Tag: Metacognitive Awareness

On the Benefits of Metacognition: Seeking Justice by Overcoming Shallow Understanding

By John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. responds to the white moderates of Birmingham who believed his protests were ill-timed and unnecessary. He writes:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. (King, 295)

White moderates baffled King because he knew them to be people of good will. Why would they talk the equality talk without walking the walk? For example, they worried that King’s protests threatened to undermine the rule of law. Yet, King argued that respect for the law and for the human beings governed by those laws, demanded standing against injustice even when, perhaps especially when, it would be convenient for whites to do otherwise. Moreover, King’s respect for the system of law was underscored by the fact that the protests were nonviolent and the protestors were willing to accept the consequences of their lawbreaking. King’s letter challenged the white moderates of Birmingham to consider why they were so reluctant to side with those being treated unjustly. In short, King called on them (and us today) to be more metacognitive.

The Benefits of Metacognition

            Metacognition is the ongoing awareness of a process and a willingness to adjust when necessary. King’s letter argued that the white moderates needed to become aware of a broader set of issues and adjust their actions accordingly. For example, white moderates were concerned about the safety of their families and the fact that protests might turn violent. This seems reasonable until we consider the living conditions and often violent treatment of their black neighbors. King suggests that white moderates were emotionally disconnected from the lived experience of those affected by segregation and this disconnect helped explain their tepid endorsement of the civil rights movement. Willful ignorance can shield us from uncomfortable truths about ourselves and the world around us. It is often easier not to ask tough questions than to face unflattering answers. However, metacognition prompts us to consider the quality of our thought processes and then take action based on a new awareness of ourselves.

Raising awareness by purposefully engaging our reasons for action (or non-action) might prompt us to ask the following sorts of metacognitive prompting questions.

  • How well do I understand those around me?
  • When am I less likely to question what I am doing?
  • What are the forces that keep me from being connected to the suffering of others?
  • When am I less likely to see the harms done to others? Are the harms invisible (e.g., internal struggles that I could only see with careful listening)? Or would harms be visible to me if I were paying attention?
  • Why am I not paying attention to others?
  • Do I tend to avoid bad news because ignorance is psychologically easier?
  • Am I afraid of asking myself difficult questions because I doubt I can do anything about it anyway?
  • Am I afraid to rock the boat?
  • Am I afraid to ask questions that will paint me in a bad light?

The list of relevant questions could go on for pages and it will likely depend on the particular circumstances, but it is worth remembering that it was in inability of white moderates to ask such questions led King to write his letter. If we want to avoid similar pitfalls, then each of us must find the wherewithal to take a hard look in the mirror and adjust when necessary.

Looking forward

            I find King’s letter especially relevant at a time when many of us are coming to grips with how address issues raised by the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements as well as the worldwide conversation surrounding immigration. I believe that there are rich research opportunities at the intersection of metacognition and ethical reasoning. For example, how might metacognition help overcome implicit bias or microaggression? How might it support the development of respect for humankind? I hope to consider these issues in future posts.

References

King, M. L. (1963).  “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., ed. James Washington (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1986).


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

by Stephanie Chasteen, University of Colorado Boulder

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


Supporting Student Self-Assessment with Knowledge Surveys

by Dr. Lauren Scharff, U. S. Air Force Academy*

In my earlier post this year, “Know Cubed” – How do students know if they know what they need to know?, I introduced three challenges for accurate student self-assessment. I also introduced the idea of incorporating knowledge surveys as a tool to support student self-assessment (an aspect of metacognitive learning) and promote metacognitive instruction. This post shares my first foray into the use of knowledge surveys.

What exactly are knowledge surveys? They are collections of questions that support student self-assessment of their course material understanding and related skills. Students complete the questions either at the beginning of the semester or prior to each unit of the course (pre), and then also immediately prior to exams (post-unit instruction). When answering the questions, students rate themselves on their ability to answer the question (similar to a confidence rating) rather than fully answering the question. The type of learning expectation is highlighted by including the Bloom’s level at the end of each question. Completion of knowledge surveys develops metacognitive awareness of learning and can help guide more efficient studying.

Example knowledge survey questions
Example knowledge survey questions

My motivation to include knowledge surveys in my course was a result of a presentation by Dr. Karl Wirth, who was invited to be the keynote speaker at the annual SoTL Forum we hold at my institution, the United States Air Force Academy. He shared compelling data and anecdotes about his incorporation of knowledge surveys into his geosciences course. His talk inspired several of us to try out knowledge surveys in our courses this spring.

So, after a semester, what do I think about knowledge surveys? How did my students respond?

In a nutshell, I am convinced that knowledge surveys enhanced student learning and promoted student metacognition about their learning. Their use provided additional opportunities to discuss the science of learning and helped focus learning efforts. But, there were also some important lessons learned that I will use to modify how I incorporate knowledge surveys in the future.

Evidence that knowledge surveys were beneficial:

My personal observations included the following, with increasing levels of each as the semester went on and students learned how to learn using the knowledge survey questions:

  • Students directly told me how much they liked and appreciated the knowledge survey questions. There is a lot of unfamiliar and challenging content in this upper-level course, so the knowledge survey questions served as an effective road map to help guide student learning efforts.
  • Students asked questions in class directly related to the knowledge survey questions (as well as other questions). Because I was clear about what I wanted them to learn, they were able to judge if they had solid understanding of those concepts and ask questions while we were discussing the topics.
  • Students came to office hours to ask questions, and were able to more clearly articulate what they did and did not understand prior to the exams when asking for further clarifications.
  • Students realized that they needed to study differently for the questions at different Bloom’s levels of learning. “Explain” questions required more than basic memorization of the terms related to those questions. I took class time to suggest and reinforce the use of more effective learning strategies and several students reported increasing success and the use of those strategies for other courses (yay!).
  • Overall, students became more accurate in assessing their understanding of the material prior to the exam. More specifically, when I compared the knowledge survey reports with actual exam performance, students progressively became more accurate across the semester. I think some of this increase in accuracy was due to the changes stated in points above.

