Tapping into Students’ Learning Awareness LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

1. Tapping into Students’ Learning AwarenessLEARNING HOW TO LEARN A.K.A Metacognition

2. Metacognition • People’s knowledge of their own learning and cognitive processes • Regulation of learning processes to enhance learning and memory • Basically: the more met cognitively sophisticated-the greater potential for learning

3. Metacognitive Knowledge and Skills • Aware of one’s own learning and memory capabilities are, and of what learning tasks can be accomplished • You can’t do it all at once, learn to segment larger assignments • Knowing which learning strategies are effective and which are not • How do you learn, what’s the best way to commit information to long-term memory • Plan an approach to learning that is likely to be successful • Limit distractions, find your natural learning time of day • Use effective learning strategies • Note taking, recording lectures, memorization, hands-on lab work • Monitor your present learning state • Take time to review and double-check what you have learned • Find and address areas of weakness • Know how to retrieve previously stored information • Tie-in past knowledge to newly gained information • It’s all about association

4. Metacognition…. Still confused? It’s all about thinking about thinking

5. So just how should the students think about thinking? say in reading? • Clarify the purpose for reading something • Ask yourself, “why do I hope to learn from this text passage?” then stop talking to yourself • Determine what is most important and focus on that • You only have so much time, get the facts, the big facts • Bring your prior knowledge into play, and associate possible examples of the ideas presented • If you’re reading about Roman history, imagine how you would have made the decisions to invade and conquer the world, what would you have done differently? • Ask for clarification on ambiguous or unknown words or points of interest • If you don’t know it, don’t skip it; write it down and look it up • Critically evaluate what you read, then stop…check for consistency, review, and move on

6. Metacognitive thinking requires -FOCUS- If you get distracted, STOP, reorganize or take a break Don’t try fooling yourself, you can’t trick the mind past exhaustion Better to learn it right once slowly then quickly learn it wrong over and over again

7. Self-Regulated Learning • The process of setting standards and goals for personal success • Setting personal goals • Controlling motivation • Handling emotion

8. The process of self-regulated learning • Goal setting: identify, from the start, a desired end result for the learning activity. Know what you want to accomplish • Planning: determine how best to use the available time Plan ahead! • Self-motivation: maintaining intrinsic motivation to complete the task It takes a variety of strategies to stay on task, use several learning tools, don’t just stick to one • Attention Control: give the task at hand your full attention Focus, clear your mind of distracting thoughts Tune out the static

9. The process of self-regulated learning continued • Application of learning strategies: select the appropriate approach to the type of learning to be committed Passively reading about model trains doesn’t need the same level as reading up on heart surgery -especially if you’re a doctor. • Self-monitoring: Creating check points to see whether any progress is being made Modification midway through the goal is OK, if you’re on the wrong track, change it • Self-evaluation: assess the final outcome of one’s efforts “Is what I have learned sufficient for the goals I have set?” “Do I need more, or have can I streamline with less?” • Self-Reflection: Was all this work successful, have you satisfied the goal, were there any areas of concern, how efficient was the process?

10. Effective Learning and Study Strategies • So what’s a Strategy? • A strategy is the intentional use of one or more cognitive processes to accomplish a particular learning task… • In other words: knowing that in order to be effective you’re going to have to apply some of learning tools • You can’t just “wing it”

11. In order for learning to be meaningful you’re going to have to get -TACTICAL!-

12. Learning strategies are more general/overall strategies of accomplishing a goal. Example: building a skyscraper requires planning to hire a architect to design a model (you’re going to need to know what to build) Tactical learning involves specific tangible acts -actually putting on a hardhat and stamping rivets

13. Tactical Techniques • Meaningful Learning • Relating new material to knowledge already stored in long-term memory • Elaboration • The process of using prior knowledge to interpret and expand on new material Both techniques work hand-in-hand with each other

14. Organization is Key Organization is more than simply listing unrelated facts Organization needs -Structure-

15. Organization techniques Start simple: outlinesare a great way to chronologically order a series of events. great for lectures and textbook readings However-if you can function without an outline, don’t bother some people do perfectly well without them

