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I had the pleasure of attending the CIRTL Network‘s conference, “Preparing the Future STEM Faculty for the Rapidly Changing Landscape of Higher Education” at Texas A&M in College Station, TX on April 12 – 14, 2015.

It was a great meeting with a lively Twitter backchannel using hashtag #CIRTL15. My friend, Derek Bruff @derekbruff, archived the Twitter traffic and I’ll update this post when he shares it.

Speaking of Derek, he’s really good at drawing #sketchnotes, that is, recording presentations in pictures and words. Here’s his summary of Anya Kamenetz’ keynote on the future of higher education.

I’m an amateur sketchnoter, too, but I’m not good enough to sketch entire presentations yet. Instead, I try to draw the people giving the presentations. I’m deliberately practicing getting better at remembering people’s names and drawing them seems to help. So, here are many of the people who spoke at #CIRTL15. I know I missed a few. And my apologies if you’re in this collection and you don’t look anything this 😉 Whenever possible, I linked to their presentations, all of which are available on the CIRTL Forum website.

Randy Bass
Associate Provost and Professor of English, Georgetown University
Plenary Address: In the Crystal Ball: What will Higher Education Look Like in 2030?

Derek Bruff’s sketchnote of Randy’s presentation

Benjamin Flores
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Texas at El Paso
What Do Current Demographic Trends Predict for the Students of 2030?

Jennifer Glass
Professor of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty in the context of changing demographics?
The Future of the STEM Labor Force: Implications for Training and Curriculum

Peggy Shadduck
Director of the Dallas Community College District STEM Institute
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty in the context of changing demographics?
Focus on 2-Year College Students

Olufunmilayo Adebayo
Graduate Student, Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty in the context of changing demographics?
How can we effectively make mentorship and sponsorship training, a part of the graduate student experience?

George Siemens @gsiemens
Executive Director of the LINK Research Lab, University of Texas at Arlington
How Do We Best Utilize the Teaching Technologies Yet to Come?
Derek Bruff’s sketchnotes of George’s presentation

Emilieanne McCranie
Graduate Student, Chemistry, Vanderbilt University
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty in the context of technological changes?
In Search of Experience: One graduate student’s quest for a teaching philosophy

Derek Bruff @derekbruff
Director, Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University
Panel Moderator and Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty in the context of technological changes?
MOOCs as Networks of Local Learning Communities

Jim Julius @jjulius
Faculty Director of Online Education, Miracosta College
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty in the context of technological changes?
A Community College Perspective

Anya Kamenetz @anya1anya
Author and Education Reporter, NPR
Keynote: The Future of Higher Education: People, Practices, Tools (linked to Derek Bruff’s sketchnotes)

Mary Deane Sorcinelli
Distinguished Scholar in Residence, Mt. Holyoke Wiessman Center for Leadership
The Future of the Professoriate: How Must We Change?

(Derek Bruff’s sketchnotes of Mary Deane’s presentation)

Katie Kearns @kkearns23
Senior Instructional Consultant, Indiana University Bloomington Center for Teaching and Learning
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty for the changing nature of teaching positions in higher education?
Intersections of Identity and Instruction

Alison Rober
Assistant Professor of Biology, Ball State
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty for the changing nature of teaching positions in higher education? University

Myles Boylan @myles_boylan
Program Director, National Science Foundation
Panelist: How do we prepare future faculty for the changing nature of teaching positions in higher education? University
At the NSF, we are interested in changing graduate education for the better

Suzanne Ortega @sortegaCGS
President, Council of Graduate Schools
Closing Reflection

Bob Mathieu
Director, CIRTL
Closing Discussion

Crystal Dozier @ArchaeoCrystal
Graduate Student, Archaeology, Texas A&M University
Patterns of Efficacy of Teaching Concepts of Race in Anthropology

One last sketch. Bob Mathieu reminded us again and again about the CIRTL Mission:

To enhance excellence in undergraduate education through the development of a national faculty committed to implementing and advancing effective teaching practices for diverse learners as part of successful and varied professional careers.

With my life-long interest in astronomy and space exploration, I couldn’t help but draw a CIRTL mission patch.

A mission patch for CIRTL — What’s a mission without a mission patch?

That’s my portrait(s) of #CIRTL15. Again, my apologies if I made anyone look too old, too young, too ogre-like, too anything. And if, by chance, you see yourself here and want to use my sketch, go ahead. I’m sharing them under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 International License.

“Cognition” is another word for “thinking”. Metacognition, then, is thinking about your own thinking. Cynthia Brame at Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching has this terrific quote by John Flavell in her post, Thinking About Metacognition:

I am engaging in metacognition if I notice that I am having more trouble learning A than B. John Flavell (1976)

Metacognition is thinking about your own thinking.

One of the key findings about how people learn is that we need to metacognitive about our learning. Indeed, one of the signs of expertise is an “internal dialogue” — a little voice in your head — that continually questions what you’re doing, how well you’re doing it, why you’re doing it.

If teaching is about making your students more like experts, metacognition should be important. It’s already challenging to draw out and build on student’s pre-existing knowledge and teach the multitude of facts and concepts AND the conceptual framework which link those facts together. (These are the other two Key Findings of How People Learn.) How do you teach students to be metacognitive? It’s not like there’s a switch you flick on (“Everyone, please think about your thinking. Thank-you.”) Like any skill you’re teaching, students need practice being metacognitive before they’re good at it.

My frustration with coming up with metacognition practice made me all the more amazed and pleased by the responses I got when I asked my students to write a blog post. The course I’m teaching, The College Classroom, is about teaching and learning in higher education. My students are advanced Ph.D. students and postdocs about to embark on academic careers. Prior to our class on deliberate practice, I asked them to write a blog post about a time when they’ve engaged in deliberate practice. Write they did, and over and over, their posts progressed from a description of what they did to how well they did it and why they did it. They wrote about time management, aiming high, running, running, learning Zapotec, driving, rodent neurosurgery, entrepreneurship, guitar, math, practice, teaching, coaching volleyball, learning English, piano, math, learning Italian, studying, soccer, tae kwon do, soccer, guitar, learning Spanish, soccer, regret, writing, macroeconomics, writing, piano, Scabble, improv, soccer, crafting conversations, and Vespas.

It’s metacognitive blogging
— meta-blog-nition —
pouring out onto the page!

The moral of the story: if you’re an instructor struggling to create opportunities for your students to practice being metacognitive, get them blogging. As an added bonus, their posts are a wealth of pre-existing knowledge and experiences you can build on. That’s a win for everyone.

What about you? When are you metacognitive? What do you do to get your students to think about their own thinking? Leave a comment to share it with the rest of us!

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