Welcome to this video on Metacognitive Strategies.

You may already know the term Metacognition.

A simple definition is thinking about your own thinking.

Metacognitive Strategies are the tools you use to manage and control your learning.

Not just what you learn, but how you learn.

In this video

we will focus on three core Metacognitive processes.

Planning

Monitoring and Evaluating and Adjusting.

Metacognitive Strategies always work together with Cognitive Strategies.

Cognitive Strategies are about how you work with the content

for example

elaboration, organization or rehearsal.

Metacognitive Strategies are about how you steer your learning process.

When to use which strategy

how long to study and when to change your approach.

The goal is to move from being a trial and error learner

who just hopes that something will work and to being a self-regulated learner

who can consciously plan

observe and improve their learning over time.

On the next slides, we will look at the three steps.

Plan

monitor and evaluate and connect them directly to your own exam preparation.

The first Metacognitive step is Planning.

Many students skip this step and just start somewhere.

As a result

they read a lot

but are not sure what they are actually aiming for.

Planning starts with a few simple questions before you begin to study.

What exactly do I want to be able to do at the end of this session?

How much time and energy do I realistically have today?

Which strategies make sense for this topic and this exam?

It is very helpful to formulate specific learning goals.

Instead of saying

I want to understand working memory

you could say

after this 30-minute session

I can explain working memory in two or three sentences

and give one everyday example.

This requires a short task analysis.

What kind of content is it?

A definition, a model, a long theory.

How will it appear in the exam?

Multiple choice

short answer

application to a case.

Which level of detail do I need?

Based on this

you choose two or three concrete cognitive strategies for this session.

For example