Student feedback included the following:

  • End-of-semester feedback from students indicated that vast majority of them thought the knowledge surveys supported their learning, with half of them giving them the highest rating of “definitely supports learning, keep as is.”
  • Optional reflection feedback suggested development of learning skills related to the use of the knowledge surveys and perceived value for their use. The following quote was typical of many students:

At first, I was not sure how the knowledge surveys were going to help me. The first time I went through them I did not know many of the questions and I assumed they were things I was already supposed to know. However, after we went over their purpose in class my view of them changed. As I read through the readings, I focused on the portions that answered the knowledge survey questions. If I could not find an answer or felt like I did not accurately answer the question, I bolded that question and brought it up in class. Before the GR, I go back through a blank knowledge survey and try to answer each question by myself. I then use this to compare to the actual answers to see what I actually need to study. Before the first GR I did not do this. However, for the second GR I did and I did much better.

Other Observations and Lessons learned:

Although I am generally pleased with my first foray into incorporating knowledge surveys, I did learn some lessons and I will make some modifications next time.

  • The biggest lesson is that I need to take even more time to explain knowledge surveys, how students should use them to guide their learning, and how I use them as an instructor to tailor my teaching.

What did I do this past semester? I explained knowledge surveys on the syllabus and verbally at the beginning of the semester. I gave periodic general reminders and included a slide in each lesson’s PPT that listed the relevant knowledge survey questions. I gave points for completion of the knowledge surveys to increase the perception of their value. I also included instructions about how to use them at the start of each knowledge survey:

Knowledge survey instructions
Knowledge survey instructions

Despite all these efforts, feedback and performance indicated that many students really didn’t understand the purpose of knowledge surveys or take them seriously until after the first exam (and some even later than that). What will I do in the future? In addition to the above, I will make more explicit connections during the lesson and as students engage in learning activities and demonstrations. I will ask students to share how they would explain certain concepts using the results of their activities and the other data that were presented during the lesson. The latter will provide explicit examples of what would (or would not) be considered a complete answer for the “explain” questions in contrast to the “remember” questions.

  • The biggest student feedback suggestion for modification of the knowledge surveys pertained to the “pre” knowledge surveys given at the start of each unit. Students reported they didn’t know most of the answers and felt like completion of the pre knowledge surveys was less useful. As an instructor, those “pre” responses helped me get a pulse on their level or prior knowledge and use that to tailor my lessons. Thus, I need to better communicate my use of those “pre” results because no one likes to take time to do what they perceive is “busy work.”
  • I also learned that students created a shared GoogleDoc where they would insert answers to the knowledge survey questions. I am all for students helping each other learn, and I encourage them to quiz each other so they can talk out the answers rather than simply re-reading their notes. However, it became apparent when students came in for office hours that the shared “answers” to the questions were not always correct and were sometimes incomplete. This was especially true for the higher-level questions. I personally was not a member of the shared document, so I did not check their answers in that document. In the future, I will earlier and more explicitly encourage students to be aware of the type of learning being targeted and the type of responses needed for each level, and encourage them to critically evaluate the answers being entered into such a shared document.

In sum, as an avid supporter of metacognitive learning and metacognitive instruction, I believe that knowledge surveys are a great tool for supporting both student and faculty awareness of learning, the first step in metacognition. We then should use that awareness to make necessary adjustments to our efforts – the other half of a continuous cycle that leads to increased student success.

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


Developing Affective Abilities through Metacognition Part 2: Going Granular

Ed Nuhfer, California State Universities- retired

In Part 1, we noted that the highest stages of thinking are not merely cognitive, but they require cognitive knowledge and skills with the addition of metacognitive reflection involving affect. We also promised to present some ways to help students increase the capacity for reaching these highest levels of thinking through using metacognition to understand and develop affective reasoning.

Granular components make up a whole shape

This contributed post, Part 2, has three components. The first recognizes that understanding a way of knowing can take two forms, global and granular. The second provides research-based evidence that gaining an understanding of a metadiscipline’s way of knowing (e.g., science) by gaining awareness of the essential interconnections (granular approach) that constitute the metadiscipline is more effective than trying initially to understand the metadiscipline through considering it as a whole (global approach). The third introduces an example of a heavily affective way of knowing—ethics— and its interconnected components.

  1. From describing to understanding

The popular definition of metacognition as “thinking about thinking” invites a universal response: “OK. So, now what do we think about?” No individual invented or discovered any complex way of knowing, such as science or ethics. Instead, these ways of knowing developed over a long time through the collective contributions of many workers. Over centuries, added insights made awareness of new concepts possible, and better understanding allowed an improved global articulation of each specific way of knowing.

In a few years of college education, we strive to produce understanding of bodies of knowledge that took centuries to develop. We believe that an effective sequence of gaining understanding of a metadiscipline usually recapitulates the historical order of its development. This parallel process for understanding a complex way of knowing involves first becoming aware of the essential interconnected concepts. Afterwards, scholars have increased capacity for constructing their global understanding of a way of knowing by learning how each concept contributes to the reasoning process that characterizes that way of knowing. To aid teaching and assessments of major ways of knowing, it is valuable to distinguish how global and granular queries elicit different ways of thinking and understanding.

Global approaches to understanding address complex issues with a single question. Examples are “How do you treat others ethically?” and “How well do you understand science?”

