What’s Thinking Got to do with it?
A Metacognitive Strategy for Student Success
SPRING 2015 IN-SERVICE MINI-CONFERENCE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015
VIRGINIA WESTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE
PRESENTED BY: CHRIS PORTER AND LINDA WHITLOCK
Michelle
 First semester student– trouble with Psych
 “Studied hard” but failed first exam miserably
 Had done well in High School
 Was frustrated and wanted to do better
 Met with SDV instructor and referred to Link Academic
Success Coach
 Initial meeting – looked at exam results
Spent bulk of study time on lecture notes
 Worked on reading comprehension skills and learning from the
text


Result: Student earned an A in Psychology
Metacognition: What is it?
Metacognition refers to awareness and monitoring of
one’s thoughts and task performance, or more
simply, thinking about your thinking (Flavell, 1979).
It refers to higher-order mental processes involved in learning
such as making plans for learning, using appropriate skills and
strategies to solve a problem, making estimates of
performance, and calibrating the extent of learning (Dunslosky
and Thiede, 1998).
Breaking Down Metacognition
 Metacognitive Knowledge
 What we know about how we learn
 The ways that we know to go about learning - cognitive
activities, procedures, strategies
 Being able to decide when the conditions are right to use each
cognitive activity
 Metacognitive Regulation
 Planning
 Monitoring
 Evaluating / Adapting
Adapted from Schraw & Moshman
article Metacognitive Theories (1995)
Changes in Thinking
 Ability to learn is not fixed.

Metacognitive skills can be learned
 There are no easy outs!

Learning requires effort, and effort will produces results.
(Schraw & Moshman, 1995)
What We Have Learned From Research
 Metacognitive skills and beliefs about learning have
consequences for students' learning and
performance.
 Teaching metacognition - introducing these new
skills and beliefs, and giving students practice at
applying them - improves students' learning.
 Low-cost interventions can have big payoffs.
(Lovett, 2008)
ACADEMIC
SUCCESS
Metacognition
Self Regulation
•
•
•
•
Goal Setting
Decision making
Time Management
Concentration/Focus
Academic and Career Planning
• Program of study
• Course Selection
• Career Plans
• Navigating the bureaucracy
Active Learning Strategies
Every Day
Assignments
Exam Prep
• Lecture
• Text
• Editing Notes
• Organization
• Decoding
• Expectations
• Segmentation
• Completion
• Scope/Style
• New ALSs
• Mastery
• Practice Recall
Learning STYLES
Multiple
Intelligences
Motivation
Created by: Chris Porter
Virginia Western Community
College
Link Mission
The Academic Link connects students
to academic success by supporting the
development of critical learning skills
through services and supports that
assist students in becoming better
learners.
Metacognitive Tutoring
 Traditional Tutoring – Content Focused
 Occurs when student perceives a need

Tutor works with student on specific concept, problem, or
test prep
 Metacognitive Tutoring – Learning Focused
– Occurs on regular basis
–
Tutor helps student analyze and understand his or her
learning process
–
Tutor assists student in developing learning goals and
identifying the strategies and skills necessary to achieve those
goals
Academic Success Coaching
●
Component of overall tutoring strategy
●
Available to all students (Michelle)
●
Tailored to specific student circumstances
●
In-depth assistance with developing learning
skills and strategies.
Bloom’s Taxonomy in Action
 Key to college level learning is to move progressively
up Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning
Remembering
Understanding
How do we put this into our practice?
How do you use metacognitive strategies
in working with students?
Application in the Classroom
Wrappers
 A wrapper is an activity that surrounds a pre-existing
learning or assessment task and fosters students’
metacognition
 One can build a self-monitoring wrapper around any
pre-existing learning activity (lecture, assignment,
test)
Example
Why Wrappers Work
 Time efficient - Students are doing the task anyway
 Metacognition practice is integrated with the task
 Students are self-monitoring in the context where it
is needed
 Feedback on accuracy can be built in
 Wrapper support can be gradually faded
 Research shows even minor interventions that frame
a task in a new way can significantly change behavior
(Lovett, 2008)
More Applications in the Classroom
 Self-Testing - exam prep planning
 Be explicit on the level of thinking expected on an
assignment – many do this in the form of rubric
 Pull apart the definition of the term “studying” and
what that looks like in your course. (Combining
content knowledge with pedagogical knowledge)
Even More Applications
“Studying” is an ambiguous term at best
 Subject specific strategies
 Teaching a particular Active Learning Strategy (ALS)
and incorporate it into an assignment
 Creating a Study Plan – instead of creating a study
guide or review guide, provide a template for
students to complete their own study plan.
List of Active Learning Strategies
 Revising Notes

e.g. concept maps
 Writing Summaries
 Writing Recall Questions
 Marking text
 Using review questions
 Creating Outlines
 Mnemonics/Acrostics
memory aides
Creating graphic organizers
Making Note Cards
 Self-Testing
 Creating Summary Sheets
or Study Guides
 Thematic Studying
 5-Day Study Plan

What’s Thinking Got to do with it?
THANK YOU!!
References
Brown, A. (1987). Metacognition, executive control, self-regulation, and other more
mysterious mechanisms. In F. Weinert and R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation and
understanding (pp. 65-116). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitivedevelopmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34, 906 – 911.
Lovett, M. (2008). Teaching Metacognition: Presentation to the Educause Learning
Initiative Annual Meeting, 29 January 2008.
Schraw, G. and Moshman, D. (1995). Metacognitive Theories. Educational Psychology
Review, 7(4), 351-371.
Thiede, Keith W. and Dunlosky, John (1998). Toward a general model of self-regulated
study: An analysis of selection of items for study and self-paced study time. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25(4), Jul 1998, 1024-1037.