Welcome! Time to own your learning!
Welcome to the Metacognition Module! This module is designed to help you develop and improve upon your problem-solving and decision-making skills to become a more efficient learner.
These aims will be achieved by:
- Helping you learn metacognition skills so you may monitor and decide what to do for your learning.
- Guiding you through the process of self-regulated learning (SRL) and understand its’ role in metacognition
- Providing you with a list of metacognitive problem-solving strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate your problem-solving approaches more efficiently.
Learning can be difficult and that’s okay! Success takes effort and requires dedication and at times it can be very frustrating. Research has shown that the best learning is happening when it feels the most difficult so don’t worry if you’re feeling this way; it means you’re on the right track!1 Even professors and professionals have struggled (and failed!) too! The goal of this module is to help you develop learning skills and strategies to help you gain success — in university, your career or even your personal life.
“I’ve never met a successful person who had an easy path.” —Robyne Hanley-Dafoe
What is self-regulated learning (SRL) and why should I use it?
Self-Regulated Learning means taking strategic control of how you approach your goals and being prepared and willing to face any challenges and seize any opportunities that might arise as you work to make your goals your reality.2
The self-regulated learning cycle
The SRL cycle has three phases: reflect, plan, and act.
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- The REFLECT phase involves looking back on past performances to identify your strengths and the areas you think you need to focus on. You’ll also identify your learning beliefs, your mindset when faced with challenges and your existing knowledge. Finally, you will set and refine the goals you want to achieve.
- During the PLAN phase, you will identify strategies and develop a plan and schedule to achieve your goals from the reflect phase.
- Now that you have goals and a plan it’s time to enter the ACT phase. Here you will carry out your plan, continually monitoring your progress and making adjustments as you feel necessary.
The SRL cycle can be repeated multiple times as you face deadlines – How did your plan come together? What would you change? What goals did you realize? What goals need more work?
Once you’ve completed the module you can keep using the SRL cycle in other aspects of your life.
REFERENCES
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- Brown, P.C.; Roediger III, H.L.; McDaniel, M.A. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2014.
- Zimmerman, B. J. Am. Educ. Res. J. 2008, 45 (1), 166–183.
Self-regulated learning can be achieved through the SRL cycle. The SRL cycle allows you to take strategic control of how you approach your goals and be prepared and willing to face any challenges and seize any opportunities that might arise as you work to make your goals your reality. The SRL cycle consists of three phases: reflect, plan, and act. Ideally, you should repeat this cycle multiple times as you create goals and tackle challenges.
A particular milestone in your semester or year that you are preparing for. The deadline could be an exam, assignment, competition, etc. The key idea is to identify specific timepoints using these deadlines so that you can check your progress toward your goals.
