Assessing Metacognitive Awareness during Problem-Solving in a Kinetics and Homogeneous Reactor Design Course

Abstract

Since practicing engineers are hired, retained, and rewarded for solving problems, engineering students should learn how to solve workplace problems . Therefore, we designed and implemented several problem-solving learning environments (PSLEs) for the junior course entitled Kinetics and Homogeneous Reactor Design at Universidad de las Americas Puebla. Metacognition has been shown to be important for the solution of more open-ended and wellstructured problems. Flavell 5 distinguished two characteristics of metacognition: knowledge of cognition (KC) and regulation of cognition (RC). In order to support student metacognitive processing while learning to solve kinetics and homogeneous reactor design problems, the instructor created a supportive social environment in the course and inserted a series of question prompts during PSLEs, as a form of coaching where the problem to be solved was represented as a case, and cases were used in various ways (worked examples, case studies, structural analogues, prior experiences, alternative perspectives, and simulations) as instructional supports. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) designed by Schraw and Dennison was utilized as a pre(first day of classes) post(last day of classes) test. MAI is a 52-item inventory to measure adults’ metacognitive awareness. Items are classified into eight subcomponents subsumed under two broader categories, KC and RC. Furthermore, in order to assess metacognitive awareness during problem-solving activities, students had to answer the corresponding problem as well as approximately 2-3 embedded problem-solving prompts (from Jonassen) and 4-6 embedded metacognitive prompts (from MAI). Results for the pre-post MAI exhibited a significant (p<0.05) increase in student metacognitive awareness. This increase was also noticed by means of the embedded MAI prompts while solving different kinds of problems (such as story problems, decision-making problems, troubleshooting, and design problems) throughout the course, in which students also improved the quality of their embedded problem-solving answers and corresponding grades. Promoting metacognitive awareness and skills could be a valuable method for improving learning and student performance during kinetics and homogeneous reactor design problemsolving, as has been previously reported for professional educators and dental hygiene students.