande, Emma Binder, Maureen Kahn, and Bridget Zimmerman.

Using Business Ethics Case Studies to Foster Metacognition and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Appreciation

by Dr. Charles Zola, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Catholic and Dominican Institute

The values of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have recently emerged as an area of concern in many areas of contemporary American life. Societal pressure and expectations have motivated many in the business community to examine how these values are promoted in contemporary American business practice. Similarly, accreditors for schools of business now require that these values be reflected in the curriculum and that students demonstrate an awareness of and appreciation for DEI. However, they have not been proscriptive in how this is to be accomplished. I suggest that using case studies can serve this learning outcome and by having students reflect upon their proposed resolutions to DEI-related moral dilemmas arising in business, they develop metacognitive skills which engenders a greater understanding of the implications of DEI in the workplace.

Case Studies and Metacognition

Case studies have long been used as part of business ethics pedagogy. Utilizing case studies promotes understanding of ethical theories that are usually unfamiliar to students and can gradually build student confidence in arguing a moral point of view with the aim of solving a moral dilemma. Beyond this, case study pedagogy can be employed to develop students’ metacognitive capacities. After applying ethical theories to navigate moral dilemmas and justify proposed solutions, students can be prompted to examine why they choose the moral theories that they do and why they apply them in the way they do. Additionally, students can be prompted to resolve the same case study employing a different moral theory, for example, substituting deontological or virtue ethics for a utilitarian approach. They then compare how their proposed resolutions align. In doing so, students not only gain fluency in applied ethical reasoning, but a greater awareness of how their own moral reasoning changes in each iteration. This practice challenges students to be more conscious and reflective about their thinking in terms of application of ethical principles to the same case study and if such application alters the resolution in any way. Inculcating this approach into course pedagogy strengthens students’ metacognitive activity.

If time allows, continued reflection can encourage students to consider the suitability of the application of moral principles among cases, revealing greater similarity and differences not only in the theories themselves but also in procedures and policies that regulate business. In assessing the effectiveness of their proposed solutions, students can be further prompted to re-examine their moral dialectics to ascertain if all aspects of a moral dilemma are adequately addressed and if the moral agents impacted find themselves in a better or worse situation.

One way that this can be encouraged is that for each case study, students could chart the application of each ethical theory where they identify the way/s that moral agents were impacted and how the potential outcomes varied. Each chart can then serve as a metacognitive tool that students use to reflect upon their own thinking processes. If case study analysis is done by teams of smaller groups within a class, then the charts can provide even more information for reflection. A comparison and review of the charts can result in discovering where some essential points were inadequately addressed or not addressed at all, or where potential outcomes were not foreseen. This may result in having students revisit and revise their earlier positions and think about how they reasoned through the moral dilemma. On the other hand, these charts can reveal how their moral reasoning resulted in optimal outcomes, thus affirming the important and practical role that business ethics has for business practice. These varied approaches encourage students to reflect upon their critical thinking and cultivate metacognitive awareness.

Case Studies and DEI

One of the most important topics of a business ethics course that relates to DEI is justice. Classically defined as “giving to each their due,” justice is an essential moral value that regulates how businesses are expected to operate both internally and within the wider community and, thus, is a core value of DEI. Addressing almost every area of business from workplace etiquette to graver considerations such global warming, case studies can be utilized to foster appreciation for the importance of justice. At minimum, businesses act justly in respecting civil law, especially in relation to Civil Rights. These laws seek to eradicate decades of inequality and injustice in terms of business activities related to hiring, promotion, discipline, and discharge of employees and this is closely aligned with the objectives of DEI initiatives. Extending beyond, corporate social responsibility challenges businesses to consider just actions in terms of paternalistic actions within the community that range from philanthropy to efforts to curb and reduce the exploitation of natural resources that often contributes disproportionate harm and inequalities for populations in developing economies.

Case studies drawn from the aforementioned topics can help students understand how justice and the values and goals of DEI are related to business in two distinct ways. First, the case studies themselves can illustrate challenges and opportunities for creating a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace, or how businesses can effectively support those values beyond the workplace through initiatives related to corporate social responsibility.

The other is by reframing the case studies themselves. Changing key characteristics of the moral agents can generate greater sensitivity to some of the moral aims of DEI. Switching the age, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic identity of a moral agent invites students to view the case study and moral dilemma in a different light and from multiple perspectives. For example, would the moral dilemma and proposed solution be the same if the main character was no longer a Hispanic woman but a White woman who was diagnosed with cancer and recently divorced? Are the demands of justice to give to each their due reflected in the case study analysis and subsequent resolution? This reframing can challenge students to reconsider their own moral analysis and proposed resolutions from a more empathetic perspective, hopefully engendering a greater sensitivity to the goals of DEI.

In light of this, students can be encouraged to consider if they would remain committed to what they initially viewed as the moral dilemma, or would this alter the analysis? Similarly, would the proposed resolution of the moral conflict remain the same or would change as well? Further prompting encourages metacognition by challenging students to reflect upon how and why the reframing might have altered their thinking about the moral dimensions of the case study as well as its resolution.

Equally important in raising issues related to justice and DEI is a concern for rectifying societal inequalities of the past. Students can be prompted to review and reflect upon their analysis and proposed resolution of a moral dilemma to discern if it advances the interests of traditionally marginalized groups and affirms a more equitable society. Crafted in this way, case study analysis can raise students’ exploration of the meaning of corporate social responsibility and how it reflects a commitment to social justice.

Beyond this, students could be encouraged to reflect on how their own identities and circumstances may have shaped how they responded to the case study. In what way and to what extent might their own biographies have influenced their impressions about the situation that had been presented and how they reasoned to resolve it? Students can be prompted to examine if their moral reasoning betrayed a bias due to their own circumstances and if not, why not? Such an exercise can be doubly beneficial if students work in teams and share with fellow students their observations, yielding an even wider perspective about how a diversity of viewpoints may impact the resolution of a moral dilemma. Furthermore, doing so also models for students a respect for diversity and inclusion by giving each member of their team “their due” in being able to share their views and having them considered.

Using case studies in the ways described can help to advance one of the essential learning outcomes for schools of business, namely, that future business professionals aspire to ethical conduct in their professional lives and promote it in everyday business practice. Too often, case study pedagogy can remain a mere academic exercise completed unrelated to personal development and cultivating reassessment of personal moral codes. If so, such pedagogical practice is sterile. However, careful attention to case study pedagogy that encourages metacognitive reflection can gradually cultivate habits of moral thinking that translates into moral agency that eventually can be transformative of business practice as it relates to the goals of DEI.

Using Learning Portfolios to Support Metacognition

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

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

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

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

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

Overview of the Learning Portfolio

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

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

E-Book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lessons Learned

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

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

Conclusion

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

Building Emotional Regulation and Metacognition through Academic Entrepreneurship

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drawing on Literature and Personal Experience

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

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

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

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

Academic Entrepreneurship Class Context

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

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

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

Figure 1. Academic Entrepreneurship Course Process

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

Resources

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

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

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

Helping students become self-directed writers

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

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

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

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

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

Beliefs and Assumptions

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

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

Activities to guide the process of self-directed learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Engaging Struggling Students through Empathy and Metacognitive Conversations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Infusing Metacognition in a Learning Strategies Course

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

Boosting the Effectiveness of Collaborative Learning Using Metacognition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Example of Incorporating Metacognition: An Online Abnormal Psychology Course

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Metacognition Pervasive

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Series Introduction – Ways Metacognition Can Enhance Student Success

by Anton O. Tolman, Ph.D., Utah Valley University Guest Editor

There appears to be growing interest among faculty and researchers on the topic of metacognition. This is evidenced, in part, by increasing research and published works related to the subject such as Saundra and Stephanie McGuire’s (2015) book regarding teaching students how to learn. Other recent works (e.g., Doyle & Zakrajsek, 2018; Bain, 2012) are aimed primarily at students, encouraging them to recognize how the brain works and how they can adopt behaviors and strategies that will enhance their learning. These are laudable efforts that provide a solid foundation for faculty to introduce to students thereby increasing students’ chances of success. Yet, faculty and others who approach metacognition only from the perspective of enhancing student learning strategies or behaviors (process metacognition) are missing the opportunity for a deeper understanding of metacognition’s central role in learning.

