Connecting Metacognitive Knowledge to GIS Instruction
Dr. Peter Arthur, Senior Instructor from University of British Columbia – Okanagan, describes Metacognitive Knowledge as anything one knows about thinking, especially one's own.
Dr Arthur further breaks this down into 3 types of knowledge:
- Declarative knowledge - Knowledge about one's self as a learner and what can influence one's performance.
- Procedural knowledge - Skills, heuristics, and strategies. Knowledge about how to do things.
- Conditional knowledge - Knowledge about when and in what conditions certain knowledge is useful.
Dr Arthur goes further by defining Metacognitive Regulation as the process of managing one's own learning; including planning, monitoring, and evaluating.
As educators, we deal with 4 things that are simultaneously and rapidly changing: GIS technology and methods, educational institutions, student expectations, and societal issues. In such a dynamic environment, being thoughtful about our instructional practice is critical to ensuring that our offerings are relevant and innovative, and critical to ensuring that students are learning and growing in meaningful ways. Connecting metacognitive knowledge to GIS instruction can help guide instructors in planning activities, courses, and programs, including assessing student work and building in plenty of self-reflection and engagement. Consider the following (and also in video form, here).
2. Being purposeful about procedural knowledge can help faculty structure lessons, readings, courses, and programs to be as effective as possible when they teach with GIS. GIS is a system, and thus is inherently complex, containing the ability to collect, map, analyze, and communicate geo-information. GIS is also complex because using it, we are teaching about the real world, which is dynamic across time and space. Our world is a system of interconnected systems; it is a set of spheres (biosphere, anthrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and others), and a set of cycles (carbon cycle, hydrologic cycle, and others). Procedural knowledge helps us thoughtfully consider how to teach with GIS. Procedural knowledge keenly matters as instructional components are designed. Nowadays, there is no shortage of tools, data sets, problems, and approaches that can be used in GIS instruction. As instructors, we cannot and should not use all of these tools and data sets. That said, what should be chosen, and what should be left out? How can our courses be structured and taught in face-to-face, hybrid, and online settings? How should these courses be taught so that students can connect what they learn to their other courses and other life experiences, and so that they can become change agents in the workplace?
3. Conditional knowledge matters in course and program design, too: When and in what conditions is certain knowledge useful? Consider the following: Should students need to know about map projections? About field data collection? About symbology and classification? About spatial analysis? About communicating with dashboards and infographics? And if so, to what extent, and in what contexts?
The answers to these questions can and should vary as modern students come from a wider variety of backgrounds and as GIS is taught in a wider array of disciplines. I would argue that understanding and working with map projections, for example, should be different for a student in GIScience versus a student in business. The student in GIScience should have a firm grasp on how map projections fits into, horizontal and vertical datums, measurement accuracy, map perceptions, and to the greater geodetic issues. The student in business does not have time or need to know all of this--they really want to focus on making maps and analyzing demographics, consumer preferences, supply chain, and business locations, for example. But I contend that even those business students should understand something about map projections and why they matter: I would frame it in an activity such as "routing your ships through the Arctic Ocean"--and how the measurements in the routes and supply chains vary as the map projection varies. Thus, the approach is different and the amount of time spent with each group of students varies.
4. Metacognitive regulation is also helpful as faculty consider their own learning in GIS. What do you, as a faculty member, need to know about GIS to teach it as a course in a GIS program? What do you need to know to teach it in biology, urban planning, business, data science, or in other diciplines? Faculty are usually learning alongside their students; this lifelong learning attitude and opportunity is what drew many into education in the first place. Most GIS instructors I know are keenly aware that they cannot be the "sage on the stage" and know everything about GIS before they can teach it. In fact, they are aware that if they wait until they are a GIS expert, they will never actually get to the point of 100% expertise and confidence. I have been using GIS since 1985, and I am still learning. Metacognitive regulation also helps faculty evaluate their own learning. And resources such as the Geospatial Technology Competency Model can help faculty and students identify gaps in their skills and knowledge, and then take steps to fill those gaps.
5. How can faculty evaluate their students' skills and content knowledge? How should they evaluate their students? As educational research makes painfully clear, it is often difficult to assess and quantify what students are gaining, especially when they are using any sort of inquiry-driven instructional tool such as GIS. Assessing skills gained with GIS is more difficult than assessing a worksheet of filled-in-answers or a standardized test. GIS is a valuable instructional tool in part because it is teaching students more than just "the right answers". You are teaching GIS because you truly believe and have witnessed, at all levels and in all disciplines, that students are gaining skills in critical thinking, problem solving, and spatio-temporal thinking. They are gaining skills in communication and working with data. They also gain content knowledge--in population change, how ecoregions work, weather and climate, river systems, crime or health patterns, or any other topic that the GIS analysis is applied to. They apply the geographic perspective and examine change over space and time. These sets of skills and knowledge are increasingly assessed with story maps, in class and online oral presentations, videos, and other means that become a part of the students' professional porfolios that they bring with them into the workplace upon graduation.
I look forward to your comments!