Metacognitive Discourse—Final Course Presentations that Foster Campus Conversations about Learning

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

Prior to the pandemic and now since returning to campus, there has been a shift in students’ use of group study and ability to learn and work in groups. When I began my position as Learning Specialist 10 years ago, it was not uncommon to find 30 students at group study sessions at 9 pm in the evening. Now, one group study session remains, and 2-3 students might attend the sessions (unless they are teams’ sessions required by athletic coaches). Colleagues have also shared in conversations that they have found it problematic that students avoid interacting with one another in the classroom and are not able to work and learn in physical groups. Further in my learning resource center year-end reports, data have shown a steady decline in group study attendance and a steady increase of students relying on support from me, the Learning Specialist. They want to work one/one with adults. In conversations with students and in online discussion blogs, students’ have shared a lack of inter- and intrapersonal communication skills as affecting their ability to work with their peers. In simple terms—overuse of electronic communication pre-pandemic and during the pandemic has left them unable to communicate interact with their classmates. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. In terms of learning, pedagogy is clear—learning is social (Bandura, 1977).

An Assignment to Reinforce Social Learning and Metacognition

In response, this semester, to reinforce social learning and metacognition, I changed the final assessment for the College Study Strategy course to be a final presentation that embedded metacognition and social discourse. The College Study Strategy course is metacognitive in nature in that it begins by having students reflect on their prior learning experiences, assess themselves and their skills, and set goals for the semester. It is a 1-credit course open to any student below 90 credits and can be retaken. However, in the second semester, it is almost entirely filled with students placed on academic probation or warning who are required to take the course. Curriculum includes theorists such as Marzano (2001), Bandura (1994), Ducksworth (2013), Dweck (2014), and Covey (2004) and requires them to begin applying new motivation, emotional intelligence, learning, reading, time management, study, note-taking, and test-taking strategies to their courses. In the past, students created a portfolio that demonstrated the use of their new strategies and presented their growth to me in a midterm and final conference. This year, I wanted them to share their new growth with more than me—I wanted them to share their growth with the entire community.

By changing the final project to be more outward-facing, the assignment would still be metacognitive in nature—requiring students to reflect on past learning, show how they made adjustments to learning and applied new methods and strategies, share in conversation how they made the adjustments, and finally explain how they will continue to apply strategies and continue their growth in the future with the new knowledge and strategies. Again, it would require students to share with more than me. They would need to envision a larger audience and needs—the entire campus community (administrators, students, Athletic coaches, staff, professors, recruits) and create a presentation that could be adjusted to the audience. They would practice inter and intra-personal skills as they made adjustments to their presentation over the course of 2 hours while they remained at station in the library, prepared to share their presentation as members of the campus community approached. This also allowed for the campus community to benefit from the students’ new knowledge and growth of the semester. And, being on a small scale, it re-introduced students to the art of in-person, face-face conversation between each other and the value of seeking information from each other. This is something that has been eroding due to a heavy use of electronic communication and isolated learning that occurred during the pandemic.

Students were introduced to this assignment in week one of the semester. They were told that in week 6 they would choose any topic from the course curriculum that they felt they needed to focus on more intently based on their semester goals. Once choosing the curriculum they would focus on (ex: motivation, reading, procrastination, time management, studying, growth mindset), they would then research a different article each week related to their chosen topic (weeks 6-12) and apply the new critical reading strategy taught in class to create journal entries that would be used to prepare content for the final presentation. In weeks 14 or 15, they would present in the library at a table (poster session style) during a time of their choosing (two-hour block) to the campus community about their topic. The presentation needed to include some type of visual and the content needed to include all of the following metacognitive information about the topic:

past struggles
reasons for choosing the topic
strategies learned in class
information learned in their research
recommendations for other students struggling
strategies for continued growth

Positive Impact and Take-Aways

While students were nervous and hesitant prior to the presentations, during and after the presentations, they admitted to having fun sharing about their growth and learning. Staff, faculty, and students were also appreciative of the presentations and made a point of attending. Some future students/recruits even attended as they were touring. Not surprising, most students chose to present about motivation, time management and procrastination. A few students chose to present about growth mindset, Bloom’s Taxonomy as a study strategy, and reading. A surprising take-away was that in the metacognitive process of the presentation, many students connected improved reading strategies to increased motivation and reduction in procrastination.