With a broader understanding, all faculty and staff who have contact with students can promote and advocate for metacognitive skill development in general education, course development, across programs and curricula, and as valued skills in students’ personal and professional lives.

Three Ways Metacognition Can Enhance Student Success

Here are three quick examples of how metacognition furthers student success as well as promoting the overarching goals of colleges and universities:

Fostering process metacognition helps students understand how they learn and promotes the acquisition and development of effective learning strategies across subjects (including General Education) as well as within the major. This promotes content mastery and improved academic skills and performance as well as transfer across knowledge domains, but only if the use of these skills is perceived as valued by instructors across courses and within the major. Otherwise, students tend to see this emphasis as restricted to a particular course or professor. If student advisors also encouraged buy-in of the value of these skills and their value to professional careers, this could also have a significant impact.
Metacognition reduces student resistance to learning. Students, especially in their first years, often see themselves as consumers, functioning primarily in a passive “student” role they know well and are comfortable with. Resistance to learning is ubiquitous in education and plays a major role in decreasing student motivation to learn. Resistance arises due to systemic influences (see Tolman & Kremling, 2017), one of which is the lack of metacognitive awareness (see Figure below).

Students’ lack of self-awareness of learning strategies, their relative effectiveness, and the ability to monitor and evaluate their learning (beyond grades) naturally leads to negative classroom situations, frustration, and anxiety. In their consumer or “student” role, pushed in part by social expectations and institutional culture, many believe that if they have put in good effort, they should receive excellent grades. If this does not occur, natural targets of that frustration are the instructor (she doesn’t teach well), the content (I’m no good at this subject), or the generalization that they do not belong in college.

Promoting student metacognition, especially, shifts the responsibility for learning back towards the student who hopefully realizes they can succeed by using better learning approaches and encourages them to seek help when they realize they have not mastered important skills or concepts. This also increases student motivation and desire to learn and can curtail the sense that they do not belong. Instructors, advisors, and others who emphasize the relevance of metacognitive skills in professional careers, or even effective parenting, can help students see value and meaning in using these skills in many environments and across their lives.

Another vital aspect of metacognition is that in becoming self-aware of their own motives, approaches, level of resistance, and personal responsibility, students begin to shift their personal narrative and identity away from that of consumer to that of someone capable of success. They begin to see themselves as someone who can be a lifelong learner and a learned person in their profession and in society. Taraban (2020; Taraban & Blanton 2008) described this process of personal narrative development as inherently metacognitive. In addition, Hale (2012) likewise explores the powerful interdependent relationships between metacognition, critical thinking, and personal narrative.

These relationships are so interdependent and so potent, they underlie the documented effectiveness of what are called “high impact practices” in learning and retention. A good example of this is the power of undergraduate research, an enterprise heavily laden with metacognitive experiences if done well, to shape students’ personal narratives and create a new sense of identity as a scholar, as someone capable of asking their own questions and finding answers. These experiences are especially powerful for first-generation and minority students as clearly described by Charity Hudley, Dickter, and Franz (2017) and the work of Tarabon and Blanton (2008).

Overview of this Guest Editor Series

Even with these limited examples, it should become obvious that metacognition is central to successful learning. The purpose or goal of this Mini-series is to explore several pivotal aspects of learning in higher education related to student resistance and motivation and to encourage all faculty and students to explore these boundaries. In the upcoming blogs, you will hear from the following authors on several important subjects:

Christopher Lee on How Metacognition Can Facilitate Student Inclusion in the Classroom
Steven Pearlman on Metacognition and the Fish in the Water
Benjamin Johnson on Change Instead of Continuity: Using Metacognition to Enhance Student Motivation for Learning
Anton Tolman on Boosting the Effectiveness of Collaborative Learning Using Metacognition

I will conclude the series with a blog focusing primarily on personal narrative and self-identity. Above, I noted that student resistance is a common occurrence in our classrooms. However, resistance is not limited to students. It is time that we, as professors, go beyond the constraints of thinking of ourselves as “content experts” and consider the broader scope of what we are capable of achieving by promoting metacognition in our assignments, our curriculum, across the major, and our institutions. We hope this blog series will help you see some new possibilities.

References

Bain, K. (2012). What the Best College Students Do. Belknap Press.

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

Doyle, T. & Zakrajsek, T.D. (2018). The New Science of Learning: How to Learn in Harmony with Your Brain (2^nd Ed). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

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 Publishing.

Taraban, R., & Blanton, R. L. (Eds.). (2008). Creating Effective Undergraduate Research Programs in Science: The Transformation from Student to Scientist. New York: Teachers College Press.

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

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

Metacognition and First-Year Students

by Megan Morrissey, Assistant Director of Student Success, Mount Saint Mary College

MY OWN INTRODUCTION TO METACOGNITION

“But, Meg, how am I supposed to remember this stuff?”

I heard this question quite frequently throughout my first year in 2012-2013 as a part-time Academic Coach, a new position for me in higher education. The core values of my job included:

developing holistic relationships with my students
assisting them in feeling more confident as a college student both academically and personally
aiding in their overall transition to college life

Armed and prepared with questions and exercises I thought would help my students open up to me, I used an intake form that posed logistical questions, like their contact information and intended major, as well as questions that spoke to their interests and self-awareness. However, what became apparent to me is that this generation of students was craving skills that would help them retain information in more meaningful ways, and my focus was to support them in becoming more metacognitive.

For my student meetings, my toolkit included ways to learn and many inventories that tested students’ learning styles. Although these strategies might have worked for an initial exam, giving them a good place to start, these were not enough to help them fully understand key concepts they would be seeing over and again, throughout the semester, and the rest of their college career. They used the skills I gave them to cram information and facts in for that first test, and then they would push all of it aside to do the same thing for the next exam, never truly immersing themselves in the material and understanding the concepts themselves.

THE FEAR OF ASKING QUESTIONS

[In high school] “I didn’t have to study. I paid attention and got good grades.”

Prevalent in secondary education, the “teach to the test” mentality that some educators have is understandable. Being evaluated by standardized test scores, teachers and administrators feel the need to educate their students on exactly what to expect. However, what happens when these students get to college and suddenly the answers to the exam are not so black and white? When they need to defend an answer instead of just memorizing a Power Point slide? When professors want them to immerse themselves in the material? What scared my students the most was their faculty encouraging them to ask questions in class and/or share their informed opinions on what they thought about the material.

