Background

        As a first-year college students, one crucial thing they need to know in college is how to learn. Go to class, take notes, study those notes, and prepare for an exam if a teacher gives one. Those steps seem easy to understand, but one is more complicated than the other. Studying notes takes more than having the instructor’s words written down and memorized during the lecture. It would take them to understand their metacognition, actually to learn thoroughly. As a first-year college student fresh out of high school, it is sometimes hard to transition from a mandatory learning style to a free one. It is hard for one to learn by themselves without a premade path. So, how can first-year college students learn better understand and improve their metacognition?

Discussions

         Every first-year college student’s previous learning style has come from high school. The way they study developed and cemented there, but as they go through college and see that their way of learning is flawed, why not try to change it. In chapter 2 of Teach Yourself How to Learn, Saundra McGuire uses a student’s explanation of why they do not heed warnings about college in high school. “People told me that college was going to require a lot more of my time and effort, but I didn’t believe them because I had heard it before,” Says a struggling full scholarship math major at LSU (McGuire 7). What the quote is saying is that for high school students, it is hard to change their way of thinking when told because they have heard the same thing time and time again but never had needed to do so. So, it would help high school students to know the main differences between high school and college beforehand.

        California State University-Chico gives a complete list of the differences between high school and college. They break them down into five sections; rules and responsibilities, classes, instructors, tests, and grades. With Rules and Responsibilities, one would have to follow the rules in high school, but in college, they choose to be responsible. The fact that you have to chose to be responsible can give a first-year a sugar rush, and they do everything they couldn’t in high school, like miss due dates, skip class on purpose, and choose when to study. They would eventually crash at the end, and this would throw off their balance, which is risky in the beginning because no one wants to start on the wrong foot. With classes and instructors, their guiding principle is that it is up to the learner to learn independently rather than get handed one assigned short reading to get done while in class. While learning with professors in college, one is responsible for using metacognition and applying what they learned unguided. Lastly, the guiding principle for tests and grades is that students are given chances to learn and improve in high school, and grades are rewarded on good-faith efforts. In college, students are given few tests that require mastery, and grades are predominantly based on results. However, even with this knowledge, some students still lack in college, so now institutions would have to bring in reinforcement to help; instructors.

        In “Why Good Students Do “Bad” In College: Why We Should Care and What We Should Do,” The Learnwell Projects writes about how teachers could help students become better learners. They speak of a 20/80; 80/20 rule that students go by when they learn. When a student walks into a class, they intend to absorb 80% of the knowledge out of 20% of the information. To help prevent this, The Learnwell Projects suggest instructors come at students in the past, present, and futures steps. Giving them their past would show them how in high school, they stuck with a specific study approach that was never going to help them. Next, giving them their presence is to help change their mindset on their old way of studying and help them try to adopt the 20/80 rule instead of continuing with 80/20. Lastly, when giving them their future, it would be trying to sell them a future on how much more successful they would be if they took on the 20/80 rule. These conversations that teachers should be having with students could have a significant impact because it shows from a student’s perspective that their teacher is trying to help, so they could become successful when learning. 

With knowledge of the differences between high school and college and the help of some teachers, a student would still need to learn how to use their metacognition. Metacognition is the understanding of one’s thought process. When anyone attempts to learn, they always go in with their metacognition, whether weak or strong. The weaker a thought process, the less one learns. Amy Baldwin’s College success is a book that helps first-year college students feel seen and involved, and when they go over their skills and learning method, they encounter the book’s central theme; “real life doesn’t stop when college starts.” In chapter seven of this book, Baldwin uses a quote, “Becoming aware of your thought process and using this awareness deliberately is a sign of mature thinking.” This quote is like the gasoline of discovering one’s thought process because it presses one to rethink how one thinks. The book uses the example that all students have gone through, reading a page in a book and not understanding a word on the page. Some metacognitive approaches to solving that roadblock would be to try to comprehend what that student read. Like look up different words they do not understand in the paragraph, ask others that can help study, or even reading it out loud so they can understand it better (Baldwin 242). Doing these things are all examples of understanding how one learns and what to do if they ever come to a stop when studying.

Even with all the benefits of knowing how one’s metacognition works, some students may feel like they are the outliers that cannot access theirs, or it takes too long to understand it. In reality, the metacognition process does not add much to anyone’s plate because they are already doing it when they study, just not to the fullest extent. The video by Peterson’s provides a metacognition process that has three steps; plan, monitor, and evaluate. The most important part is the planning; it’s how one would set their steps upon how they will learn a particular topic. The monitoring process is to look over how well one is currently learning, one example would be practice tests. The last step is evaluating, in which after one finished a task, they turn it in and get a grade back; they would look back at how they did the first two steps and see where they would need to modify their approach. The whole metacognition process is studying, but it adds tiny things to help boost one’s understanding while studying and how to approach that understanding after getting some results.

Conclussion and Reccomendations

It will not just take a day to perfect when it comes to metacognition. One would have to go through a process and develop a new understanding of themselves. It helps to know from the beginning (high school) how adjusting to the new learning environment feels. A little boost from teachers would also get the job done because it makes students feel more comfortable knowing they are not being punished for not learning the correct way. Once the understands how one thinks, the process of improvement happens.

Citations

McGuire, Sandra Yancy. Teach Yourself How to Learn. Virginia: Stylus, 2018. E-Book

Baldwin, Amy. “College Success.” OpenStax, OpenStax, 27 Mar. 2020, https://openstax.org/books/college-success/pages/1-introduction.

