Welcome to the Teaching & Learning Guide for Integrating Metacognitive Strategies into Your Courses! 

This guide includes best practices and tips designed to help you: 

• Introduce students to the benefits of and strategies associated with metacognition;

• Aid students in becoming self-directed learners;

• Select and apply appropriate metacognitive strategies to your courses;

• Leverage Canvas tools to integrate metacognitive strategies;

• Request support from your Instructional Design Partner and the Technology Service Desk.

Metacognition is an ongoing process of analyzing one’s own thinking and learning and following that analysis up with “self-regulation—the ability to orchestrate one's learning: to plan, monitor success, and correct errors when appropriate—all necessary for effective intentional learning” (National Research Council, 2000). Skilled learning is not an inborn trait or natural talent; anyone can develop metacognitive skills with intention and practice. 

Students with strong metacognitive skills consistently:

• monitor their own learning processes and their understanding of content;

• reflect on what they do and do not understand;

• adapt their learning strategies when faced with new and more complex material;

• take initiative to fill the gaps in their understanding;

• demonstrate mastery of what they have learned on assessments and in real-world situations (Pintrich, 2002).

Rather than distract students from the course content, metacognitive strategies embedded throughout the course help them engage with, remember, and apply content, even when it is highly complex (Hartman, 2001). Although students come into the college classroom from a wide variety of backgrounds, you can help increase equity in your courses for all students by providing opportunities for them to improve their metacognitive skills through simple reflection and planning activities. The end goal of integrating metacognitive strategies into your course is to help students become self-directed learners who strive for mastery of content rather than simply achieving a certain grade.

Self-directed learners often employ metacognitive strategies without thinking about them because they have become habits. However, students need guidance to get to this point, especially if they have never been taught how to analyze and improve their own learning. 

Many students enter college assuming they learned all the study skills they will ever need in high school, and they may not realize that college-level course material is more complex than high school material and requires higher-order thinking skills. Students can struggle with college-level work if they do not have the metacognitive skills to assess where they are falling behind and the ability to choose the appropriate study strategies to help them catch up. Some students may become frustrated, begin to doubt their own intelligence, and even consider dropping out of college. The knowledge that anyone can improve their own ability to learn can keep students encouraged and engaged, and it leads to students earning higher grades, even after controlling for prior achievement (Henderson and Dweck, 1990).

Fortunately, there is a wealth of resources available on metacognition for you to share with students. The references list at the end of this guide can help you get started on building a toolkit of resources to share in your courses.

The more often students are exposed to metacognitive strategies, the more likely they are to adopt and benefit from these strategies. You can embed metacognition content throughout your course in a variety of ways: 

Provide students with optional resources.

Create an optional resources module in your Canvas course for students to explore on their own. You may choose to extend extra credit opportunities to students for putting in the effort to read and learn from these optional resources about metacognition.

Remind students of their available resources when they approach you for help during the semester. In addition to letting students know about the various tutoring services available at TWU, you can also encourage them to take advantage of the optional metacognition resources you have provided in your course. Often, it will not help students to spend more time studying if they are not using good study skills. 

Be explicit with students about metacognitive strategies.

Openly discuss your own experiences with applying metacognitive strategies, both during your education and in your current professional life. For example, you might explain how you learn the latest research in your field and apply it in your work. Students will benefit from hearing real-life applications of these strategies from someone they respect.

As you teach, be explicit about all the specific steps involved in problem solving, writing, performing, conducting laboratory experiments, and other activities you want students to master in the classroom and in their future professions. In other words, students need guidance on how to obtain a desired outcome before they are asked to complete assignments on their own. You could provide students with sample assignments from previous semesters that show each step clearly and accurately in addition to providing your own examples during class sessions or in your Canvas course.

Promote goal planning as a learning objective.

Include goal planning in your course-level or module-level learning objectives. For many students, the semester goes by too quickly trying to keep up with their assignments to pause and set intentional goals for their own learning. 

You can assist students by incorporating learning objectives that specifically address the goal of reflecting on gaps in understanding and proactively working toward filling those gaps. For example, “Students will identify at least one topic in this module they have not yet fully mastered and find one method (e.g., tutoring, attend office hours with instructor, form a study group) to fill this gap in understanding.” If you cannot add to your course-level learning objectives, you could add this as a module-level learning objective. Your Instructional Design Partner can support you with your course design and learning objectives.

Metacognitive activities are appropriate for every type of course, and you do not need to redesign your entire course to incorporate these activities. You can select appropriate activities that align with your current learning objectives and course structure, as well as add more activities over time as your course evolves.

One of the most effective and easiest to implement strategies is a reflection wrapper. A wrapper is a short reflection prompt that “wraps” around another activity to encourage students to apply metacognitive strategies at the beginning and the end. Wrappers can be used in any discipline and at any grade level. As the instructor, you can also use these activities as formative assessments -- even if they are ungraded and/or anonymous -- to help you understand where students are struggling to master course content. 

