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BLAIR: Welcome to the Emerge Podcast series, brought to you by the University of Colorado Boulder Arts and Sciences Support of Education Through Technology or ASSETT Innovation Incubator. The ASSETT Innovation Incubator is a three year pilot spanning fall 2019 through Spring 2022 that provides a safe resource space for the arts and sciences community to further ideas for active teaching and learning with technology.

This series will feature conversations with participating faculty, staff, and students on topics ranging from metacognition and wellbeing, student success, multi-modal participatory publishing, and inclusive data science. We hope you enjoy learning about the unique projects and perspectives from our community.

Today's Emerge Podcast, Developing Metacognitive Strategies for Student Success, features guest interviewers Sarah Jane Alvarado and Eva Kent. Sarah and Eva are both Spring 2021 CU Boulder graduates from the Integrative Physiology Department, where they developed a lifelong friendship and an academic accountability partnership that supported their success as students.

Both Sarah and Eva are pursuing further education and careers in the medical field. As they depart from CU, they hope to share the ways in which metacognition helped them with current and incoming undergraduate students. Please enjoy Sarah and Eva's interview on metacognition strategies for students.

SARAH: Hi, my name is Sarah Jane Alvarado. I am a graduated Integrated Physiology major at CU Boulder, and I am working on the metacognition and wellbeing team.

EVA: And I'm Eva. I also graduated from CU Boulder with a major in Integrated Physiology. My end goal is med school, and I recently got interested in hopefully applying to an MD MBA program. So that's hopefully where I'm going to end up soon.

SARAH: Awesome. And today we have the privilege of speaking to Rebecca Ciancanelli, who is the Inclusive Pedagogy Lead at the Center for Teaching and Learning. She's also a chemistry teacher for the Student for Academic Success Center, and a really good one. And then we have Shane Oshetski, who is the Humanities and Social Science Coordinator for the Student Academic Success Center as well. And he also teaches writing, so we would like to welcome them in. And today we're going to talk a little bit about metacognition and their projects on campus. So if we could just start, could you just give us a brief idea of what is metacognition? What does it mean to you, and how did you incorporate it into your teaching?

SHANE: Sure. I'll take a stab at it. Rebecca, I don't know if you came up with this description, but it's the brain outside your brain looking at your brain. That's metacognition. Another way to think about it-

BECCA: I think we have to credit Sandra McGuire with that.

SHANE: Yeah. So really it's just being able to sort of witness when you're doing something, you're sort of invested in the process. Well, this metacognition is about being invested in the process, but also understanding what you're doing while the process is taking place. You're observing what you're doing while you're doing it. And by doing that, you're able to kind of fine tune your process, or you can really think about how it is that you're accomplishing a task and maybe make it more efficient. Or maybe you're doing it in a way that's a lot more confusing for you, something like that so you could adjust it. So yeah, that's my basic idea of it. Becca, you want to throw anything at that weird definition?

BECCA: No, I would totally agree with that definition, and I think in terms of how we incorporate into our classes at the Student Academic Success Center, which we refer to as SASC, is that we have students write typically about their process. So as they're accomplishing big tasks, like an exam, a project, a paper, we ask them to write about that experience maybe before they do it and after they do it. So they're really starting to look at if what they're doing is really working for them or not. So that's one way we incorporate it into our classes.

BLAIR: Is there like a dog and a squeaky toy?

BECCA: Yeah, sorry!

SHANE: Hahaha love the squeaky toy.

EVA: Okay. I guess with metacognition, what are you working on regarding how students can implement metacognition in their daily lives?

BECCA: So Shane and I have been working together for a couple of years on doing metacognition workshops for faculty in different settings, to help people think about how to incorporate reflection questions or that writing I was talking about into their classes. So we joined this incubator project, and really thought about maybe designing a piece of technology that a professor could insert into their course to let students start doing this metacognition work inside of their course. So we designed this module that we were hoping would help students have a scaffolded pathway, sort of choose what they wanted to learn about in terms of their own metacognition based on how they're doing in the class. Did they want to work on time management? Did they want to think more about how they read a textbook? Are they working on exam anxiety? So we were hoping to create something that felt more personalized to the students, using the technologies as an access.

