Two new activities based (loosely) on metacognition

It's a new academic year and I'm busy getting ready for the new year, like every other teacher. I'm always on the hunt for new ideas to imporve my teaching, and a couple of seemingly serendipitous events have lead to two new activities.

The first activity came as a result of my Chair forwarding this piece about the effect of asking students to set goals for their education. The author of that piece refers to research about goal setting that certainly is encouraging. Two caveats to that research: 1) the intervention in the main study he refers to (described here) is quite labor- and time-intensive, and 2) the author tried a more modest intervention and referred to it as a "failure". Despite those issues I decided to attempt to create an activity that would get at the same effect. In the past I've asked students on the first day to report their reasons for taking my class, but that usually produces non-helpful (but honest) answers like "to fulfill requirements" or  "it fit my schedule". In this activity I start out asking the same question (reason for taking this class), and what grade they want to earn in the course. But I then move on to getting them to think about their goals for the course other than a particular grade. I then ask them to reflect on their habits that both get them closer to and prevent them from attaining their educational goals. Hopefully this elicits some honest reflection. Then, and I think here is where the action takes place, I ask them to imagine their life after they graduate if they were somehow able to increase and improve their helpful habits and minimize or eliminate their un-helpful habits, not just in this course but in their life as a whole. Describe what their life would be like if that happened. Conversely, I also ask them to consider what their life would be like if they decreased their helpful habits and increased their un-helpful habits. Finally, capitalizing on a little cognitive dissonance research about public commitments, I ask them to at least try to minimize the un-helpful and maximize the helpful habits for the next semester, and ask them to sign and date the document. 

I plan to hand out the activity either the first or second class of the term and get them to return it by the next class. I'll hold on to them until perhaps midterm (this is a flipped class that has quizzes in every class, otherwise I would hold them until just after the first exam) and them return the activities to them and ask them to consider their progress on their habits. Reflecting on their process is a metacognitive activity. My activity can be seen here, feel free to use it as you see fit.

The other activity came about because I got an email from the Director of the Honors program at my university talking about the students in Honors electives. I teach several such courses and was a bit startled to be reminded that the students were mostly first-semester sophomores. I had thought of them as more advanced students, so the reminder was important. My Honors electives are typically taught as seminars, much like a graduate seminar, and I often assign empirical articles that would be appropriate for graduate students, but perhaps a new type of reading for these students. Now, I don't shy away from assigning challenging readings (indeed there's research about the value of doing so), but I also don't want to overwhelm them early on. So, I created an activity I plan to have students complete the first day we discuss a reading -- before we get to the discussion. I first ask if they had done the assigned reading. Then, assuming they had, I ask them how they approached the reading activity -- did they read alone, was music playing, etc. Then I ask them how they did the reading -- did they read it all at once, did they write in the margin, highlight, take notes, etc. Then I ask them what their goal was while they were reading and I give them a list of options based on Anderson and Krathwohl's taxonomy (similar to Bloom's taxonomy), including understanding, analysis, synthesis, etc. They can choose as many as apply. I bet this will be the first time they realize that they can read with different goals in mind. Finally, and this mirrors the previous activity, I ask them about what they did that helped them understand the reading and what they did that did not help them. I plan to have them share their responses with a classmate in the hopes that they would get some helpful tips from others, or at least realize that they are not alone in struggling with the reading. Again, I plan to collect the completed activities and then return them a month or so later so they can compare their current practices with what they said was helpful and not helpful. The activity can be seen here. 

These are new activities for me so I can't report here on their effectiveness. Perhaps I will comment about that in a future post. Good luck with the new year!