Metacognitive Strategies and Online Learning

Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Research in Education

Year: 2019

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Metacognitive Strategies and Online Learning

Maria de Fátima Goulão

ABSTRACT: 

Knowing how to learn, thinking about one’s own thinking is crucial in the learning system. We call this phenomenon Metacognition. Itdenotes a deep knowledge of the cognitive processes involved in learning and the control of them. This allow student autonomy. In a context of online learning we find that metacognition is an important factor for student success. Based on this assumption, we investigated to better understand the metacognitive strategies of a student group in an online environment. We also sought to know the influence that age and gender can have on this. We had a total sample of 475 students, both sexes. Its age varies between 21 and 64 years, whose average is 39.42, SD 8.34.As instrument we used a scale composed of 20 items related to metacognitive strategies. Given the elements that constitute metacognition -knowledge about cognition (KC) and Regulation of cognition (RC) -we divide our scale into 2 groups. We obtained an overall of .949, KC of .898 and RC of .905. We found statistically significant differences in the 3 analyzes (General, KC and RC) in the variable gender. The same is not true forage. Through the X2test we found a significant association between the overall scale and age. Regarding gender, the values point to a dependence between variables. Based on these results it seems appropriate to continue to invest in this area to make students more competent in their learning process. That is, give students a greater ability to control goals and become more aware of their thinking process.

Keywords:adults;learning;metacognition;online learning;strategies