Granular approaches to thinking address the interconnected concepts that enable specific ways of knowing. For example, the Science Literacy Concept Inventory (SLCI) (Nuhfer et al. 2016a) is a granular instrument. It addresses a dozen interconnected concepts that science rests upon through twenty-five multiple-choice challenges. The composite score on all twenty-five items provides the measure of competence to answer the global challenge of “How well do you understand science as a way of knowing?” It achieves this measure without either directly asking participants the global question or asking them to name any of the specific concepts.

An example query from the SLCI follows. 

  1. Which of the following statements presents a hypothesis that science can now easily resolve? 
  1.  Warts can be cured by holding quartz crystals on them daily for a week.
  2. A classmate sitting in the room can see the auras of other students.
  3. Radio City Music Hall in New York is haunted by several spirits.
  4. People with chronic illnesses have them as punishment for past misdeeds.

The query tests for a granular understanding of science as a way of knowing the physical world through testable hypotheses. The query seeks to see if a student can recognize which of the statements is testable and addresses the physical world. All four options present possible hypotheses, but only one option offers a testable hypothesis and addresses physical phenomena. Note that the query tests for understanding, not for a memorized definition of “hypothesis” or “science.” Answers to twenty-five such questions that address a dozen concepts give a highly reliable assessment of understanding science as a way of knowing.

Now comes the rub. Experts can perform effective metacognition of their understanding in direct response to a single complex global question because their understanding has already assimilated the essential granular concepts that underlie science. Their knowing “what to think about” now comes intuitively from long experience. Novices (students) who directly try to address a global question about a complex issue don’t yet have the experiences that enable experts to respond quickly by unconsciously incorporating the most essential granular concepts in their informed response.

Novices need to methodically consider each of the granular concepts as checkpoints before they can reach a well-informed response. With practice in doing so over time, they can internalize the concepts and intuitively employ them more holistically. An early start in recognizing that granular-to-global-understanding process helps to achieve internalizing earlier in one’s career or education. Without instruction, the process will not begin until a challenge makes the need for the skill apparent, and an inept response can prove costly if the challenge involves a high-stakes decision.

  1. Granular disclosure deepens understanding quickly — the evidence from science

As noted, experts have the advantage of experience. However, their traditional educational experiences rarely included metacognitive reflection, so few of our current experts had the privilege of early understanding that might have resulted from undergraduate instruction on how to achieve an understanding of an ambiguous problem through metacognitive reflection on the most relevant underlying checkpoints of a relevant way of knowing. Many experts achieved this only after high-stakes challenges forced them to adopt more appropriate thinking.

If instructors explicitly engaged in relevant metacognitive instruction, might we be able to produce better future experts than exist now? Research says “yes” by showing that minds gain an increased global understanding of science simply from responding to a granular spectrum of queries that address the interconnected concepts that underlie science (Nuhfer et al., 2016b; 2017).

These research measures started with a global query that honestly disclosed the nature of the SLCI and asked students to estimate their anticipated scores. Our current dataset consists of 1576 participants, and the correlation between their estimates from this initial global self-assessment and their actual test scores was r = .28.

Following the global query, participants completed the SLCI knowledge survey. Knowledge surveys are granular self-assessment instruments that direct students to reflect metacognitively on the interconnected, granular components underlying a comprehensive topic. The SLCI contains 25 test items. For this research, participants first rate their competency on each item and then they answer all the questions. The correlation between the cumulative self-assessment on all 25 items on the entire knowledge survey and participants’ demonstrated competence from their score on the SLCI was r = .6. On later postdicted global queries (recorded after taking the knowledge survey and after taking the Inventory), the correlations between the global self-assessed scores and the actual SLCI scores all remained high at between r = .5 and r = .6.

These results offer a valuable insight: students knew no more content about science after taking the knowledge survey than they did before taking it because no instruction or study was involved. However, taking a knowledge survey provided a granular disclosure of what they must “think about” and conveyed a significantly better understanding of the complexity of the global query than did a detailed global description of the query. Improved metacognitive understanding of the challenge relative to one’s immediate competency is not the same thing as improved content knowledge. Rather, the former clarifies to the learner the specific content learning that one needs to get to improve his or her overall competency.

 When we decide to teach a complex way of knowing, conveying an understanding of what the knowing involves (i.e., conveying the granular concepts) will contribute to success. Further, metacognitive exercises are more effective than hearing the key points in lectures, because metacognitive reflection is focused interactive engagement with the problem. The focused conversation with self that is the hallmark of metacognition enlists sufficient parts of the brain to build understanding. Listening alone engages relatively little of the brain’s neural network and produces little understanding that can be retained. Metacognitive exercises will be most effective if we build students’ competence through taking a granular approach from the very start. We want to direct our students to think about and internalize the checkpoints rather than to try to answer the global question directly from unexamined feelings.

  1. From science to ethics

Science focuses on cognitive thinking that uses testable evidence. Instructors are most familiar with developing such thinking, which lies within Perry’s stages 4, 5 and 6. Developing highest level thinking abilities, (stages 7, 8 and 9) requires additional components that allow us to go beyond constructing strong, defendable arguments and enter the realm of using our results for making decisions and acting on them. These highest levels of thinking are metacognitive and affective. Reaching them requires that we develop an awareness of how our own affective feelings are an influence on our decisions, and it further requires that we develop capacity for empathy so that we truly understand how our actions impact others.

Like science, ethics constitutes a complex way of knowing, but the latter is a way of knowing that involves more affect. We treat one another ethically because we feel that we should do so, even when competing feelings and pragmatic arguments may exist to do otherwise in our perceived self-interests. Thus, an understanding of ethics requires understanding a different set of interconnected concepts.

The four granular ethical principles or concepts are, beneficence – “do good;” nonmaleficence – “do no harm;” justice – “treat equals as equals,” and autonomy – “respect others’ control over their own lives.” These provide our checkpoints for granular understanding.