Coupled with an intimidation of new faculty, many students face a real imposter syndrome coming into college and feel as if they do not truly belong there. My students have told me that they “don’t want to bother their professors” or are afraid of asking “dumb questions” and risk having faculty look at them in a negative way. My students also struggled with figuring out specifically how to word questions to faculty to get the clarification they need. In order to help them with this task, I would ask them in our meetings to explain what they might be having trouble with in class, asking my own questions to ensure I understood what they needed. Then, we would do a role-play:

My students play their professor, and I play the student.
They give me the absolute worst things that they think their faculty might say and I, in turn, show them how to navigate the situation and get their questions answered.
We then switch roles so that they can practice and anticipate their own reactions and responses.

HOW DO HIGH-ACHIEVING STUDENTS DO IT?

The role-playing exercises I used with my students to ease their anxiety in relating to their faculty led me to think more about how other higher achieving students were able to perform at such a caliber. A study from Iowa State University investigated academic achievement, achievement goals and beliefs about learning surrounding study strategies. The researchers concluded that competence, it seems, can be found both through performance, i.e. the results of an exam or quiz, and through reflection in comparing the actual results achieved to their own expectations (Geller et. al., 2018). Four patterns of achievement goals constitute the development of student competence:

They cultivate a personal sense of having learned the material.
They create the greatest link with metacognitive skills.
They monitor their own progress.
They adjust their study habits accordingly.

To achieve more, successful students engaged in metacognition, assessing the work they have already successfully retained, creating questions to more accurately understand the material they have yet to master and adjusting as needed. They also relied on study skills that included self-testing and planning out their study schedules to avoid procrastinating and cramming.

SUPPORTING STUDENTS WITH ANXIETY

In order to address a rise in the number of students with anxiety-related health issues, we deploy a reverse design in developing several strategies to help them cope. I assist them in the following tasks and activities:

creating a structured study schedule, working backwards from when their exam is, breaking down how much material they feel they can handle in a day, and
rehearsing, i.e. going to the actual classroom, when empty, and creating a practice test (using questions from their professors, textbooks and/or the internet), having them sit in their seat, and taking the practice test in the time they’re usually allotted. This activity not only facilitates the comprehension of the test material, but also anticipates the coping mechanisms they will use in case they get anxious, e.g. deep breathing, repeating a mantra they have created, and scanning the test to see what answers they absolutely know. This process of focusing awareness on their state of mind (specifically looking at when, where, how and why their anxiety peaks) and then using that to adjust their behaviors is another form of metacognition.

HOW CAN FACULTY HELP?

“If metacognition is the answer to being a more engaged and high achieving learner, what strategies can be utilized in class to better assist them in engaging in metacognition?”

Instructors can be powerful influencers by incorporating strategies in their courses and explicitly encouraging metacognitive practices. A study done by Wilson and Bai (2010) at the University of Central Florida concluded that educators need to make metacognition a priority in their lessons and demonstrate the flexibility of these learning strategies in order to show students that they need to reflect and think about how they are retaining information. These reflections can include the following:

active discussions and think-alouds
asking students to hand in questions anonymously before class—concepts, ideas, and points-of information—that they may not have understood from the previous lesson and/or homework assignment
incorporating reflective writing at the end of each class session and to guide them in making connections in what they have been learning

CONCLUSION

My students often come into my office during the first few days of their new journey at our institution. Their emotions are raw and they’re terrified of making any type of mistake. In bridging reflective practices with the development of students’ metacognitive skills, the power, for me, lies in asking purposeful, thoughtful questions and, thus, guiding them as they confront their fear of asking questions and learn to ask questions themselves. Metacognitive skills assist them in building self-confidence in and out of the classroom.

WORKS CITED

Geller, Jason, et al. “Study strategies and beliefs about learning as a function of academic achivement and achievement goals.” Memory (2018): 8. Article.

Wilson, Nancy S. and Haiyan Bai. “The relationships and impact of teachers’ metacognitive knowledge and pedagogical understandings of metacognition.” Metacognition Learning (2010): 20. Study.

Being Authentic: Modeling Metacognitive Growth and Connecting with Students

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

Learning takes effort and can feel hard at times. Likewise, learning to manage one’s learning processes better, growing metacognitively, is an effortful process. Because approaches to learning are habitual, deeply ingrained over time, changing them is hard. Metacognitive growth often progresses in fits and starts with cycles improvement and relapse into old habits. This is true for our students and for us as instructors. Remembering this can help us help them better with metacognitive lessons that can guide them throughout their lives.

I often say that teaching students about metacognition and engaging them in their metacognitive growth is one of the most important and authentic things I do academically. I have expertise within my field (Mechanical Engineering, Dynamic Systems and Control) and I am accomplished at applying it to engineering problems. When I engage students in learning this content, I model this expertise. I strive to make my content-focused teaching authentic, but it isn’t authentic in the same way as providing instructional experiences for my students on metacognition. While I may know which disciplinary concepts students will likely struggle with, my struggles with those concepts are a distant memory. However, as I engage my students in metacognitive growth, i.e., changing my habitual approaches to learning, my struggles are concurrent with theirs.

Becoming a student again

For example, I have encountered my metacognitive struggles as I have been learning German, initially as a hobby and now more intentionally as I prepare for a sabbatical in Germany. About a year-and-a-half ago I decided to sign up for a Duolingo account to see if I could resurrect and build on my prior German language experience. I had just signed my children up for accounts to practice Spanish and sensed an opportunity to finally work towards a long-held personal goal – becoming proficient in another language. Armed with my knowledge of metacognition, I wanted to make my practice effective and efficient. I set a modest but good practice goal of two grammar modules per day, and I jumped in. I have been consistent in my daily practice – only missing about three days in 18 months – and I have added some varied strategies to practice German – Duolingo stories (spoken dialogues with text), trying to use basic phrases in my daily life, and trying to read German news stories. However, I have also noticed some metacognitive pitfalls in my language practice, even as I have gotten more serious about it.

I have not engaged in recall practice, despite the pop-up messages reminding me that I should take time after a session to recall new vocabulary and key grammar and usage insights. I also know its value, but I tell myself I just don’t have time. I am avoiding a good strategy and making poor use of my metacognitive knowledge of strategies and tasks.

I also lack a clear learning goal. What does proficient mean? How will I know I have achieved it? What are appropriate incremental goals that build towards proficiency? Admittedly, for most of this time, this has been more of a hobby pursuit, but if I really want to develop the skill, I need more specific, even if still modest, learning goals. This is poor metacognitive planning.

Then there is how I track my progress. I am sad to say I have taken pride in the number of XP points (virtual points within Duolingo) I have accrued and the number of modules I have crossed off. They are easy to count, but this does not really assess my proficiency with the German language accurately. This is poor metacognitive monitoring of my learning.

Within the story modules, I am tentative and find myself relying too much on being able to hover over the words to see the definition before answering the comprehension questions. Why do I find it hard to commit to an answer, right or wrong, and learn from it? It feels hard, but as I tell my students, this is how you know you are learning. I am relying on a lower quality strategy because it feels good.

Acknowledging the Same Struggles

So, each time I bring up metacognition with my students, I am faced with the reality of my struggles with it, as demonstrated by the pitfalls in my German language practice. Thus, I teach about metacognition, not as an expert who has it all figured out, but rather as one who is, perhaps, further along the path. This is humbling. So, what can I do with this struggle? Can I really engage my students in their metacognitive growth if I am struggling with my own metacognitive growth? Yes! But how I go about it matters.

If I ignore talking about metacognition altogether, then I might avoid feeling uncomfortable about my failings with it. But I would not likely grow myself nor help my students grow metacognitively. If I pretend I have it all figured out, then I risk being found-out, losing my credibility, and sabotaging my students’ potential metacognitive growth.