SARAH: So these modules, who are these for?

SHANE: So the audience for the one that we designed is definitely students, it's student facing. The design is there so that, as Becca said, as a student you can kind of think about what it is that you want to work on and then choose a path and give something a try. So it's definitely student facing. However, the whole module package I think is nice for instructors, because you just sort of stick it in your course. You don't have to redesign everything yourself or take a course on how to put together metacognition activities or anything like that. You just kind of stick it in there and see if it works. That's pretty much.

SARAH: That's awesome, because you can sit back and kind of see your students use it and see how they grow as they learn with it. So that is great. I have a question for you guys. How can I as a student integrate metacognition into my course if my professor doesn't? So if they don't take advantage of this project you guys are putting in a campus, what can I do as a student to start that metacognition journey on my own?

BECCA: I think that's a great question. Yeah. I think that writing is just really important. One of the things that I learned from the writing instructors at SASC was that when you write with pen and paper, it actually connects a different part of your brain than when you type. And so I think sitting down maybe with a journal and starting to write about the way you're studying and the ways that maybe things are working and things aren't working, and then maybe going to your professor at office hours and asking them questions about how they recommend that you study for this class.

I think part of it is understanding that different classes might need different methods. So starting to get some flexibility in how you approach your studying is what I think happens naturally as you go through your process as a college student. But some people struggle to make that happen before their junior year and now they've got a lot of catch up to do in terms of what happened in their previous courses. So I think we're trying to help people speed up that process, and start to do that as a freshman. Instead of just taking their high school strategies and doing them more, we're hoping to teach them to be a little more flexible and try different approaches. And I do think the professors and the TAs in your course could really give you that support.

SHANE: And I would add to that, just for a really simple specific exercise you could do if you don't have access to metacognition activities, is to do as Becca said, is just to do some quick writing. So what you do is you start, before you start a project, a paper, an exam, study session, whatever it is, just sit down and do some writing about what you think you need to do, or what it is that you want to accomplish. Just do that. Then go and do whatever it is that you need to do.

And then afterward, after you've turned it in or you get your grade back or something like that, then you do a little extra writing and you just think about the process that you went through on paper and just see what comes out. Did you think, whoa, boy, I didn't study enough and here's what I could have done, or X, Y, Z, I didn't manage my time well, whatever it may be. And that is a good place to start. And then you can take that reflection, what you thought about it, and then you can go to your professor, your TA and you can say, "Hey, is there a better way to do this? Or is there an easier way to do this?" Or something along those lines.

EVA: So I have a question for Becca, because no one's going to know this, so I am here to tell you, that Sarah Jane and I actually met Becca as her students first for general chemistry two. Was it two?

SARAH: I think it was one.

EVA: It was gen chem one. And what Becca would have us do would be after every exam, it was kind of the baby version of this whole entire project was she would give us a worksheet to fill out reflecting on how we felt the exam went, what we did to study, if we felt like we had enough time to study, or if we felt like we were lacking in some areas. And just a streamlined version of this whole concept of being mindful of your study habits. Becca, my question for you is how useful was reading through all of those worksheets that we would fill out as a class? Was it something that you think students took seriously or not seriously? Did you see it actually make a difference in the way some students performed?

BECCA: Yeah, that's a great question. It's definitely easier in a smaller class. What I typically did is- we had a series of these questions, and I would almost make a packet so that students could go back and read what they wrote for the last test, and we'd staple the new sheet there. And so it felt like a journal they were putting together in my class. And I never really made comments on it necessarily, but when students came in for office hours, I felt like I knew them really well. And if I saw something come up on what they were writing, I might reach out and send that student an email and make a suggestion about maybe if they said they were struggling with something in particular, I might write to them and schedule an appointment or have a talk about it. But honestly, and Shane, I'm curious what you think, but a lot of this process is for the students.

