An empirical exploration of metacognitive assessment activities in a third-year civil engineering hydraulics course

Abstract

Threshold concepts are transformative, integrative, and provocative; understanding these difficult concepts allows students to be capable of solving advanced problems. This investigation and evaluation of a metacognitive curricular approach explore variation in students' and teachers' discernment of structural complexity of concepts and its potential for enhancing students' learning and conceptual understanding of threshold concepts. Three trials of a metacognitive assessment activity administered to two cohorts of a civil engineering course (n = 276 and n = 264) were investigated. Students were presented with several answers (varying in structural complexity) to a question about a threshold concept and asked to mark each response. Quantitative analyses compared students' and teachers' marking schemes within and across trials, and qualitative analyses explored students' written reflections following the activity. Students' justifications for their marking schemes, their reflections on the activity's usefulness, and the convergence of students' and teachers' marking schemes suggest that the activity supported deep forms of student learning.

Keywords:

• metacognition
• threshold concepts
• formative assessment

About the authors

Jan H. F. Meyer is the originator of the notion of ‘threshold concepts’ and is a Professor of Education in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland, Australia. He previously was a Professor of Education at Durham University in the UK.

David B. Knight is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech in the USA. He was a postdoctoral fellow in engineering education at the University of Queensland in the School of Civil Engineering (Australia) when conducting this research.

David P. Callaghan is a Senior Lecturer of Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Coastal and Hydraulic Engineering at the University of Queensland in the School of Civil Engineering.

Tom E. Baldock is a Professor in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland. He is the Chair of the School Teaching and Learning Committee and leads a number of projects aimed at enabling teaching scholarship and enhancing student learning outcomes.