To help readers initiate a global understanding of an ethical decision as experienced through a granular approach, I’ve included a short module exercise with this blog entry. Open it; read it. The text is less than 900 words. Afterwards, confront a few of the reflective exercises at the end of the module.

In Part 3, we can pick up our discussion with deeper exploration of the role of affect and metacognition in making ethical decision. Afterwards, we can explore the role of metacognition in other affective dimensions of thinking.


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


Developing Mindfulness as a Metacognitive Skill

by Ed Nuhfer Retired Professor of Geology and Director of Faculty Development and Director of Educational Assessment, enuhfer@earthlink.net, 208-241-5029

A simple concept for enhancing learning is to engage more of the brain in more of the students. “Interactive-engagement,” “collaborative/cooperative learning,” “problem-based learning” and an entire series of active learning pedagogies use the concept to optimize learning. Research shows that active learning works. While frequently espoused as “student-centered learning,” advocates frequently use the active learning terms to promote particular kinds of pedagogy as “student-centered.”

However, active learning is neither the only way to enhance learning nor is it usually as student-centered as advocates claim. Whether the design occurs by the course instructor or with an involvement of a more recent profession of “learning designers,” the fact is that the emphasis is on pedagogy and on student learning. As such, they are more focused on student learning than were older traditional methods of content delivery, but the reach to proclaim most learning-centered pedagogies as student-centered leaves a bit of a gap. Metacognition is the factor missing to help close the gap needed to make learning-centered practices more student-centered.

While pedagogy focuses on teaching, mindfulness focuses on knowing of one’s present state of engagement. Mindfulness develops by the learner from within, and this makes it different from the learning developed through a process designed from without. Metacognition is very student centered, and mindfulness could be the most student-centered metacognitive skill of all.

Because mindfulness involves being aware in the present moment, it can engage more of the brain needed for awareness by enlisting the parts of the brain concurrently distracted by our usual “default mode.” Operating in default mode includes thinking of imagined conversations, playing music inside of one’s head, unproductive absorption in activities in which one is not presently engaged, or thinking of responses to a conversation while not attending fully to hearing it.

Mindfulness receives frequent mention as a method of stress management, particularly when it enlists the parts of the brain that would otherwise be engaging in worrying or in preparing an unneeded flight-or-fight reaction. The need to manage stress by today’s college students seems greater than before. However, its value to student success extends beyond managing stress to enhancing cognitive learning through improving concentration and increasing the ability to focus and to improve interpersonal communication by enhancing ability to listen.

Mindfulness has its roots in Zen meditation, which laypersons easily perceive as something esoteric, mystical, or even bordering on religion. In reality, mindfulness is none of these. It is simply the beneficial outcome of practice to develop metacognitive skill. It is simple to learn, and measurable improvements can occur in as little as six weeks.

For blog readers, an opportunity to develop mindfulness is fast approaching on September 19, 2016, when Australia’s Monash University again offers its free massive open online course (MOOC) in mindfulness. Rather than gurus dressed in costumes, the instructors are psychology professors Drs Craig Hassed and Richard Chambers, who occasionally appear in ties and sportcoats. The course is immensely practical, and the two professors are also authors of a highly rated book, Mindful Learning, which is likely of interest to all members of this particular metacognitive blogosphere. Perhaps we’ll see each other online in Australia!

**This blog contribution is a short derivation from “Mindfulness as a Metacognitive Skill: Educating in Fractal Patterns XLVII” by the author and forthcoming in National Teaching and Learning Forum V25 N5.


The Challenge of Deep Learning in the Age of LearnSmart Course Systems (Part 2)

A few months ago, I shared Part 1 of this post. In it I presented the claim that, “If there are ways for students to spend less time per course and still “be successful,” they will find the ways to do so. Unfortunately, their efficient choices may short-change their long-term, deep learning.” I linked this claim to some challenges that I foresaw with respect to two aspects of the online text chosen for the core course I was teaching: 1) the pre-highlighted LearnSmart text, and 2) the metacognition-focused LearnSmart quizzing feature. This feature required students to not only answer the quiz question, but also report their confidence in the correctness of that response. (See Part 1 for details to explain my concerns. Several other posts on this site also discuss confidence ratings as a metacognition tool. See references below.) My stated plan was to “regularly check in with the students, have class discussions aimed at bringing their choices about their learning behaviors into their conscious awareness, and positively reinforcing their positive self-regulation of deep-learning behaviors.” 

This post, Part 2, will share my reflections on how things turned out, along with a summary of some feedback from my students.

With respect to my actions, I did the following in order to increase student awareness of their learning choices and the impact of those choices. Twice early in the semester I took class time to explicitly discuss the possible learning shortcuts students might be tempted to take when reading the chapters (e.g. only reading the highlighted text) and when completing the LearnSmart pre-class quizzes (see Part 1 for details). I shared some alternate completion options that would likely enhance their learning and long-term retention of the material (e.g. reading the full text without highlights and using the online annotation features). Additionally, I took time to share other general learning / studying strategies that have been shown through research to support better learning. These ways of learning were repeatedly reinforced throughout the semester (and linked to content material when applicable, such as when we discussed human learning and memory).

Did these efforts impact student behaviors and choices of learning strategies? Although I cannot directly answer that question, I can share some insights based on some LearnSmart data, course performance, and reflections shared by the students.

