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Table 2. Student outcomes before and after the introduction of metacognitive education
and changes to teaching practice
Criterion
Before New Teaching
Practices, Averaged Over
Three Semesters (
n
= 184)
After New Teaching
Practices, Averaged Over
Three Semesters,
n
= 207
Average grade
59.0%
68.0%
Standard deviation
12.0%
19.7%
% students scoring >80%
6.58%
20.8%
% students scoring
70-80%
19.4%
28.2%
Maximum mark
76.6%
93.3%
Minimum mark
40.1%
41.0%
Average attrition rate
12.3%
7.0%
Note: Some filtering was undertaken to remove students who withdrew from or failed for
nonacademic reasons. This may introduce a small element of subjectivity into the assessment
of the attrition rate.
metacognitive/strategy straining needs to be grounded in the subject area with specific and
semi-specific strategies being taught, rather than generic skills, if recidivism is to be
prevented. Although it was not possible to go back over the six-semester period and break
down the results by age, I noticed that some of the mature students were already using
metacognitive techniques of their own devising or choosing, though actual awareness of that
fact varied from subconscious to fully conscious. My belief is that younger students benefit
more than mature students from metacognitive training, but I accept that further work is
required to prove this to a satisfactory level.
CONCLUSIONS
At this stage, I am unable to offer an absolute level of proof that my metacognitive
training program and changes to my teaching practice are responsible for the significant
improvement in student outcomes described above. However, I would argue on the balance
of probability that it is so. Should my hypothesis be vindicated, there are obvious implications
for Information Systems curricula and Information Systems lecturers. An informal survey of
30 online information systems curricula of U.S. universities failed to reveal any that addressed
metacognition and thinking styles. While this is insufficiently rigorous to draw firm conclu-
sions, I would argue that it is indicative of the general state of affairs. Of the model curricula
I reviewed, only the ISCC (Lidtke et al., 1999) model made explicit reference to teaching
approaches.
In order to develop a fully convincing case, it will be necessary to carry out a controlled
experiment with a larger sample. Campus reorganizations at my university will provide such
an opportunity in late 2002. It is anticipated that the data obtained from this experiment will
provide the basis for long-term, longitudinal study. It is hypothesized that students will