While observing the presentations, it was encouraging to see students learn to adapt their presentations as people approached. Since they were stationed at a table for two hours, they needed to present the material many times to different types of audiences—and they had to field questions. As they presented and represented, they learned how to interact and present differently based on the needs of the audience. This adaptation required the use of metacognition and rhetorical analysis. It also built inter- and intrapersonal communication skills. It also came at a good time in the semester, as students were authentically seeking many of the strategies and skills to prepare for finals, conclude the semester, and look forward to the next semester. Many of the presenters had friends and team members, coaches, and faculty come to hear their presentations (as I had advertised the presentations to the campus in advance). In conclusion, metacognitive presentations that engage the entire campus community in discourse about learning may be a helpful step toward rebuilding learning communities post-pandemic. Next semester, I will continue this assignment. Additionally, next semester, I am working on embedding group reading labs into targeted courses to improve learning, motivation and reduce procrastination in the classroom.

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).

Critically Thinking about our Not-So-Critical Thinking in the Social World

By Randi Shedlosky-Shoemaker and Carla G. Strassle, York College of Pennsylvania

When people fail to engage in critical thinking while navigating their social world, they inevitably create hurdles that disrupt their cultural awareness and competence. Unfortunately, people generally struggle to see the hurdles that they construct (i.e., bias blind spot; Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002). We propose metacognition can be used to help people understand the process by which they think about and interact with others.

a photo montage of face images from a large variety of people

The first step is to reflect on existing beliefs about social groups, which requires people to examine the common errors in critical thinking that they may be engaging in. By analyzing those errors, people can begin to take down the invisible hurdles on the path to cultural awareness and competency. Using metacognition principles collected by Levy (2010), in this post we discuss how common critical thinking failures affect how people define and evaluate social groups, as well as preserve the resulting assumptions. More importantly, we provide suggestions on avoiding those failures.

Defining Social Groups

Social categories, by their very nature, are social constructs. That means that people should not think of social categories in terms of accuracy, but rather utility (Levy, 2010, pp. 11-12). For example, knowing a friend’s sexual orientation might help one consider what romantic partners their friend might be interested in. When people forget that dividing the world into social groups is not about accurately representing others but rather a mechanism to facilitate social processes, they engage in an error known as reification. In relation to social groups, this error can also involve using tangible, biological factors (e.g., genetics) as the root cause of social constructs (e.g., race, gender). To avoid this reification error, people should view biological and psychological variables as two separate, but complementary levels of description (Levy, 2010, pp. 15-19), and remember that social categories are only important if they are useful.

Beyond an inappropriate reliance on biological differences to justify the borders between social groups, people often oversimplify those groups. Social categories are person-related variables, which are best represented on a continuum; reducing those variables to discrete, mutually exclusive groups, creates false dichotomies (Levy, 2010, pp. 26-28). False dichotomies, such as male or female, make it easier to overlook both commonalities shared by individuals across different groups as well as differences that exist between members within the same group.

Overly simplistic dichotomies also support the assumption that two groups represent the other’s polar opposite (e.g., male is the polar opposite of female, Black is the polar opposite of White). Such an assumption means ignoring that individuals can be a member of two supposedly opposite groups (e.g., identify as multiple races/ethnicities) or neither group (e.g., identify as agender).

Here, metacognition promotes reflection on the criteria used for defining group memberships. In that reflection, people should consider whether the borders that they apply to groups are too constraining, leading them to misrepresent individuals with whom they interact. Additionally, people should consider ways in which seemingly different groups can have shared features, while also still maintaining some degree of uniqueness (i.e., similarity-uniqueness paradox, Levy, 2010, pp. 39-41). By appreciating the nature and limitations of the categorization process, people can reflect upon whether applications of group memberships are meaningful or not.