With respect to the LearnSmart application that quizzed students at the end of each chapter, one type of data I was able to retrieve was the overall percent of time that student LearnSmart quiz question responses fell into the following correctness and confidence categories (a metacognition-related evaluation):

  1. Students answered correctly and indicated confidence that they would answer correctly
  2. Students answered correctly but indicated that they were not confident of the correctness of their response
  3. Students answered incorrectly and knew they didn’t know the answer
  4. Students answered incorrectly but reported confidence in giving the correct answer

I examined how the percentage of time student responses fell in each category correlated with two course performance measures (final exam grade and overall course grades). Category 1 (correct and confident) and Category 3 (incorrect and knew it) both showed essentially a zero relationship with performance. There was a small positive relationship between being correct but not certain (Category 2). Category 2 responses might prompt more attention to the topic and ultimately lead to better learning. The strongest correlations (negative direction) occurred for Category 4, which was the category about which I was most concerned with respect to student learning and metacognition. There are two reasons students might have responses in that category. They could be prioritizing time efficiency over learning because they were intentionally always indicating they were confident (so that if they got lucky and answered correctly, the question would count toward the required number that they had to answer both correctly and with confidence; if they indicated low confidence, then the question would not count toward the required number they had to complete for the chapter). Alternately, Category 4 responses could be due to students being erroneous with respect their own state of understanding, suggesting poor metacognitive awareness and a likelihood to perform poorly on exams despite “studying hard.” Although there was no way for me to determine which of these two causes were underlying the student responses in this category, the negative relationship clearly indicated that those who had more such responses performed worse on the comprehensive final exam and in the course at large.

I also asked my students to share some verbal and written reflections regarding their choices of learning behaviors. These reflections didn’t explicitly address their reasons for indicating high or low confidence for the pre-class quizzes. However, they did address their choices with respect to reading only the highlighted versus the full chapter text. Despite the conversations at the beginning of the semester stressing that exam material included the full text and that their learning would be more complete if they read the full text, almost half the class reported only reading the highlighted text (or shifting from full to highlighted). These students indicated that their choice was primarily due to perceived time constraints and the fact that the pre-class LearnSmart quizzes focused on the highlighted material so students could be successful on the pre-class assignment without reading the full text. More positively, a couple students did shift to reading the full text because they saw the negative impact of only reading the highlighted text on their exam grades. Beyond the LearnSmart behaviors, several students reported increasing use (even in other courses) of the general learning / study strategies we discussed in class (e.g. working with a partner to discuss and quiz each other on the material), and some of them even shard these strategies with friends!

So, what are my take-aways?

Although this should surprise no one who has studied operant conditioning, the biggest take-away for me is that for almost half my students the immediate reinforcement of being able to more quickly complete the pre-class LearnSmart quiz was the most powerful driver of their behavior, despite explicit in-class discussion and their own acknowledgement that it hurt their performance on the later exams. When asked what they might do differently if they could redo the semester, several of these students indicated that they would tell themselves to read the full text. But, I have to wonder if this level of awareness would actually drive their self-regulatory behaviors due the unavoidable perceptions of time constraints and the immediate reinforcement of “good” performance on the pre-class LearnSmart quizzes. Unfortunately, at this point, instructors do not have control over the questions asked in the LearnSmart quizzes, so that particular (unwanted) reinforcement factor is unavoidable if you use those quizzes. A second take-away is that explicit discussion of high-efficacy learning strategies can lead to their adoption. These strategies were relatively independent from the LearnSmart quiz requirement for the course, so there was no conflict with those behaviors. Although the reinforcement was less immediate, students reported positive results from using the strategies, which motivated them to keep using them and to share them with friends. Personally, I believe that the multiple times that we discussed these general learning strategies also helped because they increased student awareness of them and their efficacy (awareness being an important first step in metacognition).

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Some prior blog posts related to Confidence Ratings and Metacognition

Effects of Strategy Training and Incentives on Students’ Performance, Confidence, and Calibration, by Aaron Richmond October 2014

Quantifying Metacognition — Some Numeracy behind Self-Assessment Measures, by Ed Nuhfer, January 2016

The Importance of Teaching Effective Self-Assessment, by Stephen Chew, Feb 2016

Unskilled and Unaware: A Metacognitive Bias, by John R. Schumacher, Eevin Akers, and Roman Taraban, April 2016


Metacognition for Scholars: How to Engage in Deep Work

By Charity S. Peak, Ph.D. (Independent Consultant)

True confession: I’m addicted to shallow work. I wouldn’t say I’m a procrastinator as much as I am someone who prefers checking small things off my list or clearing my inbox over engaging in more complex tasks. I know I should be writing and researching. It’s just as much of my job as teaching or administrative duties, but I get to the end of my day and wonder why I didn’t have time for the most critical component of my promotion package – scholarship.

It turns out I’m not the only one suffering from this condition (far from it), and luckily there is a treatment plan available. It begins with metacognition about how one is spending time during the day, self-monitoring conditions that are most distracting or fruitful for productivity, and self-regulating behaviors in order to ritualize more constructive habits. Several authors offer suggestions for how to be more prolific (Goodson, 2013; Silvia, 2007), especially those providing writing prompts and 15-minute exercises, but few get to the core of the metacognitive process like Cal Newport’s (2016) recent Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown and author of 5 books and a blog on college success, shares his strategies for becoming a prolific writer while balancing other faculty duties.

Newport claims that deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It is arguably the most difficult and crucial capability of the 21st century. Creative thinking is becoming progressively rare in our distracted world, so those who can rise above shallow work are guaranteed to demonstrate value to their employers, especially colleges and universities. In order to be creative and produce new ideas, scholars must engage in deep work regularly and for significant periods of time. Instead, Newport argues that most people spend their days multitasking through a mire of shallow work like email, which is noncognitively demanding and offers little benefit to academia, let alone an individual’s promotion. In fact, he cites that “a 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone” (Newport, 2016, p. 5). Sound like someone you know?

The good news is that if you carve out space for deep work, your professional career will soar. The first step is to become metacognitive about how you are spending your time during the day. One simple method is to self-monitor how you use your work days by keeping a grid near your computer or desk. At the end of every hour throughout your day, record how much time you actually spent doing your job duties of teaching (including prep and grading), writing and research, and service. Like a food diary or exercise journal, your shallow work addiction will become apparent quickly, but you will also gain metacognition about when and under which conditions you might attempt to fit in time for deep work.

