Metacognition Matters for Learning: An NYU Teach Talk

I’m a good student. In high school I worked hard and did well in school, generally studying for 3-4 hours the night before an exam the next day. For the most part, this served me well. I made Honor Roll, joined the National Honor Society, consistently held a GPA of 3.8 or higher and graduated in the top 10% of my class. 

So imagine my shock when my first semester at university yielded a GPA below a 3.5. I quickly cycled through a rapid series of thoughts and emotions. First there was panic, followed by confusion. Then anger settled in with a strong desire to blame someone else (my instructors were surely to blame!) Then came the crushing sense of failure, interpreting this “low” GPA as a personal failure that deeply challenged my sense of self. I was a good student - this is who I am! Yet this GPA showed me that I perhaps wasn’t as good a student as I thought I was. 

If I could go back and talk to that younger version of me, I would first hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay. Then I’d want to talk to her about how people learn. The tools of blunt force memorization that had served me so well in high school would not be applicable to much of my courses in the university setting. School wasn’t for grades, it was for learning. Instead of rote recall, it would have been better to engage with metacognition, often described as “thinking about thinking.” 

18-year old me would have benefited greatly from the Metacognition Matters for Learning session that I had the pleasure of attending on March 19, 2025 TeachTalk at NYU. In this session, facilitators Jenni Quilter (Executive Director, Expository Writing Program & Assistant Vice Dean for General Education, A&S), Duncan Smith (Associate Professor of Biology), and Katie Schneider Paolantonio (Clinical Professor of Biology) discussed how important it is to understand our students and how they study. More pointedly, it’s crucial for us to understand that our students may not know how to engage in deeper learning practices and study habits and that there are ways that we can support those students to change their study habits. 

Some key take-aways for me include: 

• Students crave new ways of studying. When instructors take the time to teach students about how learning works, they tend to crave more information about how they can improve their study tactics. 

• We can show students new ways of studying. When students perform poorly, their instinct is to double-down on their poor study habits. It may be beneficial to explicitly talk about how students should be engaging with course materials in order to encourage more effective learning habits. 

• Ask students to share assumptions about instructors. This metacognitive exercise encourages students to think outside of their own process and think about why an instructor might be posing a particular question or designing activities. 

To engage in deeper learning, we must engage in self-reflection and think about (and challenge) the ways we have been historically educated. As educators, it’s up to us to help our students begin that journey.