Evaluating Social Groups

Critical thinking failures that occur when defining social categories are compounded when people move from describing social groups into evaluating those social groups (i.e., evaluative bias of language, Levy, 2010, pp. 4-7). In labeling social others, people often speak to what they have learned to see as different. As more dominant groups retain the power to set the standards, people may learn to use the dominant groups as the default (i.e., cultural imperialism; Young, 1990). For example, when people describe others as “that older woman”… “that kid”… “that blind person”… and so on – their chosen label conveys what they see as divergent from the status quo. By becoming more aware of the language they use, people simultaneously become more aware of how they think about social others based on social grouping. In monitoring and reflecting on language, metacognition affords us a valuable opportunity to adapt thinking through language.

Changing language can be challenging, however, particularly when people find themselves in environments that lack diversity. Frequently, people find themselves surrounded by others who look, think, and act like them. When surrounded by others who largely represent one’s self, unreflective attempts to make sense of the world may naturally echo their point of view. This is problematic for two reasons: first, people tend to rely more on readily available information in decision-making and judgments (i.e., availability heuristic, Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

Further, with one’s own views reflected back at them, people easily overestimate how common their beliefs and behaviors are (i.e., false consensus effect, Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). That inaccurate assessment of “common” can lead people to conclude that such beliefs and behaviors are also “good”. Conversely, what is seen as different or uncommon, relative to the self, becomes “bad” (i.e., naturalistic fallacy, Levy, 2010, pp. 50-51).

By pausing to assess the variability of perspectives people have access to, metacognition allows people to consider what perspectives they are missing. In that way, people can more intentionally seek out ideas and experiences that may be different from their own.

Preserving Assumptions

Though not easy, breaking away from one’s point of view and seeking out diverse perspectives can also address another hurdle that people create for themselves: specifically, the tendency to preserve one’s existing assumptions (i.e., belief perseverance phenomenon; e.g., Ross & Anderson, 1982). Change takes work, and not surprisingly, people often choose the path of least resistance – that is, to make new information fit into the system we already have (i.e., assimilation bias, Levy, 2010, pp. 154-156).

Further, people tend to seek out information that supports existing beliefs while disregarding or discounting disconfirming information (i.e., confirmation bias, Levy, 2010, pp. 164-165). Given the habit of sticking to what fits with existing beliefs, people develop an illusion of consensus. Existing beliefs are reinforced when people fail to realize that such beliefs inadvertently influence behaviors, which in turn shape interaction, thereby creating situations that further support, rather than challenge, existing belief systems (i.e., self-fulfilling prophecy, e.g., Wilkins, 1976).

This tendency then, to protect what one already “knows” speaks to the necessity of metacognition to challenge one’s existing belief system. When people analyze and question their existing beliefs they can begin to recognize where revision of those existing beliefs is needed and choose to acquire new perspectives to do so.

Summary

So many of the critical thinking failures above occur without much effortful or conscious awareness on our part. Engaging in metacognition, and non-defensively addressing the unintentional errors one makes, allows people to break down common hurdles that disrupt cultural awareness and competency. It’s when people critically reflect upon their thought processes, identifying the potential errors that may have shaped their existing perspectives, that they can begin to change how they think and feel about social others. In terms of developing a heightened sense of cultural awareness and competency, metacognition then helps us all realize that the world is a much more complex though interesting place.

References

Levy, D.A. (2010). Tools of critical thinking: Metathoughts for psychology. Waveland Press.

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 369-381. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167202286008

Ross. L., & Anderson, C. (1982). Shortcomings in the attribution process: On the origins and maintenance of erroneous social assessments. In D. Kahneman, P. Siovic, & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge Univ. Press.

Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977).The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279-301. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(77)90049-X

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 27, 1124-1131. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124

Wilkins, W. E. (1976). The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sociology of Education, 49, 175–183. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112523

Young, I. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press.