I see the discovery happening as they're writing. So it's kind of neat that I'm providing that platform for it to happen. And then it feels like it's their internal journey and they actually discover things. I'm doing coaching in class, so I definitely do metacognitive coaching in class and make suggestions and recommendations for how people study. Or sometimes I would do a poll where we all put answers up on the screen about how we study so they could see ideas from their classmates. But in terms of their internal reflection, I felt like it was really for them. And I felt like it was really interesting to watch students discover as they were writing new ways to study. Then they really felt like they owned it, and it felt to me like it went much deeper when they were in charge of it. What do you think, Shane?

SHANE: Absolutely. I think it's really just providing the opportunity for the process, not necessarily looking directly at the product of that process. So when I have students submit reflections, it is interesting to see where people are at and where they are on the spectrum of being confident with their study habits, but really it is just allowing them to own their process themselves. I agree.

EVA: So then I guess a kind of follow up question I have about that, I think I've only really been able to experience the full benefit of being metacognitively active and aware of myself. With my STEM classes as a STEM major, that was definitely the majority of I guess my struggles. Just academically that was probably the harder area for me where I really benefited the most from that. So as a writing instructor, how do you see students implementing this with I guess papers or research projects or something like that, that's not necessarily like, oh, here's an example of math problems and science?

SHANE: Sure. So for me, I think it's kind of three places. One is reading. A lot of students think that if I assign a reading, that they just read it through once and then it's done. That's over and that's it. That's all. Well, I read the reading. Okay. That's good. So developing some really close reading skills and things like that is a really big deal, especially when you get into more difficult reading in the humanities later on, I think it's really important.

The second place is writing. In writing, there's a lot of places where you need to be metacognitive, but the one that we try to develop in students is just an awareness of audience and of purpose and of things like the rhetorical situation. The more aware of that you are, the better off you are. And the way to make certain rhetorical moves in your papers, really make them more effective I guess is the way to put it, that's good. And then the last one is just sort of managing a project. That is because a lot of writing projects or projects in the arts, they're not one shot and done. It's a long term process that you're putting together something, and that takes a lot of awareness to work through. So that's another place we focus on.

SARAH: Awesome. I just want to share really quick, I was referred onto a podcast about metacognition by Blair, shout out Blair. And they said something that kind of stuck with me. And they said... Oh my gosh, it's leaving my mind now. You know what you know until you don't. And then don't let the test be kind of the examination of that. So kind of quiz yourself leading up to the test to make sure that you really know the material, because you don't want to get onto the test and find out that you didn't know it as well as you thought you did. So I thought that was a great reflection of what metacognition is as a student.

BECCA: I think that's a great point. That's one definition that we use when we're doing our workshop, is for people to accurately assess where they're at with their learning. And I totally agree that it's this level of trying to get people to see how much they might be leaning on some other resource, whether it's another student or the internet, and then all of a sudden they find themselves when they're actually having to show what they know, they didn't realize how much they were leaning on that, whatever that resource was. So that's a great point.

SARAH: I definitely see that.

EVA: Yeah, I think we did that a lot at first, when we first started sitting together. We would each fill in each other's gaps and then we would go to a quiz or something and would be like, oh crap.

SARAH: Okay. So I have a question for you guys. Can you tell us about a time when you learned about yourself because of a metacognitive reflection, and how it shifted the way that you engaged with your learning? Anything stand out to you, just reflecting over your time teaching at CU?

