I have used metacognitive strategies in my courses, but always find myself refining and adding to them! The last two activities we have done on active learning and reflective practice have opened my eyes! I have used reflective journals to allow students to not only think about what concepts they have trouble understanding in class but also utilize study resources I have pooled together for them to address their confusion (and hopefully remedy it)! I have found this to be pretty successful through at least them saying it has been helpful! I am also aiming for reflective questions within a class session, whether face-to-face or online (the latter would occur in a discussion), including what topics were most interesting to learn about and what will they likely tell someone else from outside of class (friends, family, so on) about what they learned! Finally, I have assigned post-exam reflections before, but figured I would add to them based on what I have learned through SAGE! Below is an example of what I plan to assign after the first exam in my online oceanography course:

1. How long did you study for the exam? How far in advance did you study? Did you manage your time well leading up to the exam? Explain briefly.
2. Which of the following resources did you use?
Textbook, PPTs, Discussions and discussion summaries, Supplemental links (videos, articles, etc.), Mastering Oceanography HW, Exam Review Resources (outline, practice quiz, discussion board, StudyMate), Study Groups, Tutoring (Science Tutoring Center, Other), Other resources?
3. Were you satisfied with your grade? Were there aspects of the exam that you feel you were stronger or weaker in (ex. question types, concepts)?
4. Do you feel your time management during the exam was sufficient in answering the questions? Explain briefly.
5. What would you do differently from what you stated in the previous parts of the reflection in preparing for Exam 2?
6. Are you on target towards your overall grade goal in the course? Explain how you are or can get on target.

...in my Meteorology course.. give the students the “chance” to present, in front of the whole class, the different weather products. ...By the end of the semester, students are able present good flowing clear and accurate information from the different maps, images, and graphs, and be able to answer any questions I pose to them about the meteorological products.

One thing I’ve been able to do in my Meteorology course, is to, after have given students some example “presentations” by myself on talking about various weather products (weather maps, satellite images, precipitation radar images, weather balloon graphs, etc.), to then give the students the “chance” to present, in front of the whole class, the different weather products. Obviously, it’s a little uneasy and nervous for the students at the start, but as the semester goes on, they eventually get more and more comfortable with their presentations (we also learn who the real “hams” are when it comes to giving presentations!) :) By the end of the semester, students are able present good flowing clear and accurate information from the different maps, images, and graphs, and be able to answer any questions I pose to them about the meteorological products.

I would like to include exam wrappers on the next exam to gauge students "feel" for the exam immediately after taking it and again when they see their scores. I have also introduced concept maps in the past and will bring this back to help students "chunk" important concepts together and clarify misconceptions.

What more do you want to know?
How do you follow up with the muddiest point for each student during class? I usually describe the most common muddy points, but I want to address them all. Can this be a think-pair-share activity, where they answer each other's questions and see how effective teaching one another is at deepening their own knowledge?

I have used reflective journals to allow students to not only think about what concepts they have trouble understanding in class but also utilize study resources I have pooled together for them to address their confusion (and hopefully remedy it)! I have found this to be pretty successful through at least them saying it has been helpful! I am also aiming for reflective questions within a class session, whether face-to-face or online (the latter would occur in a discussion), including what topics were most interesting to learn about and what will they likely tell someone else from outside of class (friends, family, so on) about what they learned!

One thing I’ve been able to do in my Meteorology course, is to, after have given students some example “presentations” by myself on talking about various weather products (weather maps, satellite images, precipitation radar images, weather balloon graphs, etc.), to then give the students the “chance” to present, in front of the whole class, the different weather products. Obviously, it’s a little uneasy and nervous for the students at the start, but as the semester goes on, they eventually get more and more comfortable with their presentations (we also learn who the real “hams” are when it comes to giving presentations!) :) By the end of the semester, students are able present good flowing clear and accurate information from the different maps, images, and graphs, and be able to answer any questions I pose to them about the meteorological products.

Making more time for student pre/post reflections will be a priority for me this semester.

I want to try having students write down their "muddiest point" or specific questions that they do not understand. Have them confer with their group mates and see if their questions can be answered and any unanswered questions will be turned in to me so that I can address these at the beginning of the next class session.

I plan to refer to the "faculty metacognition about teaching" when starting out with backwards design. Again, it gives very specific questions that when answered are very telling and give a very clear picture of what you want your students to get from the day's lesson and why. I feel this will be very helpful not only in the beginning when planning the activities, but also during and afterwards to reflect on how it went and how I can tweak it to make it even better.