However, if embrace my struggles with metacognition and am honest about them with my students, then I might be able to grow myself while I also help my students. There are at least two mechanisms for positive impact, acknowledging my similarity to my students and providing my students a concrete model of metacognitive growth in practice.

When I accept that I am like my students and my students are like me in struggling with metacognitive practice and growth (e.g., my German language studies), I gain a more complete view of my students. I can no longer view them as just lazy, unmotivated, or lacking in work ethic. Instead I can see sincere effort and a desire to learn and do well in classes, in spite of less effective learning behaviors. When I see my students in this way, I have a better attitude when I interact with them. This enables me to authentically praise the positive aspects of their learning behavior and to more gently challenge the less effective aspects they are relying on. It can move our interaction from a place of discouragement to one of encouragement and can help students to view their ability to grow into the learning challenge before them. When I recognize that my students have similar barriers to metacognitive growth as I do, I am able to be more compassionate and supportive as I help them face the challenges they experience in their learning.

Points of Connection

Sharing my own metacognitive struggles, e.g., with my German language practice, can provide a point of connection with my students. Students can have a hard time identifying with their instructors, viewing us as experts with experiences far removed from theirs. It is heartening to see students warm up to me and talk more openly and honestly about their approaches to learning when I have shared elements of my struggles with learning German. Suddenly, the relational distance between us shrinks because I have a present learning experience, concurrent with theirs, that they can readily identify with. Such authentic connections build trust and a foundation for a relationship, which can lead to further support and processing of their learning experiences.

Beyond forging an authentic connection, I can also constructively model of the effortful and continual path to becoming a more skillful learner, i.e., metacognitive growth. Sharing my critiques of my German language practice can demonstrate metacognitive evaluation of my learning processes and my openness to ongoing refinement. However, metacognitive growth does not stop with recognizing ineffective or less effective learning strategies. It requires doing something about it, enacting a productive change. For example, I could share a more refined and specific goal – such as, wanting to be able to engage in pleasantries and make small talk in German – which also helps direct my practice and how I monitor my progress.

How can this look within a specific class? This winter I have been teaching computer programming, and I have found it useful with a few students to draw analogies between my language practice and working towards proficiency with programming concepts. Becoming conversant in German requires more than just knowing German grammar rules, e.g., declensions for accusative cases. I must practice using it in conversation, that is, applying it. Similarly, to become proficient with programming I must know how to write conditional statements and loops, but I also must know how to apply them in various ways to accomplish a specified task – I have to practice applying the concepts. I was trying to model the need to align learning strategies with specific learning goals.

In summary, if I can identify with my students, I can better help them with their metacognitive growth. It helps me to be more gentle and supportive in my desire to see them grow metacognitively. It can also can help my students connect with me and see that they too can persist in their metacognitive growth when I am forthright with my metacognitive shortcomings. Being authentic matters and it can help me do what I think is the most important teaching that I do, helping my students become better learners. These are enduring lessons that can help them be successful throughout their lives, even if they forget the content that I was teaching!

The Evolution of Metacognition in Biological Sciences

By Lindsay Doukopoulos, Assistant Director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Auburn University, and blog mini-series editor.

Much of the literature on metacognition focuses on strategies that faculty can use to improve metacognitive skills in their students and the benefits of such skills. Our mini-series tackles a different kind of problem: how can a department redesign its curriculum to improve metacognition for all students and how will it know if improvement has actually occurred? We believe our efforts can inform others across a variety of disciplines.

Our answer to this question takes the form of a case study in five parts about our collaborative and ongoing efforts to redesign the Department of Biological Sciences’ undergraduate curriculum and program assessment with a goal of improving metacognition for its students and demonstrating that improvement with data. We use a narrative structure to present the key inflection points in this process as well as lessons learned and best practices from our diverse perspectives.

Our collaborators include: Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Sciences and Mathematics, Bob Boyd (also a Biological Sciences professor and formerly the department’s Undergraduate Program Officer); Associate Director of Academic Assessment, Katie Boyd; Associate Director of the Office of University Writing, Chris Basgier; Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, Scott Santos; and Assistant Director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, Lindsay Doukopoulos.

This timeline provides an overview of our efforts while our individual posts go into more detail about specific strategies and outcomes:

Ideation:

June 2016: Department leaders attend PULSE Institute and decide to make metacognition a student learning outcome (SLO) for all undergraduate programs the Department of Biological Sciences (hereafter, Biology)

May 2017: Program assessment reports at this time include only two student learning outcomes (metacognition not one of them) for each of the three undergraduate programs in Biology

August 2017: Faculty retreat led by NSF Vision & Change experts introducing metacognitive teaching strategies

Commitment:

October 2017: Learning Improvement Initiative launched by Biggio Center and Office of Academic Assessment: Biology proposes to improve SLO 6 – Metacognition

Spring 2018: Biology’s curriculum committee develops a plan for improvement and creates an ideal (“aspirational”) curriculum map to share at the 2018 fall faculty retreat

Lindsay Doukopoulos leading faculty development on metacognition at the 2018 Biology Faculty Retreat

Conflict:

August 2018: Faculty retreat, aka “Metacognition Massacre” – widespread faculty rejection of the metacognition SLO on the curriculum map

A New Approach:

Fall 2018: A three-part workshop series created by Office of University Writing (OUW) and the Biggio Center leads faculty to redefine the metacognition SLO and introduces strategies to support faculty teaching

Turning Point:

December 2018: Outcomes of the workshop series, including the new definition of SLO 6, are presented at a faculty meeting and the faculty vote to approve the new definition

Assessing Metacognition:

January – April 2018: Office of Academic Assessment and the Biggio Center lead Biology’s curriculum committee in creating a metacognitive questionnaire for graduating students and a rubric to assess the level of metacognition evidenced in the responses

Improving Metacognition:

Summer 2019: Biology invests in comprehensive strategy to promote metacognition across the curriculum using ePortfolios and several faculty participate in an intensive course redesign program

What now?

Fall 2019: OUW and Biggio provide ongoing support of teaching interventions to improve metacognition; Office of Academic Assessment provides ongoing support of the assessment of this work

What’s next?

Spring 2020: Gather baseline data on graduates’ metacognitive capabilities Goals: Based on our efforts and an ongoing collection of data, we expect to see increases in students’ metacognitive abilities over time

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.

Personal Characteristics Necessary for Metacognition

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

At my institution we have created the Science of Learning Team, a group of students who learn about the science of learning (including metacognition) and then lead seminars for other students who are hoping to improve their academic success. Additionally, as part of an ongoing scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) project, a small group of us (faculty and students) has assessed the efficacy of our various efforts to disseminate the science of learning to both faculty and students.

Students attending a seminar — Students attending a science of learning seminar

This past academic year I had the pleasure of working with Troy Mather, a senior who joined both the Science of Learning Team and the SoTL project effort as his capstone project. Below are some of his final reflections regarding his experiences helping develop his peers’ metacognition and learning skills. I believe they provide some great insights regarding the personal characteristics necessary for metacognition. He also shares some personal applications that many of us might use as a model as we work to develop metacognition in our students.

What is metacognition and why is it important?

My personal definition for metacognition is having the awareness to self- regulate your learning approaches through modifications or corrections. Having the awareness to identify what you need to work on or change gives you the opportunity to grow. It does require modesty and humbleness to look at yourself and be motivated to change something you see as an area for growth. If you are someone like me, who isn’t someone naturally gifted with academics, metacognition is a tool that you can use to guide your growth as a student and learner.

What is the biggest challenge to developing student metacognition skills?