BECCA: Well, I can even just tell you something super recent. I've been reading a lot of books this year because of my new work, and one of the books that I read with a couple of other people is this book called Cast. And it's really long. And because we were doing it in a book club style, I was reading quickly to get ready for these book club meetings. So I would read and show up to the meeting and always thought it was really useful. But now somebody else asked me to read it with them, and I realized as I picked the book back up again that I couldn't remember it very well. So this time as I've been reading, I've actually stopped every time I read a chapter and write something in my own words about what I just read. And it's crazy how much more I'm connecting to this book than I did.

Even though I really felt like I was connecting and learning the first time I read it, to have to stop and put something in my own words. And it's funny, I learned it from Shane. And I resist it. You know how sometimes something you know should be doing to do deep learning feels vulnerable and uncomfortable? And so I was feeling uncomfortable doing it. So I was on a plane, and because I was trapped, I was like, stop and take notes. And I was so glad I did, because now I have these summaries of every chapter. So when I meet with this next group who's reading the book again, I actually feel like I understand it really deeply in a way I didn't the first time. So that just happened this week.

EVA: That's awesome. I feel like if I was listening to you say this story honestly a week ago I would've been like, "Yeah, but that's academic." You have a meeting for it and it's a setting where you are... I don't know, like it's a professional setting I guess, and I probably would've shrugged it off, but honestly in this past week I was sitting down with some friends and they started talking about this book that we all had read, and they were just talking about plot points in this book and characters in this book. And I am not kidding, I could not remember a single thing they were talking about.

I was like, are you kidding? I read this entire book front to back. It was such an enjoyable book for me and I just genuinely could not for the life of me remember anything they were talking about. And so I just think, yeah, what Becca just said is so true and so relevant, is you could be super invested in whatever you're reading, but if you're not consciously taking away points from it and making an effort to remember it, it's just going to leave your head.

SHANE: I'll talk about teaching, just for an example, so sometimes I plan a class and I'm like, "This is going to be awesome," and I'm so pumped and I'm ready to go and I have this really cool structure set up and I'm like, the students are going to love this. And then I go in and it just happens. And then afterwards I'm like, well that was not as good as I hoped. Normally you just kind of walk away sometimes from something like that. But lately I've been sitting down and just writing about it. In my mind what I'm trying to do is, okay, what actually happened and what was the result? Not being judgey and being like, oh my god, I failed. But what actually happened, where did what I planned and the real world intersect in a way that it didn't go off the way I wanted it to? You know what I mean, think through it so that for my next great idea I can have some background knowledge, something there to work with.

EVA: So instead of the, oh, right, well it is what it is mentality, just kind of being like, "Okay, well that happened, but."

SHANE: How can I get better?

EVA: Right, exactly.

SHANE: How can I make it better?

BECCA: Well, and I love that story because it takes time. There's such a temptation just to move into your next thing, especially with teaching. You do your lecture or your class and then you move on. And one of the things that was so great in SASC is that we would sit down with our instructional assistants once a week to talk about how class went. And it was that sort of metacognitive process of getting outside of it and saying, how did that go?

For me to be able to talk to other people that were in the room, that were in an assistant role, an instructional assistant role, really got some of my activities so deeply connected so that I knew that I wouldn't have that experience, that it had tested, proven success. So yeah, that's such a great story.

So I'll just start. I wanted to hear from you two, when you felt like you reached out to a professor and they helped you with your metacognitive process, so maybe you were a little nervous or something to ask them about it, but then they gave you an idea and they encouraged you and that really helped you get deeper connected to how you study.

SARAH: Yeah, definitely. That's a great question. Looking back on my time at CU, I would definitely have to say you, Becca, I think you were my main first introduction to metacognition. But when I took what you taught me out of the classroom and I took it to main campus, I want to give a little shout out to Oana Luca, who was my Organic Chemistry professor. She was so connected with the students, and I would sit in her office hours and ask her questions and she wouldn't tell me the answer directly, she would make me reflect back on what I learned in lecture, and then she would actually call on me during lecture. So I would have to think back to our previous times together and build on that. It's just so refreshing to have professors like that who really care about you and watch your growth as a student.

