STLHE 2016 SAPES

Metacognition can be defined as cognition about cognition; or thinking about thinking. For educators it involves helping students become knowledgeable about their cognitive processes (declarative, procedural, conditional knowledge), and how to regulate them (plan, monitor, evaluate) in order learn, make decisions, solve problems, generate ideas and perform other cognitive tasks. Creative metacognition focuses on cognitive tasks that involve generating, choosing and evaluating creative ideas and then apply those ideas to develop products and services, new solutions to problems and other innovative tasks.

The challenge for educators is that course curriculums are already crowded and expecting faculty to teach creative thinking and metacognition, in addition to discipline-specific content, is problematic. Faculty members may be challenged to teach students creative thinking strategies given the content demands and time constraints

Our work teaching business students Design Thinking, and more specifically Human Centered Design (HCD) a variant of Design Thinking, indicates that students can acquire and apply creative thinking and creative metacognition strategies and processes while learning discipline specific knowledge. Within the context of HCD projects, students encounter problematic situations that expose conflicting, paradoxical demands. They must overcome the tendency to engage in either/or thinking and choose generate ideas, solutions, and experiences for the end user that resolve contrary demands.

In an engineering creative problem solving course, creative thinking techniques were introduced and practiced in order to encourage students to consciously and deliberately apply them both course related projects and in their personal challenges.

This session will explore the literature, strategies, methodologies and experiences helping business and engineering students develop creative metacognition. Participants will be expected to share their experiences helping students develop creative metacognition.