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The metacognitive strategies of planning, monitoring, and evaluating can be promoted through systematic reflection to drive self-directed, lifelong learning. This article reports on a three-year study on systematic written reflection within an undergraduate Fluid Mechanics course to promote planning, monitoring, and evaluation. Students were prompted weekly to reflect on their in-class problem-solving, classroom and exam preparation, performance, behaviors, and learning in a flipped classroom at a large southeastern U.S. university. In addition, they received intentional instruction on how to plan, monitor, and evaluate their problem-solving during class. To enable a comparative assessment, a flipped classroom without these interventions was also implemented as a non-experimental cohort. The cohorts were compared using a final exam, concept inventory, and the Metacognitive Activities Inventory (MCAI). The MCAI indicated a significantly higher positive change (pre- to post-course) in self-regulatory behavior for the experimental cohort ( p = 0.037). The weekly reflections were studied using an inductive content analysis to assess students’ self-regulatory behaviors. They were also used to investigate statistical associations between reflection content and course outcomes. This revealed that academic self-discipline via planning, monitoring one's work, or being careful and diligent may be as aligned with course performance in STEM as is practice with the problem-solving itself. The effects for the final exam in the experimental cohort were positive overall as well as statistically or practically significant for various demographic strata. These results provided evidence for the potential enhancement of course performance with metacognition support. A positive shift in students’ perspectives regarding the value of the reflection questions was observed throughout the study. Therefore, as an implementation guide for other educators, the reflection questions and any changes made in posing them to students are discussed chronologically. Overall, the study points to the desirability of providing metacognition support in a STEM course.
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How are students' online learning behavior related to their course outcomes in an introductory physics course?
This study investigates patterns in students' learning and problem-solving behavior as they proceed through a sequence of 10 mastery-based online learning modules and how these patterns correlate with overall course outcome. Students' interaction with each module, as measured by analyzing the platform log data, was categorized into nine different states. The student population was divided into top, middle and bottom cohorts based on their total course credit, and we visualized each cohort's distribution among the nine states over the 10 modules using a series of parallel coordinates graphs. We found that the patterns of interaction were mostly similar on the first six modules, but are significantly different on modules 7-10. For the later modules, the top cohort mostly concentrated on the state corresponding to high problem-solving effort after learning, while the majority of the bottom cohort did not access the learning materials after multiple failed attempts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1845436
- PAR ID:
- 10133048
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Physics Education Research Conference 2019
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2019.pr.Garrido
