On March 12, Dr. Saundra McGuire, a nationally recognized expert on metacognitive strategies in teaching, was brought to campus by the CLAS Faculty Council with the help of several campus partners to give three talks to different relevant audiences.  The visit supported other work ongoing at GVSU about metacognition, such as an FTLC Metacognition Work Group, and ongoing discussions in Psychology that resulted in a metacognition resource bank online.

Meanwhile, Chemistry faculty had been in discussion about how to support student success in the crucial CHM 115 course needed by several majors.  It had been changed in recent years from a five-credit course with a discussion section to a four-credit course without the discussion section and with one fewer lecture hour per week.  Assistant Dean and Chemistry Professor George McBane, Director of Institutional Analysis Philip Batty, and Director for 1st Year Advising and Registration and Professor of Mathematics Matt Boelkins had been working on a self-selection model (like one in long use by Writing to help students place themselves in the appropriate first writing course) to be used by first-year students during summer registration for their courses.

Associate Professor and FTLC Fellow Tom Pentecost noted, “Several of us were concerned that people would be blown out of the water. So a prep course for those who felt they were not quite up to speed was created.” Tom notes the particular contributions of his colleagues Professor Steve Matchett and Associate Professor Jessica VandenPlas who started the course.  He came in Fall 2016 and Sarah Clark (Director of the Chemistry Success Center) came on board in Fall 2017.

“We became aware of colleagues who were doing something similar in their ‘prep chem plus how to study’ course.  It really can’t just be chemistry you are teaching,” Tom concluded.

Initially, Tom incorporated some of the readings being used by the Oregon State University chemistry faculty.  This summer, Tom and Sarah are collaboratively planning how to also make use of Sandra McGuire’s work on metacognition with particular reference to her books Teach Students How to Learn (aimed at a faculty audience) and parts of her Teach Yourself How to Learn: Strategies You Can Use to Ace Any Course at Any Level written for a student audience.

“I’m involved in a learning community on improving first-year learning, as is Donovan [Anderson, CLAS Associate Dean].  I’d been analyzing the results of a first-year survey done by Kurt Ellenberger [Honors College] as part of my work with the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center.  This all converged in the work on CHM 100.”

In the last year, CHM 100 has also become a parachute course.  That is, students who have been actively engaged with CHM 115 but nevertheless struggled on the first major exam (below a defined threshold) can be given the option of a safe landing into CHM 100, despite the term already being in progress.  This saves them from a withdrawal or failing grade in CHM 115, not to mention frustration and wasted time, while preserving for most of them a full schedule which may also safeguard their financial aid status.

That first exam includes questions intended to be predictive of success in the CHM 115 course.  Assistant Professor Brittland DeKorver is looking into whether they really prove to be predictive. 

So that some students may begin the term in CHM 100 and other can enter later (via ‘parachute’) the 24-28 student course is initially capped at 20 to allow for some growth.  Some coordination of syllabi between CHM 115 and CHM 100 is also taking place so the transition is accomplished more easily.  When students hit the wall on the CHM 115 fourth week exam, if they have been making a good faith effort to keep up, they can meet one-on-one with the instructor about the parachute option.  They are even shown the CHM 100 exam at the same point in the course so the student can flag any concepts that they do not feel they have seen so that catching up can be facilitated.  The access to the homework through WebAssign was specially negotiated so that it will transfer as the student parachutes to avoid any additional cost.

During summer 2019, Tom and Sarah are plumbing both of McGuire’s books to use her strategies to make refinements in the CHM 100 course.

Sarah notes that she is thinking about, “when should we teach these strategies?  Students, as McGuire points out, must be ready and that is usually in response to a failure.”

An AAC&U conference on metacognition had impressed on Tom how key this timing was going to be.  “Helping students find out what strategies are required to be successful is even more important than course content.  In the first year, we are teaching students how to learn.”

This summer, Sarah and Tom meet to swap readings and ‘exam wrappers’, post-test reflections by the students which address whether there is a good match between their study strategies and what is being asked of them.  They agree that they will follow McGuire’s lead and use a 50 minute class session to be very overt with students about the nature of what is being asked of them,.  They intend to introduce Blooms taxonomy to the students so they have a way of articulating the level of these intellectual tasks.  They hope this will help students leave behind the notion that they just need to study as they did in high school but longer or avoid garden-variety procrastination.  Tom and Sarah want students to see that a higher order of thinking is required and necessitates new methods of preparation that they can learn if they are open to them.

Also over the summer, meetings of the metacognition work group continue.  Sessions are planned for the fall FTLC pre-conference and a Strong Start Initiative will launch.  Interesting work on the “hidden curriculum” by Georgetown University faculty is being reviewed so that a wide variety of faculty resources can be offered.

“We hope to give people things they can do in their classes right away,” Tom shares.

Data analysis by Chemistry Unit Head Deborah Herrington on the success of the course is ongoing. 

While, CHM 100 is designed to help students who feel shaky about their high school preparation, Tom acknowledges that some honor students opt for it as a sort of grade insurance.  “That doesn’t bother me,” he says.  They also see that the population of nontraditional students, who have not taken chemistry in a long time, is served well by the course.  “They really rave about it.”

He and Sarah have focused on challenges such as how to ramp up the end of the CHM 100 course so that the relative speed and intensity of CHM 115 won’t come as a shock.

“I hope,” Tom explains, “that the course hastens the first year maturation process.  After the first exam comes the real study help because at that point they know they need it.  That first exam gets their attention.  We show them videos about how to study by Stephen Chew at Samford University that get their attention because he calls into question practices such as multitasking with social media while studying.  They know they do that.  We also incorporate mindset work by Carol S. Dweck [Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University].  We want to move them away from a fixed and toward a growth mindset. We want to say, ‘here’s how you change that.’”

Sarah and Tom do not think students are lying about how many hours they are putting in, but they don’t think those hours are all effective.  They enjoy being able to say that there is a way to “put in less time doing better stuff.”

Sarah and Tom share that most of the student evaluations are positive although some persist in wondering about why more time was spent focusing on non-chemistry content.  “We’re okay with that and the number who say that are decreasing.”

Tom finds he’s bringing some of what he’s learned about metacognition into his CHM 115 class, too, such as the Stephen Chew videos.  He tells them, “My goal is to get you to become second-year students.”