Image courtesy of brainleaders.
‘Metacognition‘ can be an intimidating term for most people. However, for Natasha Holmes, ‘thinking about thinking’ has become more than a PhD project, it could be a novel step into the way we look at education.
Metacognitive thinking is the process of identifying how we think and learn. The goal is to understand the learning process and design new methods which optimize our understanding and retention of new information. When this type of thought is used to assess our current lecture-based system, many people conclude that students are not in an optimal learning environment and that improvements can be made in the way material is presented. Sound familiar?
“College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.” – Mark Twain
Where do we start?
The research project we investigated, authored by Ido Roll et al., is one which builds on past research that investigates which techniques are most effective in a learning environment. Some important concepts that have arisen and will be highlighted throughout this presentation include:
- Invention activities
- Metacognitive scaffolding
- Invention strategies
What is an invention activity?
“We hope that students realize there are better ways to learn than ‘being told’… It should be about creating knowledge.” – Natasha Holmes
Which line is the best fit?
An example of an invention activity.
Courtesy of Natasha Holmes.
The idea behind an invention activity is that students should be given an opportunity to try and create knowledge before it is given to them, in an effort to create a deeper understanding of the information once it is given.
The concept is simple; if a student is given the data set pictured on the right and asked to create a mathematical formula describing the best-fit line before they are ever taught a best-fit line formula, they will have to analyze the data in many different logical ways in order to determine which mathematical components should be used to build the formula. However, the students aren’t likely to succeed in this task on their first attempt. This creates a need for information which can later be met by providing guidance toward the solution.
What is metacognitive scaffolding?
In the project we investigated, the variable was whether or not metacognitive scaffolding was provided during the invention procedure. The control group was expected to complete the invention activity without scaffolding, whereas the treatment group received the scaffolding. Scaffolding encourages the students to think in the right direction by providing a number of examples which highlight the important features of the problem.
Scaffolding is used to encourage the following invention strategies:
- Exploratory analysis
- Self-explanation
- Peer interaction
Despite how effective these strategies are in highlighting important features of the problem, often the net result is that the expert solution is not reached. However, a basis for understanding the formula when it is finally given to the students has been established. This contrasts greatly with our current method of simply providing the formula up front and encouraging students to take for granted that it makes sense.
Getting involved
Our group had the opportunity to participate in one of Natasha’s invention activities, which yielded interesting results and allowed us to compile this video summary of her work:
Afterwards, a discussion of our experiences with the research was conducted:
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Cameron Tough, Jamie Tsai, Mandy Choi, Vanessa Fladmark and Young Ryu
