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Metacognition is the understanding of your own knowledge including what knowledge you do not have and what knowledge you do have. This includes knowledge of strategies and regulation of one’s own cognition. Studying metacognition is important because higher-order thinking is commonly used, and problem-solving skills are positively correlated with metacognition. A positive previous disposition to metacognition can improve problem-solving skills. Metacognition is a key skill in design and manufacturing, as teams of engineers must solve complex problems. Moreover, metacognition increases individual and team performance and can lead to more original ideas. This study discusses the assessment of metacognitive skills in engineering students by having the students participate in hands-on and virtual reality activities related to design and manufacturing. The study is guided by two research questions: (1) do the proposed activities affect students’ metacognition in terms of monitoring, awareness, planning, self-checking, or strategy selection, and (2) are there other components of metacognition that are affected by the design and manufacturing activities? The hypothesis is that the participation in the proposed activities will improve problem-solving skills and metacognitive awareness of the engineering students. A total of 34 undergraduate students participated in the study. Of these, 32 were male and 2 were female students. All students stated that they were interested in pursuing a career in engineering. The students were divided into two groups with the first group being the initial pilot run of the data. In this first group there were 24 students, in the second group there were 10 students. The groups’ demographics were nearly identical to each other. Analysis of the collected data indicated that problem-solving skills contribute to metacognitive skills and may develop first in students before larger metacognitive constructs of awareness, monitoring, planning, self-checking, and strategy selection. Based on this, we recommend that the problem-solving skills and expertise in solving engineering problems should be developed in students before other skills emerge or can be measured. While we are sure that the students who participated in our study have awareness as well as the other metacognitive skills in reading, writing, science, and math, they are still developing in relation to engineering problems.
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Metacognition and Self-Regulation in Programming Education: Theories and Exemplars of Use
Metacognition and self-regulation are important skills for successful learning and have been discussed and researched extensively in the general education literature for several decades. More recently, there has been growing interest in understanding how metacognitive and self-regulatory skills contribute to student success in the context of computing education. This paper presents a thorough systematic review of metacognition and self-regulation work in the context of computer programming and an in-depth discussion of the theories that have been leveraged in some way. We also discuss several prominent metacognitive and self-regulation theories from the literature outside of computing education – for example, from psychology and education – that have yet to be applied in the context of programming education. In our investigation, we built a comprehensive corpus of papers on metacognition and self-regulation in programming education, and then employed backward snowballing to provide a deeper examination of foundational theories from outside computing education, some of which have been explored in programming education, and others that have yet to be but hold much promise. In addition, we make new observations about the way these theories are used by the computing education community, and present recommendations on how metacognition and self-regulation can help inform programming education in the future. In particular, we discuss exemplars of studies that have used existing theories to support their design and discussion of results as well as studies that have proposed their own metacognitive theories in the context of programming education. Readers will also find the article a useful resource for helping students in programming courses develop effective strategies for metacognition and self-regulation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1941642
- PAR ID:
- 10325349
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Computing Education
- ISSN:
- 1946-6226
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Gardner, Stephanie (Ed.)Stronger metacognition, or awareness and regulation of thinking, is related to higher academic achievement. Most metacognition research has focused at the level of the individual learner. However, a few studies have shown that students working in small groups can stimulate metacognition in one another, leading to improved learning. Given the increased adoption of interactive group work in life science classrooms, there is a need to study the role of social metacognition, or the awareness and regulation of the thinking of others, in this context. Guided by the frameworks of social metacognition and evidence-based reasoning, we asked: 1) What metacognitive utterances (words, phrases, statements, or questions) do students use during small-group problem solving in an upper-division biology course? 2) Which metacognitive utterances are associated with small groups sharing higher-quality reasoning in an upper-division biology classroom? We used discourse analysis to examine transcripts from two groups of three students during breakout sessions. By coding for metacognition, we identified seven types of metacognitive utterances. By coding for reasoning, we uncovered four categories of metacognitive utterances associated with higher-quality reasoning. We offer suggestions for life science educators interested in promoting social metacognition during small-group problem solving.more » « less
