Think about thinking: Metacognition

- Think of a famous logo you see every day or a coin you might use to pay for your morning coffee. These are things that we see over and over again that are really easy to recognize. However, how well do you really know them? Take a moment to make a judgment about how well you know the logo or coin. Now, let's put your judgment to the test. Try drawing it. How did you do? If you're like most people, this probably didn't go well, and that's completely normal. Thinking about your thinking is called metacognition. It's the process of being aware of your own knowledge and understanding of a topic, and there are lots of examples of metacognition leading us astray. For example, how much time do you spend on social media? Go ahead, write it down. Now pause a video and check your actual usage on your phone. If you're like most people, your estimates are vastly different from your actual usage. One example of inaccurate metacognitive judgments we've talked about before is multitasking or multi-failing. People have very little awareness, both of how often they're multitasking, and how much it hurts their ability to learn. Here are a couple of other examples of popular strategies that feel like they help you learn, but in reality, don't. One strategy that tricks your metacognitive system is rereading. Why did you feel like you knew the logo or coin, only to find yourself unable to draw it? This common metacognitive error happens when you look at something over and over again and feel like you know it. This also happens when you try to learn something by reading more than once. Each time you reread or rewrite what you were trying to learn, you feel increasingly more familiar with the material, which drives your inaccurate metacognitive judgment. Despite being one of the most popular learning strategies people use, rereading gives you very little boost in learning. Instead, strategies like retrieval practice, which we'll describe later in this course, are more effective. Another strategy that leads you to make inaccurate judgements about what you're really learning is highlighting. When you're in a meeting, it's intuitive to highlight important information to help you remember it later. It might feel like highlighting is a great way to soak up new information, but in most situations, highlighting just tricks you into thinking you are learning. In addition, there's a lot of variability in what people highlight. Some don't highlight much at all, whereas others highlight pretty much everything. Surprisingly, feelings of fluency can also lead to inaccurate metacognitive judgments. You've probably experienced online trainings that felt connected and easy to follow, and others that felt disconnected and hard to follow. Which one led to more learning? If you're like most people, you likely think you've learned more from the fluent lesson. However, research shows that while you feel like you've learned more from the fluent lesson, actual measurements of learning reveal no differences. So while you think you've learned more, your learning is actually the same with both styles. There's both good and bad news here. The good news is that if you don't like the visuals or style of a presentation or feel like it's disorganized, you will still be able to learn. The bad news is that a presentation that's well organized, easy to understand, may lure you into a false sense of learning. Which are you experiencing as you progress through this course? Has it been easy to understand? My hope is that it has been, but remember, just because you understand it now doesn't mean you'll remember it later when you need it. Be sure to practice the strategies throughout the course to guarantee meaningful long-term learning. And one more thing, you can put a lot of effort into these strategies only to discover you haven't learned much of anything. "Surely," you think to yourself, "After all of this work, all have learned something." Think about it. Have you ever felt frustrated when you worked hard at learning something, but that hard work just didn't pay off? Next time, ask yourself, are you using strategies like rereading or highlighting that only make you feel like you're learning? If so, it might be time to consider switching strategies.