What are some (new) ways you might apply metacognition in one or more of your courses?

Hi everyone - I find this topic to be really intriguing. Many of the activities are very simple yet the evidence supports that they work well for student success. I've used concept mapping before but I plan to try a 2 minute pause with a quick think-pair-share activity every 5-8 minutes when I use lecture. I reviewed the PowerPoint on the SAGE site (https://serc.carleton.edu/sage2yc/self_regulated/activities.html ), "Helping students learn how to learn" which is on self-regulation. There are concrete examples of the results teachers experienced when implementing the strategy. Those results convinced me that this is important.

I also plan to discuss the video on metacognition from LSU. The checkpoint of studying as if you were going to teach the information to someone else seems very tangible for students.

I was inspired by Tanner's article as well. I do have students self-reflect after large projects where they write two sections: what would they do differently if they could continue this work or start over AND a summary of their learning about the process. I should incorporate that reflection sooner in the process so they can make those adjustments as they go rather than as an evaluation at the end.

Thank you for the readings - Rebecca

What are some (new) ways you might apply metacognition in one or more of your courses?
In the next problem-solving session I do with my physics students, I'm going to break the students into groups of two, or one group of three if there is an odd number, to work on a problem. I will have them begin by coming up with a plan to solve the problem and developing a strategy. After 10 minutes or so, the students will regroup with the other students in the row who were working on the same problem. They will compare their results and their progress. They will have an additional 10 minutes to work on the problem if they haven't already solved it. Then one student from each row will go up to the board and present a solution to the problem. At the end of the class, I will ask the students if their plan and strategy worked, and if not, what they think they could do better for the next time.

What more do you want to know?

What is a good way to present Bloom's Taxonomy to a class? Should I post it and ask students to write a question for each level of the taxonomy, for practice?
If I give a lot of "remembering" questions on a quiz, how would I incorporate some higher level questions into a test? Would they have to be short answer or essay? Or can you do multiple choice questions on higher level topics?
One thing I do in labs is have students interpret depositional environments of sedimentary rocks from short descriptions of the rocks that include critical features (such as red color and fining upward sequences). I guess that falls in the "analyze" category? Anyway, it would be good to have some example questions that address Bloom's Taxonomy, that I could use and adapt to the topic at hand. Thanks.

What do I currently do with metacognition?
I spend a fair amount of time talking with students about the adaptive learning assignments that we use (via our eText). I explain the cognitive science behind them and the idea of a flipped classroom.

What more do I want to know? What might I implement?
I used to implement exam wrappers when I gave paper tests, but I have been having trouble with them since I have switched over to administering exams via Canvas. I used to add an extra page at the end of the exam with some reflection questions, and I had them tear it off and hold on to it when they turned in their exams. Then I would grade the exams, hand them back in the next class and we would go over answers (often I would have them make corrections by talking with peers to find the correct answer) and have a brief discussion about metacognition. I'm struggling to translate that procedure to the new, online exams. They take the exam in-person, and they can see which answers they got incorrect (and I have the option of showing the correct answer) immediately after submitting their exam. So, each student takes a different amount of time to finish, they see their score immediately and then they leave for the day. So the next class session there isn't anything for me to hand back, or for them to look at and compare with their peers, so I am at a loss for how to create that "moment" of analyzing their results. Does anybody else do exam wrappers on Canvas? Advice on walking them through correcting their mistakes when they can't have the test directly in their hands?

What is something you currently do to incorporate metacognition in your courses? Do you have evidence that indicate it's been successful? Any suggestions for others who might want to implement something similar?

After exams, I have asked students "How many hours did you spend studying for the exam?".
The most telling moment was when a student piped up and said "You mean minutes!".
And now I know that this is part of an Exam Wrapper. It is helpful to know some additional questions I can ask after the exam to instill in the students some notion that they need to be spending time doing particular things and thinking about how they approach studying. It is nice to have some particular things I can ask them now.

So when I started this training, I did not really know what metacognition was, or exactly what "reflection" was. Nothing I had heard about these terms really made sense. This module (Activity 5) was a great introduction, and it was fun to see that I had actually done some of the things mentioned. I often do the think-pair-share activity when starting a new topic, asking students what they know about a topic, then sharing notes with a partner, and reporting back to the class. The post-exam reflection handout is very helpful.

The metacognitive practices I currently use are:
1) Assigning reading reflections on every pre-class homework assignment for my hybrid astronomy class. I read these reflections just before class each day and get a good idea of what is clicking and what is confusing.
2) Students complete weekly reflections online after class. I ask them “what worked” and didn’t work each week, and ask them to summarize the week’s main points and their muddiest point. I don’t have evidence that it has been successful for student learning (that correlation would be self-fulfilling: the students completing the reflections are also doing the reading, homework, attending class, etc). However, their feedback is essential for my own reflective teaching practice. I can easily see common sticking points and incorporate student feedback. Generally, students will tell me which activities (lecture tutorials, primarily) they found particularly helpful. This is especially helpful to me since this is my first time teaching this course.

Ideas for implementation:
These resources made me realize the breadth of possibilities for implementing metacognitive reflection! I love Dr. Kraft's notebook idea, but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. A better place to start for me will be using Table 2 from Kimberly Tanner’s “Promoting Student Metacognition” to integrate metacognition into classroom activities I am already doing, such as think-pair-share (or clicker questions) and lecture tutorials. I'd also like to try the exam wrapper and "metacognition talk" that Bryn Benford mentioned last week, and will incorporate that into our first assessment next term. This talk could include the self-regulated learning cycle, reading methods, and effective study processes (a couple of slides in the Saundra McGuire's powerpoint had great diagrams that I will definitely borrow).

I want to learn more about...
Providing structured feedback efficiently, and assessing to allow students to make mistakes, grow, and demonstrate mastery down the line. I find it difficult to provide meaningful feedback when gathering lecture tutorials daily and quizzes weekly - with 46 students it's hard to give each student a lot of individual attention. I'm toying with not gathering those anymore, implementing self-grading (and making the weekly quizzes formative instead of summative), and instead providing feedback on (short!) daily exit tickets which target higher Bloom's levels. I'm also curious if anyone uses a standards-based assessment approach despite being in the sciences, which often requires sequential and summative mastery. I can provide all the metacognitive reflection I want, but if the student demonstrates that they have grown as a learner but has no chance to "prove" it on assessments, it may be discouraging. This may not be the time or place for this conversation, but if anyone has thoughts on assessment and course design that addresses this issue, please contact me!

When you use clickers, do you use them as a T-P-S? For instance, have students respond individually to a question, then show the class response poll, and then have students discuss why they chose the answer they did? That format really forces students to explain their thinking. I teach astronomy, too. Have you found the UNL Class Action resources? There are tons of clicker questions there. Just google it, or happy to share resources.