Learning about Learning: Metacognition

Members:Britt Scharringhausen (Beloit), Steve Singleton (Coe), Tim Tibbets (Monmouth), Marty Condon (Cornell), Janet Davis (Grinnell)

Challenges:

• Getting buy-in from skeptical colleagues and administrators.
  
• Identify resources for learning about these topics ourselves.
• Delivering these resources to interested colleagues.
• Implementation in larger classes.
• Does spending time on metacognition necessarily mean covering less content, or can it support the delivery of content?
  
• Persuading students that this is worthwhile.

Existing resources:

• Writing Center Directors often have a lot of expertise in this area. Ask for their help with assignment design and assessment.
• Metacognition in Geoscience
• Karl Wirth (See especially Learning to Learn [PDF])

Action Steps

• Assign reading to group. Accomplish this by Sunday!
• Continue to post thoughts on the wiki - annotate resources for review, add resources that seem useful.
  
• Group members identify interested colleagues, brainstorm about implementation, report back on the Wiki.
  
• Meet (perhaps virtually, perhaps at Coe) before the start of spring semester to discuss implementation in classes.

Goals for the Next Meeting

• Finalize a short list of reading for our colleagues.
• Commit to small goals and actions for Spring term.
• Develop prompts for an Experience Report form.