Once you have a grasp of the issue at hand, you can begin to self-regulate your behavior by blocking off time in your schedule in which you can engage in a deeper level of creative thinking. Each person will gravitate toward a different modality conducive to an individual’s working styles or arrangements. The author offers a few choices for you to consider, which have been proven to be successful for other scholars and business leaders:

  • Monastic: Eliminate or radically minimize shallow obligations, such as meetings and emails, in an effort to focus solely on doing one thing exceptionally well. Put an out-of-office response on your email, work somewhere other than your workplace, or take a year-long sabbatical in order to completely separate from frivolous daily tasks that keep you away from research and writing. Most teaching faculty and academic leaders are unable to be purely monastic due to other duties.
  • Bimodal: Divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. During the deep time, act monastically – seek intense and uninterrupted concentration – but schedule other time in your day for shallow work to be completed. One successful scholar shared the possibility of teaching a very full load one semester but not teaching at all during the next as an example of engaging deeply in both critical duties.
  • Rhythmic: Also called the “chain method” or “snack writing,” create a regular habit of engaging in deep work, such as every morning before going into work or at the end of each day. Blocking off one’s calendar and writing every day has been proven to be one of the most productive habits for scholars attempting to balance their research with other duties (Gardiner & Kearns, 2011).
  • Journalistic: Fit deep work into your schedule wherever you can – 15 minutes here, an hour there. Over time you will become trained to shift into writing mode on a moment’s notice. This approach is usually most effective for experienced scholars who can switch easily between shallow and deep work. Inexperienced writers may find that the multitasking yields unproductive results, so they should proceed cautiously with this method.

The key is to do something! You must ritualize whichever method you choose in order to optimize your productivity. This may take some trial and error, but with your new-found metacognition about how you work best and some alternative strategies to try, you will be more likely to self-regulate your behaviors in order to be successful in your scholarly pursuits. If you try new approaches and are still not engaging in enough deep work, consider joining a writing group or finding a colleague to hold you accountable on a regular basis. Again, like diet and exercise, others can sometimes provide the motivation and deadlines that we are unable to provide for ourselves. Over time, your addiction to shallow work will subside and your productivity will soar… or so they tell me.

Resources:

Gardiner, M., & Kearns, H. (2011). Turbocharge your writing today. Nature 475: 129-130. doi: 10.1038/nj7354-129a

Goodson, P. (2013). Becoming an academic writer: 50 exercises for paced, productive, and powerful writing. Los Angeles: Sage.

Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

Silvia, P. J. (2007). How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.


Are Academic Procrastinators Metacognitively Deprived?

By Aaron S. Richmond
Metropolitan State University of Denver

Academic Procrastinators Brief Overview

One of my favorite articles is Academic Procrastination of Undergraduates: Low Self-Efficacy to Self-Regulate Predicts Higher Levels of Procrastination by Robert M. Klassen, Lindsey. L. Krawchuk, and Sukaina Rajani (2007). Klassen and colleagues state that “…the rate for problematic academic procrastination among undergraduates is estimated to be at least 70-95% (Ellis & Knaus, 1977; Steel, 2007), with estimates of chronic or severe procrastination among undergraduates between 20% and 30%” (p. 916). Academic procrastination is, “the intentional delay of an intended course action, in spite of an awareness of negative outcomes (Steel, 2007; as cited in Klassen et al., 2006, p. 916). Based on the above stated statistics, it is obvious that academic procrastination is an issue in higher education, and that understanding what factors influence it and are related to its frequency is of utmost importance.

In their 2007 article, Klassen and colleagues conducted two studies to understand the relationship among academic procrastination and self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-esteem and then understand this relationship within “negative procrastinators” (p. 915). In study 1, they surveyed 261 undergraduate students. They found that academic procrastination was inversely correlated to college/university GPA, self-regulation, academic self-efficacy and self-esteem. Meaning as students’ frequency of academic procrastination went down, their GPA and self-reported scores of self-efficacy, self-esteem, and self-regulation went up. They also found that self-regulation, self-esteem, and self-efficacy predicted academic procrastination.

In study 2, Klassen and colleagues (2007) they were interested in knowing whether there was a difference between negative and neutral procrastinators. That is when procrastinating caused a negative affect (e.g., grade penalty for assignment tardiness) or a neutral affect (e.g., no penalty for assignment tardiness). They surveyed 194 undergraduates and asked students to rate how academic procrastination affected, either positively or negatively, specific academic tasks (reading, research, etc.). They then, divided the sample into a group of students that self-reported that academic procrastination negatively affected them in some way or positive/neutrally affected them in some way.  What they found is that there were significant differences in GPA, daily procrastination, task procrastination, predicted class grade, actual class grade, and self-reported self-regulation between negative procrastinators and neutral procrastinators. They also found that students most often procrastinated on writing tasks.

So Where Does Metacognition Come in to Play?

Because a main factor of their focus was self-regulation, I think Klassen and colleagues study, gives us great insight and promise into the potential role (either causal or predictive) that metacognition plays in academic procrastination. First, in Study 1, they used the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & MckKeachie, 1993) to measure self-efficacy for self-regulation. This MSLQ subscale assesses students’ awareness of knowledge and control of cognition (Klassen et al., 2007). It asks question like “If course materials are difficult to understand, I change the way I read the material.” or “I try to change the way I study in order to fit the course requirements and instructor’s teaching style.” (p. 920). As self-efficacy for self-regulation are a subset of metacognition, it is clear to me, that these questions indirectly, if not directly, partially measure elements of metacognition.

