Sports, Science, and Senioritus

It's almost August, and that means there's only one month left before I officially begin my senior year of high school! I've been busy with the Math & Science Academy capstone project, but I do admit to procrastinating when it comes to my blog posts. Before I even turned in my proposal, I began with sixteen hours of capacity building back in March through Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative, taking a basic online course in human anatomy and physiology. The first subjects I focused on for the purposes of our school's annual symposium were those systems associated with structure, support, protection, and movement. This included the skeletal system, the muscular system, and the integumentary system. Let's rewind back to March 14, 2015 at 12:45 PM.

"HOW TO SUCCEED IN ONLINE COURSEWARE"

That was the header of the first unit in the Carnegie Mellon course. The course was entirely self-taught, and I would receive no credit for it, so I could have skipped this section and moved on the the basics of anatomy. However, I thought I might yet learn something from this introduction.

It began by explaining metacognition, or thinking about thinking. This is the awareness of yourself as a learner and your ability to regulate your own learning. The Five Skills of Metacognition are as follows:

1. ASSESS the task - what is involved or required in completing a task and what are your constraints on time or resources?

2. EVALUATE your strengths and weaknesses.

3. PLAN an approach - taking into account your assessment and evaluation.

4. APPLY strategies and monitor your performance continually.

5. REFLECT and adjust if needed - look back on what did and didn't work to change your approach next time.

Pretty simple, right? There are essentially two types of learning required for an educational task. Type one is knowledge and understanding. This is recalling previously learned information and showing a basic grasp of material. Study techniques for this type of learning may include:

- Creating basic classification charts

- Creating flashcards for terms to learn descriptions and definitions

- Labeling and coloring organ system structures

- Or creating a flow chart that puts structures or events in sequence

Type two is reasoning proficiency. This is the use of facts to find relationships (application and analysis), combining ideas to form a new whole (synthesis), and making decisions based on the info (evaluation). Study techniques to use in this case include:

- Completing a Venn Diagram

- Watching animated videos of a physiological process, then creating an outline or drawing of the process

- Or reading case studies, which are more interesting than one would think

The courseware also provided an extensive set of context tools. Explanatory content included an introduction of the basic structures learned in each chapter. The important terms and definitions introduced and used throughout the course were highlighted as vocabulary. Examples illustrated concepts in context using specific conditions or events. Images were abundant and typically included more detail than the expository text, and walkthrough videos were provided, allowing me to visually explore concepts by going through the steps in a process.

By the time I was done with the first unit, it was already 1:30 PM. I decided to break for lunch and come back to my work later.

#metacognition #seniorproject #capacitybuilding