I have used metacognitive strategies in my courses, but always find myself refining and adding to them! The last two activities we have done on active learning and reflective practice have opened my eyes! I have used reflective journals to allow students to not only think about what concepts they have trouble understanding in class but also utilize study resources I have pooled together for them to address their confusion (and hopefully remedy it)! I have found this to be pretty successful through at least them saying it has been helpful! I am also aiming for reflective questions within a class session, whether face-to-face or online (the latter would occur in a discussion), including what topics were most interesting to learn about and what will they likely tell someone else from outside of class (friends, family, so on) about what they learned! Finally, I have assigned post-exam reflections before, but figured I would add to them based on what I have learned through SAGE! Below is an example of what I plan to assign after the first exam in my online oceanography course:

1. How long did you study for the exam? How far in advance did you study? Did you manage your time well leading up to the exam? Explain briefly.
2. Which of the following resources did you use?
Textbook, PPTs, Discussions and discussion summaries, Supplemental links (videos, articles, etc.), Mastering Oceanography HW, Exam Review Resources (outline, practice quiz, discussion board, StudyMate), Study Groups, Tutoring (Science Tutoring Center, Other), Other resources?
3. Were you satisfied with your grade? Were there aspects of the exam that you feel you were stronger or weaker in (ex. question types, concepts)?
4. Do you feel your time management during the exam was sufficient in answering the questions? Explain briefly.
5. What would you do differently from what you stated in the previous parts of the reflection in preparing for Exam 2?
6. Are you on target towards your overall grade goal in the course? Explain how you are or can get on target.

I think the major thing I realized while looking through these resources is that I'd like to add a session about metacognition to my courses to help students think about their learning styles. Doing a short presentation on Bloom's taxonomy and on the study strategies in the powerpoint here would be really useful. I'm always so nervous about taking time away from learning new course material, but honestly, if they're not retaining the information, they're not really learning it anyway. So taking time at the beginning of the semester and then checking in periodically would probably be really helpful to them.

I also really like the idea of doing the active listening exercises, where they listen to lecture for 10-20 minutes, then write down the three most important ideas and turn them in. I think that would be really eye-opening for the students to discover how critically they listen to the information, and then would help them do better in all of their courses.

Hello all,

I usually add one question related to metacognition in homework. For the first homework, it's:
"A physical geography course has many key terms. What strategies are you planning on using to help you remember them?"


For the second homework, it's:
"Identify one concept presented in the second week of class that is more challenging for students. Define the concept, explain why it is challenging, and identify one strategy that would help students to understand and remember the concept."

For a later assignment, it's:
"Describe net radiation using words that a fifth grader would understand."


For me, these questions are more interesting to read and grade than more objective questions. It makes grading less a slog because I'm looking forward to seeing what students come up with. And, I have a better understanding of students' thinking. At the beginning of the class before the homework is submitted, or when I return the homework, I might ask a few students to share their responses -- I think it relaxes students a bit to see how their classmates are dealing with the course content.

~Waverly

I found the video, featuring Dr. Saundra McGuire, Think About Thinking, extremely fascinating as she explained metacognition and the processes involved in metacognition. For my face-to-face classes, I usually do a review session at the beginning of lecture including material from the prior lecture. However, after watching the video, I am contemplating changing this technique (usually half the class doesn't even participate when I ask questions about what we learned from the prior lecture). So, for example, Dr. McGuire discusses techniques used to help students remember and regurgitate information. One way I may start incorporating metacognition into my lectures is to place the class into small groups (2-3 students) and have each student in that group teach an aspect/topic from the prior lecture (of their choosing). Students can then engage with one another, and if they know ahead of time that they will be required to teach a topic, it may help them absorb and understand the material efficiently. One detriment I notice throughout the semester with my students is that even though they can memorize information (such as definitions) they truly do not understand the topic, definition, etc. To combat this, I try to incorporate current events that may try to spark their interest, but I believe having to teach another student, or students, a topic could really be beneficial to the overall learning process.

I think the major thing I realized while looking through these resources is that I'd like to add a session about metacognition to my courses to help students think about their learning styles. Doing a short presentation on Bloom's taxonomy and on the study strategies in the powerpoint here would be really useful. I'm always so nervous about taking time away from learning new course material, but honestly, if they're not retaining the information, they're not really learning it anyway. So taking time at the beginning of the semester and then checking in periodically would probably be really helpful to them.

I also really like the idea of doing the active listening exercises, where they listen to lecture for 10-20 minutes, then write down the three most important ideas and turn them in. I think that would be really eye-opening for the students to discover how critically they listen to the information, and then would help them do better in all of their courses.

If they manage to solve these “impossible” tasks, adjust the lab procedure, present the extra results, and explain what their thinking process was in the lab report, they get extra points.

At a minimum, this has enabled me to say on subsequent exams "Check over your exam when you think you are done. How many of you wrote 'I skipped this question and forgot to come back to it' when you corrected the last exam"? This is the kind of thing that is second nature to me, but for many of my students, they finish an exam and turn it in without double checking it.

I think having students interact with their exam and try to articulate how they could study more effectively has led students to do better on subsequent exams, but I don't have any data on it. I think I'm going to add some of the exam wrapper questions to my post exam practice.