The biggest challenge I see with developing student metacognition skills is the fact that this skill is largely correlated with maturity. Time is a limiting factor because developing self-regulation doesn’t happen overnight. This makes teaching metacognition hard because you can tell others the definition of the concept and why it is important, but you can’t make them internalize the importance or change their behaviors. However, I have seen that most students eventually figure it out with time and maturity.

How can we overcome this challenge?

Something I found to help students get on that track of appreciating metacognition is by providing some personal examples of ways I have self-regulated my learning approaches and made clear improvements. Students listen to those moments of success and often feel more willing to make changes or even become more aware of what they should work on. Sometimes this goes outside of the academic environment. For example, one of the ways I have been most impacted by metacognition is with my training to be selected for Special Tactics/ Combat Rescue following my graduation.¹
I told my students in our Science of Learning seminars that my training experience was a journey of self-reflection and deep accountability. Every day I had to have the self-awareness and honesty to identify my weak areas and do something about it. Some days I didn’t want to drown in the pool. Some days I didn’t want to run a marathon. And some days doing thousands of body weight exercises when I was already sore was a miserable thought. But, I pushed myself to do those things everyday because I knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t reach my goal. I got a professional free- dive instructor and a track coach to help me with my training regimen. It was metacognition that allowed me to see areas to improve and reach out for resources.
With academics, students need to take advantage of all the resources they have in front of them. But, this requires self-accountability to make those identifications and be willing to put in that extra work. I told our students about my experience training for Special Operations because they hopefully saw someone with high ambitions and the willingness to put in the work. Every once in a while, learners need a motivational story to put them on track to accomplish their own goals. I have learned that metacognition is the start to achieving any level of greatness.

Using Troy’s Examples

Troy mentions humbleness and self-honesty as underlying characteristics of successful engagement in metacognition. That is not an aspect of metacognition that I have seen widely discussed, but it’s a great insight. It can be uncomfortable acknowledging aspects of our own efforts that have not been successful, and then examining them closely enough to come up with alternate strategies. This discomfort is especially strong if the alternate strategies appear to require more effort, and we’re not certain that they will lead us to success.

Many of our students face these uncomfortable moments on their path to become better learners. Perhaps we can help them through these uncomfortable barriers by more openly acknowledging the discomfort in facing one’s shortcomings, and letting students know that they are not alone in experiencing discomfort. Motivational stories such as the one Troy shared can help ease the resistance to being metacognitive. I’m sure we can all come up with a personal story or two that illustrate our own experiences as developing learners in some realm. Hopefully we can move past our discomfort in sharing our struggles in order to motivate our students to face their own struggles and self-regulate to move beyond them.

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¹ Special Tactics/ Combat Rescue is an elite team within the Special Operations career field of the Air Force.

* 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.

Investigating Students’ Beliefs about Effective Study Strategies

By Sabrina Badali, B.S., Weber State University
Cognitive Psychology PhD student starting Fall ‘19, Kent State University

As an undergraduate, I became familiar with the conversations that took place after a major test. My classmates frequently boasted about their all-nighters spent reviewing textbooks and notes. Once grades were released, however, another conversation took place. The same students were confused and felt their scores did not reflect the time they spent preparing. My classmates were using relatively ineffective study strategies; most likely because they did not understand or appreciate the benefits of more effective alternatives.

Some of the most commonly reported study strategies include rereading a textbook and reviewing notes (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009). However, those strategies are associated with lower memory performance than other strategies, such as testing oneself while studying, spreading out study sessions, and interleaving or “mixing” material while learning (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013). Getting students to change their study habits can prove difficult. An effective way to start, perhaps, is getting students to change their beliefs about these strategies.

Before a learner will independently choose to implement a more effective study strategy (i.e. spreading out study sessions), they need to appreciate the benefits of the strategy and realize it will lead to improved performance. It seems this is often where the problem lies. Many students lack a metacognitive awareness of the benefits of these effective strategies. It is common for students to believe that strategies such as rereading a textbook or cramming are more beneficial than strategies such as testing oneself while learning or spacing out study sessions, a belief that does not match actual memory performance.

Researching Interleaving as a Study Strategy

This underappreciation of the benefits of these effective study strategies was something I recently investigated. In my research project, undergraduate participants completed two category learning tasks – learning to recognize different species of butterflies and learning artists’ painting styles. For each learning task, half of the butterfly species and half of the artists were assigned to the massed study condition. In the massed condition, all images of a category would be presented consecutively before moving on to the next species or artist. For example, all four images of one butterfly species would be presented back-to-back before moving on to images of the next species. The remaining half of the categories were assigned to the interleaved study condition. In the interleaved condition, images from a category were spread throughout the learning task and two images from the same category were never presented consecutively. For example, the first image of the “Tipper” butterfly may be shown early on, but the remaining three images would be distributed throughout the learning task such that participants viewed several other species before viewing the second image of the “Tipper”.

Images illustrating both massed presentation (left side - all butterflies are in the same category) and interleaved presentation (right side - the butterflies come from four different categories).

After completing these tasks, and completing a final memory assessment, participants were given a brief explanation about the difference between the massed method of presentation and the interleaved method. After this explanation, participants provided a metacognitive judgment about their performance on the study. They were asked whether they thought they performed better on massed items, interleaved items, or performed the same on both.

Misalignment of Evidence and Beliefs

I found that 63% of the participants thought they performed better on massed items, even though actual memory performance showed that 84% of participants performed better on interleaved items. There was a clear disconnect between what the student participants thought was beneficial (massing) versus what was actually beneficial (interleaving). Participants did not realize the benefits of interleaving material while learning. Instead, they believed that the commonly utilized, yet relatively ineffective, strategy of massing was the superior choice. If students’ judgments showed they thought interleaving was less effective than massing, how could we expect these students to incorporate interleaving into their own studying? Metacognition guides students’ study choices, and, at least in this example, students’ judgments were steering them in the wrong direction. This poses a problem for researchers and instructors who are trying to improve students’ study habits.

Using these effective study strategies, such as interleaving, makes learning feel more effortful. Unfortunately, students commonly believe it is a bad thing if the learning process feels difficult. When learning feels difficult, our judgments about how well we will perform tend to be lower than when something feels easy. However, memory performance shows a different pattern. When learning is easy, the material is often quickly forgotten. Alternatively, when learning is more difficult, it tends to lead to improved longer-term retention and higher memory performance (Bjork, 1994). While this difficulty is good for learning outcomes, it can be bad for the accuracy of metacognitive judgments. Before we can get students to change their study habits, it seems we need to change their thoughts about these strategies. If we can get students to associate effortful learning with metacognitive judgments of superior memory performance, we may be able to help students choose these strategies over others.

When teaching these study strategies, explaining how to use the strategy is a vital component, but this instruction could also include an explanation of why the strategies are beneficial to help convince students they are a better choice. Part of this explanation could address the notion that these strategies will feel more difficult, but this difficulty is part of the reason why they are beneficial. If students can accept this message, their metacognitive judgments may start to reflect actual performance and students may become more likely to implement these strategies during their own studying.

References

Bjork, R. A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of human beings. In J. Metcalfe and A. Shimamura (Eds.). Metacognition: Knowing about Knowing (pp. 185-205). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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, 14(1), 4-58.

Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17(4), 471-479.