Krista, et al. “Why Good Students Do ‘Bad’ in College: Why We Should Care and What We Should Do – the Learnwell Projects.” The LearnWell Projects – Making Learning More Visible, Manageable, and Effective, 19 Feb. 2018, https://thelearnwellprojects.com/thewell/why-good-students-do-bad-in-college-proven-insights-2/.

“How Is College Different from High School? – Accessibility Resource Center.” – Accessibility Resource Center – CSU, Chico, https://www.csuchico.edu/arc/resources/college-vs-highschool.shtml.

“Metacognition: The Skill That Promotes Advanced Learning.” YouTube, Peterson’s, 28 Apr. 2020, https://youtu.be/elZFL4FLVLE. Accessed 18 Apr. 2022.

Summary

            The University of Arizona (UA) is a school that is driven by its purpose, which is to expand human potential, and explore new horizons and enrich life for all. Arizona offers over 300 majors to the students who either know exactly what they want or to students who need to explore a little bit more to get set on the right path for them. To attract these students, Arizona uses assumptions and case studies to attract new students.

Analysis

            UA attracts new students by using assumptions right on their homepage. When on the homepage you first see a welcome message to ‘new wildcats’ and a question asking the new students if they were admitted into their school. This detail shows that the university assumes that the students that do go on the site are already admitted, and if not, they might as well be. This would show a person how UA is ready to accept all students, and with open arms. They continue on to give you a place to start your enrollment and even meet other new students. The attraction is the excitement UA’s website shows at a student being accepted into their school, and some of that excitement rubbing off on the person reading the site. Whether they are accepted or not it’s good to see the entire process of enrollment, instead of a watered-down version. To make their site even more welcoming, UA also provides multiple videos of students, faculty, and staff giving their experience at the University of Arizona.

            Sometimes it may be a hard time trying to decide if one would actually want to go to the school. So, to ease that worry or stress UA provides information and videos on student life and a glance a UA. The first video would be a day the life of wildcat, Lorenzo Johnson. Lorenzo is a senior majoring in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law, and the first talks about how he is actually from Michigan. His day starts off with him eating breakfast, going to the school’s recreational center, working at a local aquarium, and even planning homecoming in his club. Even though he is from a different state, the video shows how well he’s adjusted to living with the sun shining down on him 300 days out of the year. Now, if the video wasn’t then maybe the facts will be a bit more convincing. When looking at the ‘At A Glance’ portion of the website you’d see facts about UA…at a glance. They for one have over 300 majors with 36,503 undergraduates and 10,492 graduates. Then they have a 46% diverse student body and they are a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). Lastly, 9 out of 10 students receive financial aid, making it comfortable and more relaxing to new students about not being able to afford this or that. With UA’s website, it would never be hard to impress any new student.

            UA used the strategy of assumption and case studies to help them attract students to attend their school. From being excited to any student visiting their website to helpful videos of current students, these factors all help to persuade students to attend.

Response

            Now, would I go to this school? Yes, yes I would. I am one of those students who have no idea what they want to do yet and would love to use college as a main source of experience. With UA’s 300+ majors, I could play around with them a little bit in my first semester as a freshman there and hopefully decide on what I’d like to do officially. In addition, I’ve been trying to value independence, trying to break away from needing somebody to help me sign this paper, or having my mom set up all my appointments. I know going to a whole different state is a big head start in becoming independent, but I’m always open to new challenges. It would be nice to attend a school where it’s diverse, academically challenging, and overall welcoming.

References:

University of Arizona. University of Arizona | The University of Arizona. (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.arizona.edu/

Hardworking is one of many words I’ll use to describe Mensur Muzyin. In his first year in college, Mensur is intended to major in Computer and Electrical Engineering. He is from Ethiopia and has just moved to America to start college. With this change, Mensur had to adjust to the learning standards of America rather than Ethiopia. Overcoming the struggles of taking on 17 credits and working 20 hours Mensur doesn’t waste his time. So far he has done well and plans to build a strong foundation for his future career.

Some people could never guess what it’s like moving from one country to another, especially to go to school. There could be tons of barriers holding one back from fully grasping another culture. In Mensur’s case, it would be how the material is taught in the two countries. One example would be in math, in American schools PEMDAS is taught, which means parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. However, in Ethiopia BODMAS is taught, which means brackets, order, division, multiplication, addition, and subtraction. It’s a small difference compared to many others, but if one from a different country was asked to solve the American PEMDAS they wouldn’t be able to unless they did the research.

A small link could be found between Mensur’s situation and the reading “COVID-ERA College: Are Students Satisfied?” This article is about how college students feel about coming back to school during the time of covid, like are they ready to come back? Will it be easy for them? How can we help? In a case like Mensur’s, it would be easy to make sure a transition like country swapping is as smooth as possible. With the right protocols because of covid, it would be easy to set up a better system or program to welcome international students, rather than make them go through a stressful process just to get admitted, then more processes to get settled with classes.

Mensur is dedicated and focused on setting himself up for success in the future. Taking on 17 credits in school and 20 hours of work and still doing good in school with no complaints. As a student, he has a promising future ahead of him and with no doubt, he will d anything to keep up the great work.

References:

Ezarik, M. (2021, March 24). Student experiences during COVID and campus reopening concerns. Retrieved February 9, 2022, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/24/student-experiences-during-covid-and-campus-reopening-concerns?utm_source=pocket_mylist