I did my metacognitive work so students could do theirs
Also, I think that because I did my metacognitive work and shared it with them, students felt that they could do theirs too. I encouraged confusion and making mistakes in class as the biggest opportunity for learning (Tanner 2012). I shared my own confusions and when a topic was hard to grasp, I admitted that I, too, had found it hard to grasp. When a topic was exceptionally stimulating, I admitted that I had been up all night thinking about it and linking it to my own reality. I think that I brought the language of metacognition into my classroom by ‘making the discussion of metacognitive knowledge part of everyday discourse’ which, I believe helped to ‘foster a language for students to talk about their own cognition and learning’ (Pintrich 2002 in Tanner 2012).
Another factor leading to this unpredicted but very welcome metacognitive outcome were the reflective post-assessment, pre-feedback questionnaires which students completed, as the name suggests, after each forum and before having a one-to-one feedback conversation with me. Many of the questions were designed in a way that required students ‘to examine how they thought about the topic before and how they are thinking differently about that topic now’ (Dewey 1933 in Tanner 2012). Because as Dewey argues ‘reflection on an experience is the key step in learning’ (Dewey 1933 in Tanner 2012).
Hokey Cokey
Without the final outcomes, none of this work would have been possible: Student engagement and emotional commitment to the learning process. Student engagement, much like Community Development is a process and not a product. It required students to be actively curious from the start of the process and then it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more students engaged with the process, the more they got out of it and the more they wanted to engage. Much like the ‘hokey cokey’ children’s song and dance, it is not until you put your whole self in, that you get your whole self out. Increased student engagement with the learning process in this case study may be attributed to a plethora of aspects such as the timeliness, clarity, usefulness, consistency, tone of the feedback message to name but a few.
But I think that one of the major contributing facts was that they felt emotionally connected to the process. By placing students right at the centre of their feedback and assessment process they engaged emotionally with it. One student stated that ‘I realised that when I am really passionate about an issue, I really put the work into it…’ and another student said that ‘what helped me most was knowing that you cared about me and my learning’.
Quick and Dirty is better than Perfect and Slow
I am aware that the case study could have been improved, and should I do this work again, I would make a number of changes. To accompany the criteria rubrics, I would use exemplars to show students what I am expecting of their assessment pieces. I think this would greatly help the students and me to be more precise, consistent and clear about what ‘good performance is’ (Nicol ad Macfarlane-Dick).
Also, following the first online discussion forum, I was nervous about having the formative feedback conversations and spent too long preparing myself for them. By the time I had the first set of conversations with students, they had forgotten what they had written and why they had written it etc. I soon learned that ‘quick and dirty’ feedback is better than the ‘perfect and slow’ kind (Hounsell 2015).
If doing this work again, I would also utilise the silent debate strategy earlier on and with more frequency in the semester because its impact was palpable.