Metacognition at Goucher II: Training for Q-Tutors

by Dr. Justine Chasmar & Dr. Jennifer McCabe; Goucher College

In the first post of this series, we described various implementations of Goucher College’s metacognition-focused model called the “New 3Rs”: Relationships, Resilience, and Reflection. Here we focus on how elements of metacognition have driven the training of tutors in Goucher’s Quantitative Reasoning (QR) Center.

image from https://www.goucher.edu/explore/ (faculty and student giving a high five)

The QR Center was established in the fall of 2017 to support the development of numeracy in our students and also specifically to bolster our new data analytics general education requirement (part of the Goucher Commons Curriculum, described in depth in our first article). The QR Center started at a time of transition as Goucher shifted from a one-course quantitative reasoning requirement to a set of two required courses: foundational data analytics and data analytics within a discipline. The QR Center mission is to help students with quantitative skill and content development across all disciplines, with a focus on promoting quantitative literacy. To foster these skills, the QR Center offers programming such as appointment-based tutoring, drop-in tutoring, workshops, and academic consultations, with peers (called Q-tutors) as the primary medium of support.

Metacognition is a guiding principle for the QR Center – especially reflection and self-regulated learning. This theme is woven through each piece of QR Center programming, from a newly-developed tutor training course to the focus on academic skill-building at tutoring sessions.

To support the professional development and training of the Q-tutors, the director (co-author of this blog, Dr. Justine Chasmar) created a one-credit course required for all students new to the position. This course combines education, mathematics, quantitative reasoning, and data analytics, and focuses on the intersection of teaching pedagogy within each realm. Because it is primarily set within the context of quantitative content, this course is more focused, and inherently more meaningful, than traditional tutor training. The course is also unique in combining practical exercises with metacognitive reflection. Individual lessons range from basic pedagogy to reviews of essential quantitative content for the tutoring position. Learning is scaffolded by supporting professional practice with continuous reflection and applications toward improved self-regulated learning – both for the tutors and for the students they will assist.

The content of each tutor preparation class meeting is sandwiched by metacognitive prompting. Before class, the Q-tutors prepare, engage, and reflect; for example, they may read a relevant piece of literature and respond to several open-ended reflective prompts about the reading (see “Suggested Readings” below). The synchronous tutor preparation class lesson, attended by all new Q-tutors and the director who teaches the course, involves discussion and other activities relating to the assigned reading, especially emphasizing conversation about issues or concerns the tutors are facing in their new roles. The “metacognition sandwich” is completed by a reflective post to a discussion board, where the Q-tutors respond and build on each other’s reflections, describing what they had learned that day, asking and answering questions, and elaborating on how to apply the lesson to tutoring.

In addition to these explicit reflection activities, the tutor preparation course facilitates discussion of the use and importance of self-regulated learning strategies (SRL) and behaviors. Q-tutors are provided many opportunities to reflect on their own learning. For example, they complete and discuss multiple SRL-based inventories, such as the GAMES (Svinicki, 2006) and the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire (credit to Richard Felder and Barbara Solomon). Class lessons revolve around evidence-based learning strategies, such as self-testing, help-seeking, and techniques to transform information.

One assignment requires tutors to create and present a “study hack,” an idea adapted from a thread on a popular and supportive listserv for academic support professionals (LRNASST). The assignment, inherently reflective, allows the tutors to consider strategies they successfully utilize, summarize that information, and translate the SRL strategy into a meaningful presentation and worksheet for the tutor group. The Q-tutors present their “study hacks” during class time, with examples from past semesters ranging from mindfulness exercises to taking notes with color coding. These worksheets are also saved as a resource for students so they can learn from SRL strategies endorsed by Q-tutors.

Q-tutors are encouraged to “pay forward” their metacognitive training by focusing on SRL and reflection during their tutoring sessions. They teach study strategies such as self-testing and learning-monitoring, and support student reflection through “checking for understanding” activities at the end of each tutoring session. Tutors know that teaching study skills is one of the major priorities during tutoring sessions; and they close the loop by meeting with other tutors regularly to discuss new and useful skills they can communicate to students they work with. Tutors also get a regular reminder about the importance of study skill development when they read the end-of-appointment survey responses from their tutees, particularly in response to the prompt for “study skill reviewed.”

As a summative assignment in the course, Q-tutors write a Tutoring Philosophy, similar to a teaching statement. By this time, the tutors have gained an awareness of the importance of SRL and metacognitive reflection, as seen in excerpts from sample philosophies from previous semesters:

I strive to strengthen numeracy within our tutees, rid them of their anxieties surrounding quantitative subjects, and build up their skills to become better learners.

Once the tutee gains enough trust and confidence in the material, it is essential for them to begin guiding the direction of the session toward their own learning goals.

By practicing good study habits, self-advocacy, organizational skills, and a calm demeanor when tutoring, tutees learn what it takes to be a better student.

By thinking intentionally about what it means to be an effective tutor,these students realize that they must model what they teach in a reflective, continuous mutual-learning process: “[In tutoring] my job is to identify what each person needs, use my skills to support their learning, and reflect on these interactions to improve my methods over time.”

In sum, using an intentional metacognitive lens, Q-tutor training at Goucher College supports quantitative skills and general learning strategies in the many students the QR Center reaches. Through this metacognitive cycle, the QR Center supports Goucher’s learning community in improving the Reflection component of the Goucher 3Rs.

Suggested References

Scheaffer, R. L. (2003). Statistics and quantitative literacy. Quantitative Literacy: Why Numeracy Matters for Schools and Colleges, 145-152. Retrieved from https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/QL/pgs145_152.pdf

Siegle, D., & McCoach, D. B. (2007). Increasing student mathematics self-efficacy through teacher training. Journal of Advanced Academics, 18, 278–312. https://doi.org/10.4219/jaa-2007-353

Svinicki, M. D. (2006). Helping students do well in class: GAMES. APS Observer, 19(10). Retrieved from https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/helping-students-do-well-in-class-games

Williamson, G. (2015). Self-regulated learning: an overview of metacognition, motivation and behaviour. Journal of Initial Teacher Inquiry, 1, 25-27. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10092/11442

Addressing Student Resistance to Engaging in their Metacognitive Development

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

You may be familiar with the quip,

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

Perhaps you can’t, however, my grandfather argued, “but you can put salt in its oats!” We can advise students on the importance of setting specific learning goals and accurately monitoring both their level of understanding and their learning processes. And I believe we should teach them how to be more metacognitive, but we can’t make them do any of it. Nor do I think we should. Students should own their learning. They should experience agency and efficacy in their learning (i.e., they should own their learning). But I can put “salt in their oats!” In this post I want to explore our role, as educators, in encouraging and providing opportunities for students to grow their metacognitive awareness and skills (i.e., our role as purveyors of “learning salt”).

I recently found the book Why Students Resist Learning (Tolman & Kremling, 2017). While written about resistance to learning in general, it is relevant to student resistance to engaging in their metacognitive development. Student resistance is complex with multiple interacting components. In my reading so far I have been challenged by two overarching themes. First, student resistance isn’t just about students. It’s about us, the educators, too. Our interactions with students can exacerbate or ameliorate student resistance. Second, student resistance is a symptom of deeper issues, not a student characteristic itself. For example, a student may be trying to preserve their sense of self and fear admitting a learning deficiency or a student may have had prior experiences that affirm surface approaches to learning and therefore they resist the idea that they need strategies to develop deeper learning.