16. Organization continued. Graphic representations: Maps Flow Charts Pie Charts Matrix Visual learning=great tactic

17. Organization continued. Note Taking: encoding of material combines visual and verbal learning skills It’s-za’fact: Students who take notes -but didn’t review- still remember more! Effective Note taking depends on: consistency with overall goal summarize main ideas clear understanding to student include details that support the ideas Great notes include student elaborations of material –yourthoughts

18. Identify Important Information Students encounter more information than can be stored in long-term memory “Too much information about nothing, too much educational rap,” -Bob Dylan. Filter the necessary from the unnecessary, the important details from the trivial Underline________________ useful information Highlight the facts, but don’t overdo it. -it’s a highlighter not a paint roller

19. Summarizing • Summarize: condense and integrate • Identify super and subordinate ideas • Delete trivial and redundant information • Find supporting information for each main idea • Identify a topic sentence for each paragraph or section Summarizing ultimately helps to student learn and remember classroom material more effectively

20. Comprehension Monitoring Effective learners periodically check to be sure they are understanding and remembering what they hear in class and read in a textbook –and reread or ask questions when they encounter difficulty In other words: check to be sure you have a strong footing before you jump onto new information. Ask questions, critically review the material before you move onto more challenging concepts/ideas DANGER: If you think you have know something but actually misunderstand the message you have an: -Illusion of knowing-

21. Illusion of Knowing When students think they know class material, they are less likely to study it Students who have the illusion of knowing will stop studying prematurely To combat I-of-K -Draw pictures or diagrams of material studied -Formulate questions before a lesson or reading assignment -Self-questioning: who, what, when… -Test your confidence in the material short quiz, flash cards, matching, and ol’ memorization

22. So why don’t students always use effective strategies • Uninformed/misinformed about effective strategies • Epistemological (what we think knowledge is) beliefs that tend to underestimate or misrepresent a learning task • Mistakenly believe they already are effective strategists • Little relevant prior knowledge to draw upon • Assigned learning tasks that do not lead to sophisticated strategies • Goals are inconsistent with effective learning • Assume sophisticated learning strategies require too much effort to make them worthwhile • Low self-efficiency about their ability to learn in an academic setting

23. Promoting Effective Learning and Study Strategies • Students learn strategies more effectively when those strategies are taught within the context of the specific subject domains and actual academic learning tasks • The teacher should suggest/instruct/provide questions to the class in various ways or effective learning • Students can use sophisticated learning strategies only when they have a knowledge base to which they can relate new material • Engage the students in drawing inferences and clarifying ambiguities • Students should learn a wide variety of strategies, as well as the situations in which each one is appropriate • “different strokes for different folks,” what works well for one person/situation may not be an across-the-board solution • Effective strategies should be practiced with a variety of tasks –on an ongoing basis • Learn to apply to strategy to many different tasks over a period of time

24. Promoting Effective Learning and Study Strategies • Strategy instruction should include covert as well as overt strategies • The immediate mastery of studying book-work should carry on into more advanced lifelong learning • Teachers can model effective strategies by thinking aloud about new material • Use clever and interesting correlations to help the students associate learning to memorable references • Teachers should scaffold students’ initial attempts at using new strategies, gradually phasing out the scaffolding as students become more proficient • A.K.A.-when the time comes take off the training wheels • Students can often learn effective strategies by working cooperatively with their classmates • Two brains are better than one • Students must understand why the study skills they are being taught are helpful • You need to see the value; why go to the extra effort to learn something new if it has no applicable value

25. Promoting Effective Learning and Study Strategies • Students should have epistemological beliefs that are consistent with effective strategies • Students needs a little push, or rather feel the need to apply the study skills (epistemic doubt)…a good thing • Students should develop mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating their own learning • Set specific goals • Keep ongoing records of performance • Provide criteria to judge performance • Delay feedback to first allow student introspection • Encourage and reinforce • Students must believe that, with sufficient effort and appropriate strategies, they can learn and understand challenging material • I think I can…I think I can…I think I can…

26. Works Cited Ormrod, J. (2004). Chapter 7 Social Cognitive Theory. Human Learning 4th ed. New Jersey. Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.