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Wright, L Kate (Ed.)ABSTRACT Students with strong metacognitive skills are positioned to learn and achieve more than peers who are still developing their metacognition. Yet, many students come to college without well-developed metacognitive skills. As part of a longitudinal study on metacognitive development, we asked when, why, and how first-year life science majors use metacognitive skills of planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Guided by the metacognition framework, we collected data from 52 undergraduates at three institutions using semi-structured interviews. We found that first-year students seek study recommendations from instructors, peers, and online resources when they plan their study strategies. First-year students struggle to accurately monitor their understanding and benefit when instructors help them confront what they do not yet know. First-year students evaluate the effectiveness of their study plans at two specific points: immediately after taking an exam and/or after receiving their grade on an exam. While first-year students may be particularly open to suggestions on how to learn, they may need help debunking myths about learning. First-year students acknowledge they are still learning to monitor and welcome formative assessments that help them improve the accuracy of their monitoring. First-year students may be primed to receive guidance on their metacognition at the points when they are most likely to evaluate the effectiveness of their study strategies and plans. Based on our results, we offer suggestions for instructors who want to support first-year students to further develop their metacognition.more » « less
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The Effect of Metacognitive Judgments on Metacognitive Awareness in an Augmented Reality EnvironmentBeing conscious of your thought processes is known as metacognition. It supports students in being more aware of their actions, motivations, and the potential applications of the skills [1]. This study investigates how different metacognitive judgment questions affect students’ metacognitive awareness in an augmented reality (AR) environment. The outcomes of this study will help us to understand what metacognitive monitoring method is more effective in the AR learning environment. According to the literature, students with high knowledge about cognition have higher test performance, while students with low regulation have a challenge during planning, organizing, and elaborating strategies. The dependent variables of the study are student learning performance and metacognitive awareness inventory (MAI) score, and one independent variable is the metacognitive judgment question Retrospective Confidence Judgment (RCJ) and Judgment of Learning (JOL). We hypothesized that the students with high performance would have improved MAI scores in both groups. The experiment was done with two groups (RCJ and JOL). Both groups responded to the pre-post metacognitive awareness inventory questionnaire. During the experiment, the MAI questionnaire was asked two times. In round one, the MAI questionnaire was asked at the beginning of lecture one; however, in round two, the questionnaire was asked at the end of lecture two. Results indicated significant differences in RCJ low performers. In RCJ, the participants whose performance was significantly reduced in lecture 2 had a higher improvement on MAI both regulation and knowledge about cognition. Overall, the result of our study could advance our understanding of how to design an advanced instructional strategy in an AR environment.more » « less
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Background and Context. Dispositions are personal qualities including values, beliefs, and attitudes that impact an individual's actions and behaviors. Dispositions help a person identify why and when things need to be done and motivate them to follow through in action using their knowledge and skills. A person may have the appropriate skills and knowledge to perform a task and yet may not be able to perform due to the lack of suitable disposition. Objective. As part of a larger multi-institutional project aimed at improving computing education through a competency-based approach, we plan to create a research-informed competency model that includes knowledge, skills, and dispositions valued by computing professionals in the field. The objective of this paper is to report our findings on dispositions based on the National Research Council (NRC) framework. Method. We collected data from conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) and interviewing computing professionals from the United States. For the SLR, we started with 4949 articles from prominent databases (ERIC, SCOPUS, ACM, IEEE) which were filtered down to 52 research papers using rigorous inclusion-exclusion criteria. For conducting the semi-structured interviews, we used criterion and chain-link sampling to recruit 31 computing professionals, including software developers, network administrators, systems analysts, web developers, engineering managers, and others. Findings. Based on the aggregate findings from the SLR and interviews, in this paper we present the dispositions that are deemed necessary by computing professionals or employers to any computing career. The dispositions were categorized into the themes of Collaborative Orientation, Conscientiousness, Intellectual Openness, Self-Regulation, and Lifelong Learning Orientation. Implications. We discuss the importance of incorporating dispositions in computing curricula, interrelationship between skills and dispositions, and possible pedagogical techniques that can be used to cultivate dispositions.more » « less
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3487050