We, as educators, need to recognize and deal with our role in student resistance to metacognitive development. Our interactions with our students are largely influenced by our beliefs and attitudes about our students. My colleagues and I have sought to address this in the B-ACE framework for giving formative feedback in support of metacognitive development. The ‘B’ represents an attitude of Believing the best about students. When we prepare to give feedback, we are responding to what they have written or said, which may or may not be accurate or complete. Believing the best acknowledges that we have incomplete information and need to reserve judgement. This attitude embodies sincere curiosity and seeks understanding. The remaining letters represent actionable elements of feedback, Affirm-Challenge-Encourage. Implementing our belief in the best about our students, we should seek to authentically affirm positive behaviors and growth, however small. Then explore and seek to understand the broader contexts and details of their statements by asking questions. In this way, you can provide gentle challenge to think more deeply or to discover incongruities between learning goals and behaviors. Finally, close by encouraging them. Let your students know you believe in their abilities to become more skillful learners, with effort and perseverance. If you say it, make sure you mean it. You can also point them to potential strategies to consider. Let’s see how we can implement the B-ACE framework as “learning salt”.

In my teaching, I provide a variety of opportunities for my students to engage in their metacognitive development. At some point I ask something like, “What have you been doing differently since we last talked? How is it helping you be a more skilled and efficient learner?” One common type of response I get from engineering students is exemplified by:

“I am continuing to work practice problems to get ready for exams. I try to work through as many as I can. It works best for me.”

Okay. No change. I’m disappointed. First, I need to make sure I don’t assume they are just memorizing and pattern matching, i.e., relying on surface learning approaches. Or, if they are memorizing and pattern matching, I need to believe it is in honest effort to learn. Further, change is hard and they may be trusting what is familiar and comfortable, even if it isn’t the most effective and efficient. Now I need to ACE the rest of the feedback.

[Affirm] Good! You are taking intentional steps to prepare for your exams. [Challenge] How do you know it works best? What other strategies have you tried? [Encourage] Keep being intentional about your learning. You may want to try recall-and-review, explaining-to-learn, or creating your own problems to measurably test your understanding.

There will be a difference between written feedback and oral feedback, but notice that both include an opening for further interaction and prompt metacognitive reflection. In a face-to-face dialogue, there might be other questions depending on the responses, such as, “How are you working the problems? What will happen if the problem is asked in a way that is different from your practice?” In written feedback, I may want to focus on one question instead of a list, so as not to overwhelm the student with challenge. Notice that these questions are seeking additional information and pointing the student to make connections. Still the student may or may not take my suggestions to try something different. However, I argue this type of response is “saltier” than just settling for this response or telling them directly their approach isn’t as effective, and it may lead to further dialogue later on.

In a recent post, Aaron Richmond questions if well-intentioned metacognitive instruction can, in specific cases, be unethical (Richmond, 2018). John Draeger provides counterpoint in his response, but acknowledges the need to recognize and address possible adverse reactions to metacognitive instruction (Draeger, 2018). The B-ACE feedback framework both encourages student metacognition and is an expression of Ethical Teaching, summarized by Richmond (Richmond, 2018). It acknowledges students’ autonomy in their learning, seeks to avoid harm and promote their well-being, and strives to be unbiased and authentic. Further, it can address adverse reactions, by helping students to discover the deeper issues of their reaction.

In caring for our students, we want to see them grow. They aren’t always ready. Prochaske, Norcross, and DiClemente (1994) delineate six stages of change, and it starts with the lack of awareness and willingness to change. Change takes time an effort. Even so, let’s commit to making interactions with our students “salty”! Let’s gently, quietly, and persistently encourage them in their metacognitive development.

References

Prochaska, J., Norcross, J., & DiClemente, C. (1994). Changing for Good. New York: Harper Collins.

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

Acknowledgements

This blog post is based upon metacognition research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1433757 & 1433645. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

A Project-Based Method to Help Students Practice Study Strategies in an Authentic Context

by Hillary Steiner, Kennesaw State University

Downloadable

Motivations and Context: Success in college requires the development of self-regulated learning strategies that move beyond high school skills, but teaching these strategies can be challenging. I teach a first-year seminar at a large comprehensive university that includes helping students develop college-level studying and time management skills among its goals. Knowing that students would be more likely to value these skills (and later, transfer these skills) if they were situated in context, I developed an assignment that requires students to practice self-regulated learning strategies—active reading, management of study time and achievement goals, proactive interaction with faculty, metacognitive reflection, and more—within the context of a student-selected course.

Assignment: In the Strategy Project assignment, students learn time management, communication, and study strategies in the process of preparing for an actual test. Students then demonstrate that learning by submitting their test preparation activities as part of a graded project in the first-year seminar.

First, students choose a test in another course that they find challenging. Then, they complete a contract, in consultation with their first-year seminar instructor, that indicates their individualized due dates and studying plans based on their chosen test. Students also write a pre-project reflection paper discussing their current approaches to studying and time management.

Next, the students complete a “professor interaction” activity where they visit the instructor of the chosen course to discuss a previous test or quiz, if applicable, and ask for advice about achieving success in that particular course. This portion of the project helps first-year students become comfortable interacting with their instructors and reinforces help-seeking behaviors. After this meeting, students develop a plan of study that outlines the strategies they will use to study for the test. This activity encourages effective time management and allows students to experience the benefit of study time that is distributed over several days.

Finally, the largest portion of the project requires students to complete a variety of metacognitive strategies such as textbook annotation, self-quizzing, concept-mapping, etc. Providing choices in strategies allows students to demonstrate metacognition by effectively matching studying techniques to their chosen test. After the test is graded and returned, students again complete a metacognitive reflection on the outcome of their studying habits in a short informal paper and presentation to the class.

Outcomes: For a number of years, I have studied the Strategy Project as a method for students to practice metacognition in an authentic, valuable context. I have used the project as a component in STEM learning communities that paired a first-year seminar with first-year STEM courses (e.g., Steiner, Dean, Foote, & Goldfine, 2016) as well as stand-alone first-year seminars (e.g., Steiner, 2016; 2017). Results from these studies have indicated that the project did raise awareness of, and encourage the use of, beneficial metacognitive strategies, and for most students, also increased their test scores in the chosen courses. One study’s preliminary findings (Steiner, 2017) also show a gain in self-reported metacognitive behaviors as measured by the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1993). Anecdotally, students tell me that the Strategy Project was a powerful motivator to change high school habits that had become ineffective. Many students say that although they realized their strategies needed to change, without the incentive of a graded project, they would not have committed to changing their approaches. Students also have responded positively to learning more about metacognition in my first-year seminar (Steiner, 2014), suggesting that metacognition may be an important topic for others to address in similar seminars or “learning-to-learn” courses.

Lessons Learned and Future Directions: I continue to revise the Strategy Project yearly as I learn more from my students about its efficacy. To date, I mostly have used the Strategy Project in my own classroom. However, a colleague and I are planning a large-scale study of the Strategy Project which will compare the metacognitive gains made by students in sections of the first-year seminar that include the project versus those that do not. Because many faculty who teach the first-year seminar do not have a background in educational psychology, we will include professional development on metacognition and memory as part of the training. I look forward to continuing to revise the Strategy Project in light of others’ experiences using it. I would appreciate any feedback you or your students have on the effectiveness of this assignment in your own classroom.

References

Pintrich, P.R., Smith, D.A., Garcia, T., & McKeachie, W.J. (1993). Reliability and predictive validity of the Motivated for Learning Strategies Questionnaire (MSLQ). Education and Psychological Measurement, 53 (3), 801-814.

Steiner, H.H. (2017, March). Using a strategy project to promote self-regulated learning. Paper presented at the SoTL Commons Conference, Savannah, GA.

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 (2), 271-282.

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.