EVA: Yeah, I completely agree. Luca was amazing and definitely changed the game for us it felt like with chemistry. But I think a different example for me would be Physiology two I took with Heidi Bustamante, and she can come off as very intimidating in class and she knows it too. She even says, "I know I seem intimidating, but I'm not, I promise." No, it was a great story, Sarah. My sister's taking the dog. Okay.

So Heidi's class was very conceptual. I think it was one of the first physiology classes that I had taken that you couldn't really get away with just being really good at memorizing every aspect of what you were learning. She was going to ask you very conceptual questions where you had to put the pieces together yourself, and she would never just ask you something that was on a PowerPoint slide or something like that.

I remember after the first exam, I actually didn't even perform poorly to be honest, but I was just motivated for some reason to really be able to get these questions right. And I remember going to her office hours and meeting to go over the exam and just expressing, I don't want to complain or seem like I'm being whiny or whatever, I know I didn't get a bad grade, but I'm kind of frustrated at why I didn't get these questions right because I feel like I knew the concepts.

She sat down with me and she was so encouraging and she walked me through my thought process, and then would poke at what I would say. She would I guess question it pretty much to the point where I would get to the right answer by myself just by her asking questions. But I think that was the first time really where I was like, wow, from now on I'm always going to go to office hours, even for questions I got right, even for exams that I didn't fail or anything. It's still so beneficial because then when I went on to future exams, I was able to question my own thinking like she made me do.

SHANE: So can you guys give us a quick example of some change that you made in your study habits that really made a difference for you?

SARAH: Yeah, I can definitely share this quick tip that I feel like is so beneficial to students, is to find a friend and hold each other accountable. For me, that was Eva, and we would actually do all the work before we would meet together, make our own study exams, and then meet together and go through them, and then try and question each other to kind of reinforce the material, figure out what they may ask us in the future. It takes a lot of work, but it's so rewarding and it's worth it. You'll see a difference in your grades and also just how you understand and approach the material will change.

EVA: I completely agree. I think people don't understand the benefit of just having an accountability partner. I think people say that and they're like, "Oh, so study with friends." No, that's not really it. Obviously Sarah Jane and I are friends, but it's more of on those days that you don't want to meet up and study, just having someone to say, "No, you do [inaudible 00:27:13]."

SARAH: One hour in, it'll be worth it.

EVA: The amount of times we've probably said that to each other. One hour and you'll feel better about yourself.

SARAH: And then if you don't have a partner right away, because I know coming into college is a little intimidating, definitely go to those office hours, you'll meet people, you'll start to notice people who are in the same major as you that will be in your future classes. There's also just ways you can study independently and then come to together in the office hours and kind of ask your questions.

BECCA: It sounds like an accountability partner could also be a tutor or-

EVA: Oh yeah.

BECCA: So it sounds like part of what you're saying is just really to prepare to meet with people is the strategy you did, because that's a really strong metacognitive skill, to actually, for example, try as much of my homework as I can before I start working with friends. Right? Try to really work on something before I meet with the tutor so that I'm really clear what I want to ask, instead of doing my homework with the tutor there.

EVA: Right. Exactly. Exactly. And even for Physics one, we kind of had a tutor and that's exactly what we would do with our little study group. We tried not to work on things for the first time with the tutor, because it would kind of just, I don't know, not be great use of our time.

SARAH: Awesome. Well, I think that's all the time we have today. So I want to thank you guys for being on this with us and sharing your knowledge.

EVA: Thank you. I hope you guys have a good day.

BLAIR: Thank you so much for joining us for today's conversation on the Emerge Podcast series, an offering of the University of Colorado Boulder ASSETT Innovation Incubator. If you're curious to learn more about today's topic or the Innovation Incubator, please contact us at ASSETT, A-S-S-E-T-T@colorado.edu. We look forward to hearing from you.