Increasing Metacognitive Awareness through Reflective Writing: Optimizing Learning in Engineering
- Conference
- Location
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Virtual On line
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2020
- Start Date
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June 22, 2020
- End Date
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June 26, 2021
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topics
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Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session
- Page Count
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11
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--34818
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/34818
- Download Count
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440
Paper Authors
Patti Wojahn New Mexico State University
As past Writing Program Administrator and current Interdisciplinary Studies Department Head, I have worked closely with academic departments interested in supporting the writing, communication, and academic abilities of students. For many years, I worked with Integrated Learning Communities for at-risk, entry-level engineering majors, overseeing development and use of a curriculum adapted specifically for this group. I continue to analyze data from research studies exploring challenges and identifying at-risk characteristics among students in first-year writing courses. I also worked on an initiative focused on writing in the disciplines as part of our university’s Higher Learning Commission 10-year re-accreditation cycle. As Borderlands Writing Project Director, I have worked with K-16 teachers to strengthen quality in using writing in their courses to help students learn, regardless of discipline.
Germain Degardin Southwest Outreach Academic Research (SOAR) Center
Germain graduated from New Mexico State University with a Bachelor in Economics, a Master in Business and Administration, a Master in Curriculum and Instruction, and a secondary education teaching license. Germain currently works for the Southwest Outreach Academic Research (SOAR) Center as Senior Project Specialist evaluating and assessing the impact of educational outreach programs and other education-related projects.
Muhammad Dawood
New Mexico State University
orcid.org/0000-0001-5096-9416
Dr. Muhammad Dawood received his BE degree from the NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan, 1985, and his MS and Ph.D. degrees, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in 1998 and 2001, respectively, both in electrical engineering. Dr. Dawood is involved in teaching both nationally and internationally since 1995. At present, Dr. Dawood is an Associate Professor at the Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New Mexico State University (NMSU), Las Cruces, New Mexico. Dr. Dawood's research interests lie in the area of Engineering Education, EM Propagation through Dispersive media; radar; and Antennas; He is a member of IEEE.
Melissa J. Guynn New Mexico State University
I am a cognitive psychologist with a primary interest in human memory.
Rachel Boren New Mexico State University
Dr. Rachel Boren is the Director of the SOAR Evaluation and Policy Center in the College of Education at New Mexico State University. Her expertise is in research methodology and program evaluation in the social sciences.
Abstract
Engineering programs often struggle to optimally support and therefore retain students. Our NSF-supported research, undertaken throughout the past three years, set out to focus on an alternative: put learning and success more into the hands of students, who we hypothesize can benefit from taking control of and responsibility for their own learning, growth, and retention in engineering (Gibson, Kitto, & Bruza, 2016). Our interdisciplinary team of researchers at a Southwest Hispanic-Serving Land- Grant University embarked on a study to introduce students and faculty to the significance and the potential of metacognitive awareness and expanding studying strategies in higher education environments. With faculty and graduate students from engineering, education, psychology, along with rhetoric and professional communication programs, we tapped our diverse backgrounds and research literatures to create materials and opportunities to help students “learn to learn.”
Our preliminary data had indicated that 75% of freshmen, 50% of sophomores, and 35% of juniors do not routinely adopt effective study strategies (see also Hora & Oleson, 2017; Karpicke et al., 2009). To address that issue, we developed minimally-intrusive interventions including a workshop, handouts, and journal-based reflective writing around the concept of metacognition. Our research project focused on freshman students enrolled in a relatively new Introduction to Engineering seminar. Our aims included exploring whether our materials could help increase metacognitive awareness and, if so, to lead students to alter their study practices, thereby ideally improving their performance if not retention (Hora & Oleson, 2017; Hug, Villa, Golding, & Gandara, 2015).
Our paper presents findings on students’ development of studying behaviors and mindsets related to our interventions. We observed a shift in the number of hours students reported having studied in high school to time reportedly spent studying near the end of their first college semester. More importantly, we observed an increased level of engagement in higher level studying strategies along with improved levels of metacognitive awareness. For instance, compared to at the start of the semester, at the semester’s end, many students mentioned employing a much wider range of recommended strategies, including studying in groups, completing relevant practice problems, intentionally managing study time to focus on critical information, and seeking help when they did not understand something. In addition to presenting such findings, our paper reports on other aspects of students’ study behaviors, such as how students prepared to study and approaches they determined to be effective for their engineering course and beyond. The study shows promise for instructors across all disciplines improving students’ learning practices with minimal intervention; our presentation ends with “take-home” strategies for fostering metacognitive awareness, particularly with respect to reflective writing and thinking (Everett, 2013; Siegesmund, 2016).
Wojahn, P., & Degardin, G., & Dawood, M., & Guynn, M. J., & Boren, R. (2020, June), Increasing Metacognitive Awareness through Reflective Writing: Optimizing Learning in Engineering Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34818
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