Steiner, H.H. (2014). Teaching principles from cognitive psychology in the first-year seminar. E-Source for College Transitions, 11 (2), 14-16.

The impact of metacognitive activities on student attitudes towards experimental physics

This article by Melissa Eblen-Zayas, Ph.D., shares the implementation of metacognitive activities in an advanced Physics lab. She reports that “the introduction of metacognitive activities in an advanced lab where the laboratory work is not carefully scripted may improve students’ enthusiasm for experimental work and confidence in their ability to be successful in such work.” Check out this article to see the metacognitive prompts they used as well as learn about other metacognition-related activities.

Eblen-Zayas, M. (2016). The impact of metacognitive activities on student attitudes towards experimental physics. 2016 PERC Proceedings edited by Jones, Ding, and Traxler; doi:10.1119/perc.2016.pr.021

Metacognitive Awareness of Learning Strategies in Undergraduates

This article by Jennifer McCabe presents the results of two studies focusing on metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates. Participants were asked to evaluate and predict the outcomes of six educational scenarios describing the strategies of dual-coding, static-media presentations, low-interest extraneous details, testing, and spacing. Study 1 showed low awareness of all strategies except for generation; and a correlation of scenario prediction accuracy with an independent metacognition scale. Study 2 showed improved prediction accuracy for students who were specifically taught about these principles in college courses. “This research suggests that undergraduates are largely unaware of several specific strategies that could benefit memory for course information; further, training in applied learning and memory topics has the potential to improve metacognitive judgments in these domains.”

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

Metacognition in STEM courses: A Developmental Path

by Roman Taraban, PHD, Texas Tech University

There is a strong focus in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses to solve problems (Case & Marshall, 2004). Does problem solving in STEM involve metacognition? I argue that the answer must surely be ‘yes’. That’s because metacognition involves monitoring the effectiveness of learning and problem-solving strategies and using metacognitive knowledge to regulate behavior (Draeger, 2015). But when does metacognition become part of problem solving, and how does it come about? Can we discern development in metacognitive monitoring and regulation? In this post, I will present some qualitative data from a study on problem-solving in order to reflect on these questions. The study I draw from was not about metacognition per se, however, it may provide some insights into the development of metacognition.

The study I conducted involved freshman engineering majors. These students were asked to solve typical problems from the course in mechanics in which they were currently enrolled (Taraban, 2015). Not surprisingly, students varied in how they began each problem and how they proceeded towards a solution. In order to gain some insight into their problem-solving strategies, I asked students to simply state why they started with the equation they chose and not some other equation, after they had solved the problems.

Students’ responses fell into at least three types, using labels from Case and Marshall (2004): surface, algorithmic, and deep conceptual. When asked why they started with their first equation, some students responded:

“I don’t know, it’s just my instinct”.
“No special reason. I’m just taking it randomly”.
“It’s just habit.”
“The first thing that came to my mind.”

Of interest here, these students did not appear to reflect on the specific problem or show evidence of modulating their behavior to the specific problemheir responses fit a surface learning approach: “no relationships sought out or established, learn by repetition and memorization of formulae” (Case & Marshall, 2004, p. 609).

Other students’ responses reflected an algorithmic approach to learning — “identifying and memorizing calculation methods for solving problems” (Case & Marshall, 2004, p. 609):

“I am getting three variables in three unknowns so I can solve it.”

Here the student verbally expresses a more structured approach to the problem. The student believes that he needs three equations involving three unknowns and uses that as a goal. Students who take an algorithmic approach appear to be more reflective and strategic about their solutions to problems, compared to surface problem solvers.

Case and Marshall (1995) regarded both the surface and algorithmic pathways as part of development towards deeper understanding of domain concepts and principles, the latter which they labeled the conceptual deep approach to learning: “relating of learning tasks to their underlying concepts or theory” with the intention “to gain understanding while doing this” (p. 609). Basically, their suggestion is that at some point students recognize that a goal of learning is to understand the material more deeply, and that this recognition guides how they learn. Case and Marshall’s description of conceptual deep learning fits Draeger’s (2015) earlier suggestion that monitoring the effectiveness of learning and regulating one’s behavior is characteristic of metacognitive thinking. Once students reach this level, we should be able to more readily observe students’ intentions to understand the material and observe their overt attempts to grasp the material through their explicit reflection and reasoning. Examples of this type of reflection from my study could be gleaned from those students who did not jump directly to writing equations without first thinking about the problem:

“If I choose the moment equation first, then directly I am getting the value of F. So in the other equations I can directly put the value of F.”

As students progress from surface to algorithmic to deep conceptual processing, there is certainly development. However, in the present examples that track that development, it is difficult to partial out students’ thinking about the problem content from their thinking-about-thinking, that is, their metacognitions. Draeger (2015) helps here by distinguishing between metacognition and critical thinking. The latter often requires domain-specific knowledge. Draeger suggests that “many students are able to solve complex problems, craft meaningful prose, and create beautiful works of art without understanding precisely how they did it” (p. 2). Basically, critical thinking is about methodology within a domain – e.g., the person knows how to format a narrative or select an appropriate statistical procedure, without necessarily reflecting on the effectiveness of those choices, that is, without metacognition. In the examples I provided above from my work with undergraduates on problem solving, there is invariably a mix of critical thinking and metacognition. Draeger’s distinction signals a need to better decouple these two distinct kinds of cognitive processes in order to better clarify the developmental trajectory of metacognitive processing in problem solving.

Finally, why do we observe such wide variance in students’ approaches to problem-solving, and, relatedly, to metacognition? One reason is that instructors may emphasize assessment and grades (Case & Marshall, 2004). As a consequence, students may focus more on gaining points for the correct answer rather than on the process. Welsh (2015) has suggested that course structure can act as a barrier to deeper learning: “high stakes assessments may overshadow resources designed for metacognitive development” (p. 2). Welsh found that students were more concerned with test performance than with reflecting upon their study strategies and implementing learning strategies recommended by the instructor.

How are we to understand this discord between concern with test performance and metacognition? At some level, when students set goals to do well on tests they are regulating their behavior. Metacognitive resources from the instructor may be in competition with students’ perceived resources (e.g., access to old tests, study buddies, cramming the night before). The instructor can facilitate change, but the leap from surface and algorithmic learner to deep conceptual learner must be undertaken by the student.

Passion and commitment to a topic are strong motivators to find the means to access and acquire deeper conceptual understanding. One measure of teacher success is class test performance, but another can be found in student comments. Here is one that I recently received that I found encouraging: Despite the fact that I was a bit uninterested in the subject matter, this was one of my favorite classes. By the end of the semester, not only was I interested in the subject matter, I was fascinated by it. Perhaps as instructors we need to facilitate good metacognitive practices but also nurture interest in what we teach in order to motivate students to pursue it more deeply through more effective metacognitive practices.

References

Case, J., & Marshall, D. (2004). Between deep and surface: procedural approaches to learning in engineering education contexts. Studies in Higher Education, 29(5), 605-615.

Draeger, J. (2015). Two forms of ‘thinking about thinking’: metacognition and critical thinking. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/two-forms-of-thinking-about-thinking-metacognition-and-critical-thinking/ .

Taraban, R. (2015, November). Transition from means-ends to working-forward problem solving. 56th Annual Conference of the Psychonomic Society. Chicago, IL.

Welsh, A. (2015). Supports and barriers to students’ metacognitive development in a large intro chemistry course. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/supports-and-barriers-to-students-metacognitive-development-in-a-large-intro-chemistry-course/