This makes me wonder, it would be interesting if the results of Klassen et al.’s study hold true with other forms of metacognition, such as metacognitive awareness. For example, how does it relate to metacognitive awareness factors that Schraw and Dennison (1994) suggest, such as knowledge and cognition (e.g., declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge) vs. regulation of cognition (e.g., planning, information management, monitoring, evaluation)?  Or, as Klassen et al. did not use the entire battery of measures in the MSLQ, how does academic procrastination relate to other aspects of the MSLQ like Learning Strategies, Help Seeking Scale, Metacognitive Self-Regulation, etc. (Pintrich et al., 1993). Or how might Klassen’s results relate to behavioral measures of metacognition such as calibration or, how does it relate to the Need for Cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982)?  These questions suggest that metacognition could play a very prominent role in academic procrastination.

There Are Always More Questions Than Answers

To my knowledge, researchers have yet to replicate Klassen et al.’s (2007) with an eye towards investigating whether metacognitive variables predict and mediate rates of academic procrastination.  Therefore, I feel like I must wrap up this blog (as I always do) with a few questions/challenges/inspirational ideasJ

  1. What is the relationship among metacognitive awareness and academic procrastination?
  2. If there is a relationship between metacognition and academic procrastination, are there mediating and moderating variables that contribute to the relationship between metacognition and academic procrastination? For example, critical thinking? Intelligence? Past academic performance? The type of content and experience with this content (e.g., science knowledge)?
  3. Are there specific elements of metacognition (e.g., self-efficacy vs. metacognitive awareness vs. calibration, vs. monitoring, etc.) that predict the frequency of academic procrastination?
  4. Can metacognitive awareness training reduce the frequency of academic procrastination?
  5. If so, what type of training best reduces academic procrastination?

 References

Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 116.

Ellis, A., & Knaus, W. J. (1977). Overcoming procrastination. NY: New American Library

Klassen, R. M., Krawchuk, L. L., & Rajani, S. (2008). Academic procrastination of undergraduates: Low self-efficacy to self-regulate predicts higher levels of procrastination. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33, 915-931. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2007.07.001

Pintrich, P. R., Smith, D. A. F., Garcia, T., & McKeachie, W. J. (1993). Reliability and predictive validity of the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (MSLQ). Educational and Psychological Measurement, 53, 801–813.

Schraw, G., & Dennison, R. S. (1994). Assessing metacognitive awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 19, 460-475.

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 65–94.


Lean Forward, but Do It Metacognitively!

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

As the Director for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at my institution, a large part of my job description involves helping faculty intentionally explore new approaches and how they impact student learning. In other words – I work with forward-leaning faculty who are ready to try new things. So, I think a lot about how, when, and why faculty members adopt new pedagogies, tools, and activities, and about when, for whom, and in what contexts these new approaches enhance learning. This work dovetails nicely with the development and goals of metacognitive instruction.

As a reminder if you’re relatively new to our site, one of the premises we’ve previously shared here (e.g. Scharff, March 2015) and elsewhere (Scharff and Draeger, NTLF, 2015) is that Metacognitive Instruction involves the intentional and ongoing interaction between awareness and self-regulation, specifically with respect to the pedagogical choices instructors make as they design their lessons and then as they carry them out.

I was happy to see these connections reinforced last month at our 7th Annual SoTL Forum. Dr. Bridget Arend was invited to give a morning workshop and the keynote address. Along with James R. Davis, she is co-author of Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning: A Resource for More Purposeful, Effective and Enjoyable College Teaching. In her workshop Bridget dug into how to facilitate critical thinking, promote problem-solving, and support the building of skills (3 of the 7 ways of learning), while in her keynote she focused more strongly on the concept of matching student learning goals with the most effective teaching methods. She went beyond the usual discussion of tips and techniques to explore the underlying purpose, rationale, and best use of these [pedagogical] methods.

Dr. Bridget Arend giving the keynote address at the 7th Annual SoTL Forum at the U. S. Air Force Academy
Dr. Bridget Arend giving the keynote address at the 7th Annual SoTL Forum at the U. S. Air Force Academy

7_Ways_of_Learning
Books such as these can help support metacognitive instruction.

While Bridget did not explicitly use the term “metacognitive instruction,” it struck me that her message of purposeful choice of methods directly supported key aspects of metacognitive instruction, especially those related to awareness of our pedagogical decisions. We (instructors) should not incorporate pedagogies (or new tools or activities) just because they are the ones typically used by our colleagues, or because they are what was “done to us as students and it worked for us,” or because they are the “new, latest-greatest thing” we’ve heard about. Rather, we should carefully review our learning goals and consider how each possible approach might support those goals for our students and our context.

We should also be mindful of other factors that might influence our adoption of new approaches. For example, administrators or institutions often reward faculty who are leading the adoption of new technologies. Sometimes the message seems “the more new technologies incorporated the better” or “out with the old and in with the new” so a program or institution can market itself as being the most cutting edge in education. However, while many of us appreciate being rewarded or showcased for new efforts, we also need to pause to consider whether or not we’re really supporting student learning as well as we could with these practices.

Questions we should ask ourselves before implementation include, How will our new pedagogical approach or a new app really align with the learning goals we have for our students? Will all of our choices complement each other, or might they work at cross-purposes with each other? Realistically, there are a limited number of learning outcomes we can successfully accomplish within a lesson or even across a semester.

As we implement these new approaches and tools, we should ask additional questions. How are they actually impacting aspects of student engagement, attitudes towards learning, and ultimately, the learning itself? How might they be adjusted (either “in the moment” or in future lessons) as we use them in order to better support our learning goals for our students in our context? No group of students is the same, and the context also shifts over time. What worked well in the past might need adjusting or more radically changing in the future.

