1. Enhancing Metacognition, Grit, and Growth Mindset for Student Success
Peter Arthur, PhD
University of British Columbia Okanagan
While you are waiting…think about the following questions
What do you already know about metacognition, growth mindset and grit?
What questions do you already have about this topic?
New online learning environments place more responsibility of the learning on post-secondary students.  The online environment provides an opportunity for some students to excel while others, who do not have self-directed learning skills, find it more challenging.  Metacognition is a skill that assists students with understanding, monitoring and directing one’s own thinking. 

2. Who am I? Founding Director for the Centre for teaching and Learning
Teacher: learning technology and assessment; graduate: instructional design; doctoral: teaching and learning in higher education
Research: new advanced learning models and assisting students with becoming scholarly learners.
Principle: Embrace Challenge

3. Agenda What is metacognition, growth mindset and grit
Metacognitive Strategies
Exam Planning
Exam Reflection
Assignment Wrapper
What strategies are you using?
Growth Mindset
Direct taught and reinforced
Grit
Grit Support Framework
Your Context
How might you leverage anything from today?
As universities move to a more learning centered model students are expected to work more independently and take on more responsibility for their learning.. In response, curricular interventions were created to scaffold students ability to monitor and direct one’s own thinking. The curricular interventions supported students with learning how to assess learning demands, evaluating one’s own knowledge and skills, ability to plan a learning strategy, monitor learning progress and adjust learning strategies as needed. Additionally, growth mindset was directly taught in a student lab section. Growth mindset has a positive relationship with student effort and academic performance. Further, this study’s results support how there is a strong relationship between a student’s metacognition, growth mindset, grit and academic performance. This study set out to explore the effectiveness of the curricular interventions in order to impact further development and potential research. This session will be especially important for anyone who supports student success for first year and transitioning students.

4. In Common
What does Metacognition, Growth Mindset and Grit all have in common?
All can be taught
All correlate with academic success
Metacognition and Growth Mindset support students with reaching their goals (Grit)

5. What is Metacognition in Relation to Self-Directed Learning?
Knowledge about one’s own knowledge, thinking about one’s own thinking, and learning about one’s own learning
Set of processes involved in monitoring and directing one’s own thinking (Flavell,1976; NRC, 2001)
One’s ability to monitor, evaluate, and make plans for one’s learning…. effective learning involves planning and goal-setting, monitoring one's progress, and adapting as needed
To become self-directed learners, students must learn to assess the demands of the task, evaluate their own knowledge and skills, plan their approach, monitor their progress and adjust their strategies as needed and reflect/evaluate their strategies upon completion to determine improvement for next time.
Picture Credit: Jose Bolorino

6. Metacognition Issues Students don’t know what they know or don’t know
Planning, monitoring, and evaluation of one’s learning

7. Growth Mindset
In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.
- Carol Dweck, Standford University

8. Grit
“Perseverance to accomplish long-term or higher-order goals in the face of challenges and setbacks, engaging the student’s psychological resources, such as their academic mindsets, effortful control, and strategies and tactics.”
Persistence over time to overcome challenges and accomplish big goals (Duckworth, 2013; Shechtman, DeBarger, Dornsife, Rosier, & Yarnall, 2013).

9. Grit
Looking at all factors of success…social intelligence, physical health, IQ….it is grit that is a significant predictor of success (Duckworth, 2013).

10. Metacognitive Strategies
Evidence Based Study Strategies
Exam Planning
Exam Reflection
Metacognitive Assignment Planning
Note Taking
Lecture Wrapper
Other Activities

11. Exam Prep and Reflection
Evidence-based study strategies
Creating a Study Plan
Monitor and Adjust Learning as Needed
Exam – REFLECTION
Asks…
What did I do to prepare for the exam
What did I do right and not right
What am I going to do next time?

12. Exam Reflection
Students benefit from metacognition because it enables them to reflect on their own approaches to learning, accurately assess what they do and do not know, and make better choices as a result (e.g., Butler & Winne, 1995; Zimmerman, 2001)

13. Strategy: Assignment Wrapper
How it Works
Students complete wrapper and hand in with assignment
Instructor provides feedback on assignment
Student completes post assignment grading portion and sends back to instructor
Students complete post-reflection on what learned
Completion of the wrapper is included in grade

14. Reflection
Reflection allows someone to practice recall which strengthens and consolidates memory AND elaboration i.e. analysis of what you did and therefore what you learned from the experience
“We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience” – John Dewey

15. What are you doing?
Currently doing? Any planning, monitoring or reflective activities?
What might we create to support metacognition?

16. Growth Mindset Strategy
Direct teach and reinforce
Idea of neuroplasticity
Think of a time when you pushed outside of your comfort zone to learn something really hard and stuck to it. Think pair share
What do you think happened to your brain when you did this.
Video Growing Your Mind
Discussion
How this concept applies to the context of their coursework

17. Growth Mindset Reinforce
Praise effort rather than natural intelligence
“emphasizing effort gives a student a rare variable they can control”…They can’t control natural intelligence.
See failure as an experience to learn from rather than something that is always devastating

18. What are you doing?
…to support a Growth Mindset

19. How is the session going??? (Monitoring your Learning)
What insights am I having as I experience this class session? What confusions?
What questions are arising for me during the class session? Am I writing them down somewhere?
Do I find this interesting? Why or why not? How could I make this material personally relevant?

20. Model of Grit Support Provide challenging goals
Communicate high expectations
Student Goal Setting
Growth Mindset (belief that challenge will improve their learning) – Perspective on Failure
Teach Students how to Achieve Goals
Self –regulation/metacognition (Self control, ability to plan, monitor, adjust learning as needed and reflect on their learning to change the way they learn and pursue their goals)
Anticipate obstacles and develop plans to overcome
Support students – teacher and/or peer

21. Grit Strategy If you know your students:
Challenge your students to improve, and at the same time provide support….warmth, respect and high expectations
Example of challenging students:
Experiment:
Placebo: I am giving you these comments so you have feedback on your paper
Wise Option: I am giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know you can reach them
Results: 80% of students who received wise feedback made more edits.

22. Encourage Extra-Curricular
Activities, such as martial arts, drama, and sports, can help students develop self-discipline and persistence through structured opportunities to challenge themselves, learn through failure, and experience improvement.

23. Failure
Important to share with students how people fail and learn from failure.
Some examples of great people who failed along the way
An example is a failure resume – as It normalizes failure and students that are too afraid to fail never then challenge themselves and grow.

24. Famous Failures - Stories
Examples of famous people who failed before they succeeded
Walt Disney fired by a newspaper editor for not having good ideas and no imagination
Thomas Edison tried more than 10,000 times to invent the light bulb
Steve Jobs  was actually fired from Apple Computers. When Jobs was fired from Apple, he was quoted to say “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me

25. Grit Strategy
Students need strategies and tactics to deal with challenges and setbacks
Metacognition is a tool to support grit – perseverance to reach a goal.
I.e. assess the demands of the task, evaluate their own knowledge and skills, plan their approach, monitor their progress and adjust their strategies as needed
Having a growth mindset supports perseverance

26. What are you doing? Currently doing?
What might we create to support grit?

27. Your Context
How might you leverage anything that we have discussed today?
Share with one other person.

28. Digital Copies
Happy to Share!