Reflection 3
Reflection 3
CMCL 507
When I first completed my reading on metacognition, I was surprised at how many of the
strategies I read about I had already implemented into my own learning process without
realizing. I have struggled academically throughout my degree and have had to implement and
evaluate many new strategies to understand the way that I learn. However, completing the
Metacognition Awareness Inventory surprised me even more- there were so many small
strategies listed that I hadn’t realized were metacognitive, and I found myself marking true for
almost every statement. In fact, there were only two statements that I marked as false for myself:
“I pace myself while learning in order to have enough time”, and “I organize my time to best
accomplish my goals”. Honestly this was not a surprise to me either, I tend to procrastinate and
often get away with it. Without the consequence of failing to achieve what I want, I tend to
repeat the same behaviours. I tend to be quite anxious about my academic performance, since my
weaker time management skills often make assignments and preparing for exams more stressful
than they need to be.
Despite this weakness, now that I am in my fourth year I look back on my experience as
an undergraduate student and I see a very high amount of metacognition. My evaluations of my
performance are often quite harsh; self-monitoring and changes to learning strategies grew from
the evaluation aspect of metacognition. I have always wanted to become a veterinarian and have
always been aware of the level of academic achievement this career requires. I performed very
well in high school with very little effort. I never studied and completed all homework in class,
and still graduated top of my class with no issues. I was never stretched as a learner, and without
any challenges I never learned how I learn best. When I entered university, I quickly realized that
my usual method of simply attending class wasn’t working; I wasn’t achieving at a level
anywhere near where I wanted to be. I struggled with critiquing myself too harshly since I hadn’t
experienced these kinds of challenges before, these negative emotions associated with
schoolwork became quite draining for me. It took almost two years to analyze my learning and
find strategies that helped me improve. I changed my notetaking methods multiple times and
tested many different study strategies. As I worked, I began to think about how much I was
really taking in using each strategy- which one was the best for me personally?
When I received feedback on exams and assignments I was able to assess how effective
my methods were. If I wasn’t happy with my performance, I would try something new or
improve my existing strategy based on my level of success. If I was pleased, I would continue to
use that same method on future assessments and in other courses. Looking back after learning
more about metacognition, I can see that I was evaluating my progress to see what needed to be
changed, planning new strategies for myself, and monitoring my understanding as I learned.
Planning, monitoring, and evaluating are all essential parts of thinking metacognitively (Tanner,
2012). Although I didn’t realize at the time, I was using many of the self-questions outlined in
“Promoting Student Metacognition”(Tanner, 2012).
I had a lot of failure in the beginning of this journey. Over time I found that I learn best
by reading, looking at examples, and learning with peers outside of class. In university, the social
aspect of learning has been vital to my success, I do best in a team-based learning environment.
Understanding the way that I learn has made me very successful academically and brought me
much closer to my career goal. I believe that this goal of mine is part of the reason I have been
able to reflect deeply on my learning process; it is a huge source of motivation for me to succeed
academically. As we have discussed earlier on in this course, motivation is essential to active
learning that results in adaptive expertise that can be used throughout my degree and beyond
(Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2012).
Of course, there is always room for improvement. I struggle with planning enough time
to complete everything in an organized way, this showed in my Metacognition Awareness
Inventory. Time management is something that I still need to find the best strategy for, but I have
been forced to consider this aspect of my learning more since my brain injury. I find that
although my cognition is unaffected and I am able to produce the same quality of work, I cannot
work constantly without taking breaks so I can no longer complete multiple assignments in one
sitting. This has been an adjustment for me since time management is suddenly much more
central to my health and academic success. Having learned so much about thinking
metacognitively, I feel fully equipped to overcome this challenge and have been implementing
organizational strategies such as using a planner to try and improve this aspect of my learning
process.
After completing my Metacognition Awareness Inventory, I feel that I know enough
about my own learning and metacognition as a whole to guide the students in my lab section to
think about their own learning in this way. I often share my own experience and strategies with
students who are struggling with preparing for exams, I am very open about the fact that I have
struggled in many courses. I hope that by sharing more about how I overcame these challenges
through reflecting on my learning process I will be able to encourage students to think
metacognitively about their own learning. In my position in the lab I often ask students questions
about the relationships between different exercises to help them build horizontal connections.
However, this also helps students to monitor their own understanding of the material and
recognize when they may need additional support. This promotes metacognitive thinking
(monitoring) in a direct way (Tanner, 2012). Personally, evaluating my progress was the most
fulfilling and helpful metacognitive strategy, I plan to encourage evaluative thinking in students
by asking them about their recent midterm. This will push them to think about how they feel they
performed, what could be studied differently, and how to make the most of the labs to gain
meaningful learning experience. Encouraging this type of development and sharing my own
growth has a learner will not only help students to succeed, but also make me a better mentor.
References
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2012). The Nature of Learning:
Using Research to Inspire Practice, Practitioner Guide. PDF.
Tanner, K. (2012). Promoting Student Metacognition. CBE- Life Sciences Education, 11, 113-
120. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.12-03-0033