Class Session Wrappers

Begin each class session with a short reflection activity. Often, the first 5 minutes of class time is spent waiting for students to arrive and get settled. You can leverage this time to help students practice metacognition by asking them to spend the first few minutes of class writing about what they learned in the previous class period, listing any questions they may have about the course content so far, and brainstorming ways to fill the gaps in their understanding. 

Provide a reflection activity at the end of each class session. You can “wrap” the class session by ending with a simple reflection activity such as asking students to write down their answers to a question like “What was the most confusing part of today’s class session?” or “What do you wish you understood better about today’s content?” Encourage students to write down a few steps they can take to address the gaps in their knowledge before the next class session and provide some suggestions (e.g., attend your office hours, form a study group, sign up for tutoring services).

Module Wrappers

You can embed wrappers into synchronous and asynchronous online courses by adding reflection activities to the beginning and end of each module. Incorporate as many higher-order thinking, open-ended question prompts as you can to help students activate their metacognition skills. These reflection activities could be created as ungraded surveys, discussion posts, or journal assignments. Your Instructional Design Partner can assist you with implementing wrappers in your Canvas courses. 

Assessment Wrappers

Create reflection wrappers for your current course assessments. You can add opening reflection questions as short-answer questions to the beginning of your quizzes/exams to engage students’ metacognitive skills prior to the assessment. Then, you can create a post-assessment reflection activity that students will complete after they have received their feedback on the assessment. Post-assessment reflection gives students a chance to pause, think about their own learning, evaluate the effectiveness of their study strategies based on the feedback received, and set goals for future improvement. 

You could use simple, open-ended questions such as:

• What study strategies did you use to prepare for this exam? 

• What would have made you feel more prepared for this exam?

• What questions do you still have about this content? 

• What will you plan to do differently to prepare for the next exam?

Ensure that students are provided a copy of their responses to the post-assessment reflection activity so they can stay on track with their goals and follow through on improving their learning and filling the gaps in their knowledge.

You can use Canvas features to incorporate metacognitive activities into your courses. Your Instructional Design Partner can provide one-on-one support with these and other Canvas features:

• How do I create a survey in my course?

• How do I view survey results in a course?

• How do I create a discussion as an instructor?

• How do I create an assignment?

• Ambrose, S. A., Lovett, M., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

• Anderson, J. (2017, May 09). A Stanford researcher’s 15-minute study hack lifts B+ students into the As. Quartz. Retrieved from https://qz.com/978273/a-stanford-professors-15-minute-study-hack-improves-test-grades-by-a-third-of-a-grade/  

• Carnegie Mellon University. (n.d.). Exam Wrappers - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved November 12, 2021, from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/examwrappers  

• Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning. Ten Metacognitive Teaching Strategies. Vancouver Island University. Retrieved from https://ciel.viu.ca/teaching-learning-pedagogy/designing-your-course/how-learning-works/ten-metacognitive-teaching-strategies 

• Chick, N. (2013). Metacognition. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved 11/01/2021 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/ 

• Dunlosky, J. and Metcalfe, J. (2009). Metacognition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Flavell, J.H. (1976). Metacognitive Aspects of Problem Solving. In L.B. Resnick (Ed.), The Nature of Intelligence (pp. 231-236). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

• Hacker, D.J. (1998). Chapter 1. Definitions and Empirical Foundations. In Hacker, D.J.; Dunlosky, J.; and Graesser, A.C. (1998). Metacognition in Educational Theory and Practice. Mahwah, N.J.: Routledge.

• Hartman, H.J. (2001). Chapter 8: Teaching Metacognitively. In Metacognition in Learning and Instruction. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 149 – 172.

• Henderson, V. L., Dweck, C. S. (1990). Motivation and achievement. In Feldman, S. S., Elliott, G. R. (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp. 308–329). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Lai, E.R. (2011). Metacognition: A Literature Review. Pearson’s Research Reports. Retrieved from https://images.pearsonassessments.com/images/tmrs/Metacognition_Literature_Review_Final.pdf

• McGuire, S.Y. (2015). Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate Into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

• National Research Council (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9853 

• Nilson, L. (2013). Creating Self-Regulated Learners: Strategies to Strengthen Students’ Self-Awareness and Learning Skills. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

• Pintrich, P. R. (2002). The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in Learning, Teaching, and Assessing. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 219–225. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_3 

• Schraw, G. and Dennison, R.S. (1994). Assessing Metacognitive Awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 19(4): 460-475.

• Tanner, K. D. (2012). Promoting Student Metacognition. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 11(2), 113–120. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.12-03-0033 

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