meta-cognition

Much of the "New Pedagogy" is about getting students to reflect on what they are learning, how they are learning, and I suppose why it all matters: thinking about thinking, in other words.

So, for example, in the first bit of my online course, I don't just tell them what the course goals are (as I would do in an "Old Pedagogy" course). I share my goals, and then I ask them to write about what THEIR learning goals are. I am curious to see how this will work - in the past I've asked students to write briefly about what they hope to learn in the course, and I usually get variants of "everything about Human Geography." Usually they don't really know what human geography is (and who could expect them to?) so they really don't know what to say. I am hoping that thinking about their own learning goals will produce thoughts that are more useful.

We'll see.