In sum, we know that no single approach is going to work for all learning goals or all students across all situations. But if we build our awareness of possibilities using resources such as Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning (and many other published papers and texts) to help guide our pedagogical choices; if we carefully attend to how our approaches affect students and student learning; and we if modify our approach based on those observations (and maybe using systematic data if we’re conducting a SoTL research project), then we WILL be more likely to enhance student learning (and our own development as metacognitive instructors).

Thus, lean forward as instructors, but do it metacognitively!

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Davis, James R. & Arend, B. (2013). Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning: A Resource for More Purposeful, Effective and Enjoyable College Teaching. Stylus Publishing, Sterling, VA.

Scharff, L. & Draeger, J. (September, 2015). Thinking about metacognitive instruction. The National Teaching and Learning Forum, 24(5), p. 4-6. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ntlf.2015.24.issue-5/issuetoc


Using Metacognition to Make International Connections

by Lauren Scharff, PhD, U. S. Air Force Academy and John Draeger, PhD, SUNY Buffalo State

If you’re one of our longer-term followers, you’ll notice that this post is a bit different from others on our site. We just wrapped up a fantastic week in Melbourne, Australia working with six colleagues from around the globe, and we want to share some of our metacognition endeavors and reflections with you. This experience was part of the second International Collaborative Writing Groups  (ICWG) that is an affiliate effort for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL).

Eight groups were part of the ICWG. The groups formed in May and met virtually over the summer to focus their topics and develop an outline prior to the face-to-face meeting this past week. Our group’s topic was The Student Learning Process, and we focused our efforts on how metacognition would support the transfer of learning from one situation or context to another. We believe the transfer of learning is one of the ultimate goals of education because it supports lifelong learning and employability.

The group’s work on how metacognition supports the transfer of learning will be revealed when it’s published, but meanwhile, we will share some ways that metacognition was part of our experience of facilitating the group. We’ll start with some pictures to set the tone. The first shows our group working: from left to right, Lauren, Susan Smith (Leeds Beckett University, UK), Lucie S Dvorakova (Honors Student, University of Queensland, Australia), Marion Tower (University of Queensland), Dominic Verpoorten (IFRES-University of Liège, Belgium), Marie Devlin (Newcastle University, UK), and Jason M. Lodge (University of Melbourne, Australia), [John Draeger taking the pic]. The second gives you a sense of the overall setting, showing multiple groups all kept to task by savvy ICWG coordinators, Mick Healy (University of Gloucestershire, retired) and Kelly Matthews (University of Queensland). Fortunately, Mick and Kelly also built in some social time for community building. The third picture shows our group at the Victoria State Library, left to right: Dominique, Sam, Marion, Sue, Marion, John, Lauren and Jason.

ICWG_SLP_Working

ICWG_mult_groups

ICWG_SLP_Social

How Metacognition Found Its Way into Our Facilitating Experiences

If you read the home page of this site, you’ll notice that we loosely define metacognition as the intertwined awareness and self-regulation of a process/skill, specifically with the goal of developing that process or skill. Although the site is focused on metacognition as it relates to teaching and learning, it can refer to any skill or process. Facilitating a group can be much like teaching, but it involves some additional processes that might more traditionally be linked to leadership and communication.

We noticed ourselves using metacognition in the following aspects of our work:

Use of Language: Given the international character of the group, self-monitoring and self-regulation allowed us to navigate differences in language and underlying assumptions. For example, through our discussions we learned that academic faculty might be referred to as ‘staff,’ ‘tutor,’ ‘instructor’ or ‘professor.’ Individual courses might be referred to as ‘classes,’ ‘modules’ or ‘units’ of study.

Assumptions about education: Our discussion revealed differences in the structures of the university systems in different countries. When discussing how students might use their learning in one course to inform their learning in another, the two North Americans on the team (John and Lauren) tended to think about transfer learning between a diverse set of courses across a broad liberal arts core curriculum in addition to transfer across more closely related courses within a major. Because undergraduate education in Australia and the United Kingdom tend not to be structured around a broad core curriculum, members of the team from these countries tended to focus on transfer learning within a particular field of study.

As we drafted our text and created a survey that was to be used in four different countries, we each engaged in self-monitoring of the terms as the conversation was in progress and would regulate behavior accordingly. For example, someone would start by saying “I think that staff might…” but then quickly add “or perhaps you might say ‘professors.’” Similarly, we would use our newly developed awareness of the different educational structures to guide our discussion about how transfer of learning might be supported across all of our learning environments.

Management of Project Scope: Both transfer of learning and metacognition are vast areas of study. Given the wide variety of experiences and individual interests in our group, we explored a wide array of possible directions for our paper, some of which we decided we would table for follow-on papers (e.g. how student level of intellectual development might impact transfer of learning and the creation of a “toolkit” for instructors that would help them support transfer of learning). Moving the conversation in fruitful directions required that all of us remain mindful of the task at hand (i.e. working towards a 6000-word article). Self-monitoring allowed us to detect when an interesting discussion had gone beyond the scope of our current article and self-regulation more quickly brought us back to the task at hand.

In summary, the international character of the writing group added a depth and richness to the conversation, but it also increased the likelihood of misunderstanding and the challenge of group management. Self-monitoring and self-regulation allowed us to overcome those challenges.

Many thanks to our group members for a fantastic face-to-face experience, and we look forward to our continued exchanges as we finalize the paper and carry on with the follow-on papers.


Metacognitive Awareness and Academic Achievement in College Students

“Schraw and Dennison (1994) developed the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) to assess metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation which they referred to as the knowledge of cognition factor and the regulation of cognition factor.” Young and Fry’s article discusses the correlations between the final course grades, GPS and MAI. (Metacognitive Awareness Inventory) Findings show that the scores on the MAI greatly differ between undergraduate and graduate students.

Young, A., & Fry, J. (2012). Metacognitive awareness and academic achievement in college students. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2), 1-10.

Metacognitive Awareness and Academic Achievement in College Students