That's right, I'm thinking about metacognition this week. After an interesting discussion at the AAC&U annual meeting on the more general use of student reflection on their own learning (such as in general education programs), I've been inspired to experiment with metacognition in the classroom.
This week, I'll try different ways of getting students to think about their logical learning and thinking. Today, I asked them to answer two questions during a short in-class writing period: what they've learned so far in class that has been useful outside of class (in other classes or, gasp, even in "real" life), and what has been difficult for them to learn or understand so far. On Wednesday, I'll offer students the option to revise some answers on their first exam. The scores were fine, as a whole, but the process of revision should solidify their understand of concepts they may have misunderstood. I'm requiring that they not only fix answers, but that they explain why they thought they missed them and what they know now that they didn't on exam day. They'll be thinking about their thinking, that way, which should further solidify their knowledge of Logic.
GMC's teaching center just happened to have a newsletter on metacognition last semester.
“An empirical philosophy is in any case a kind of intellectual disrobing. We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us.” ― John Dewey, Experience and Nature
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