Using a Faculty Learning Community to Promote Student Metacognitive Skills

Undergraduate students often arrive unprepared for an environment where deep conceptual understanding, application, and synthesis are valued over memorization of facts. There are many metacognitive strategies to help students develop their ability to plan, monitor, and assess their understanding and performance. However, most faculty have limited experience doing so, since they typically have little formal preparation for teaching. While metacognition is sometimes woven into undergraduate curricula via first-year student seminars, it is likely to be more impactful when integrated directly into the courses in which it is most needed.

We promoted the use of metacognitive strategies within a faculty learning community (FLC) that was part of a biological sciences initiative to change the culture of teaching and learning. The FLC was composed of ~20 faculty members who taught the first four courses taken within the biological sciences curriculum. The long-term goal was to help students recognize evidence of their learning so that they would be more receptive to teaching approaches requiring active engagement.

We developed a series of professional development activities to increase faculty confidence in helping students develop greater metacognitive awareness. These consisted of resource materials, a full-day retreat, and regular bi-weekly meetings during which faculty shared their strategies to promote student metacognition. Faculty created a plan for introducing metacognitive activities into their courses. We later surveyed and interviewed faculty as to which of 23 metacognitive strategies they were employing and which strategies they were interested in learning more about. Faculty (n=17) varied considerably in the reported strategies used (4-20 strategies/person, M=9.3; SD=4.5) and the strategies they were interested in learning more about (0-16 strategies/person, M=3.5; SD=3.8). Faculty surveys and interviews suggested that the FLC promoted greater adoption of metacognitive strategies across the biological sciences by inspiring and assisting those who had less experience or confidence using student-centered pedagogies.