Metacognition

I have recently run across this term of metacognition from an article from PIDP 3250 by Maryellen Weimer, "Three Ways to Help Students Become More Metacognitively Aware". I can appreciate the idea behind it of monitoring and evaluating your own learning, as this has done great things for me....once I learned the skill, which was during my Masters a few years ago. Once you are able to look past the traditional methods of learning stretegies and evualuating yourself, it opens up the door to understanding and interpreting information at a deeper level. My struggle is, as an instructor, how can I promote this in the classroom without the students being more confused. If students come into the class with no practice of reflecting on their learning, self evaluating, or learning how they learn, it can be a daunting thing to ask of this. I think one way I could start is by encouraging learners to be more reflective. By being more reflective, opens up the doors to questions like 'why do I think the way I do". Maybe once you open the doors to that, students can see the internal satisfication as the deeper learning about themselves? I guess this is something I will have to wait and see, and try and tweek from there on....