So I'm here with Cameron Pittman, who is a course developer here at Udacity.
He's going to talk to us a little bit about metacognition.
So thank you for talking to us today.
>> Yeah, happy to be here.
>> So the first thing I want to ask is,
the reason why I'm talking to Cameron about metacognition is that Udacity has
started a new type of debate class they call R&R.
And can you tell us a little bit about what that is?
>> Sure, R&R is not a replacement for the classroom.
It's just another way to engage students.
Our classes are essentially a series of, as you guys probably well know, videos,
questions, problems, projects, and some short readings.
And that's actually where we're extending the classroom here with R&R.
R&R is actually, I think it stands for reading and reflection.
It's essentially a set of topics online or blog posts or
news articles or any kind of writings online that are relevant to the course.
And what we simply do is ask students to read them and
then reflect in the forums.
It's just another way of trying to engage students and
introducing them to material that's out in the world.
>> So it's worth noting that when they started the R&R way of doing classes
here at Udacity I didn't know about it.
And they did it in parallel to me designing this class.
And so this R&R approach is very much what we do in this class where
it's all about readings and going out and finding your own resources and
reflecting on them and sharing them with classmates.
But something I'd ask for both these students in this class as well as for
general understanding of the way this is used, is this for everybody, or
is this a kind of approach that's specifically for
people who don't learn from traditional methods,
that don't like to learn from lectures, that they need an alternate way?
Or is this the better way to learn for everybody?
>> I would never couch something as a better way to learn for
everybody because everybody learns differently.
There are different modes of learning.
Some people learn better visually, auditorially, or in-discussionally.
Okay, that's not a word.
>> [LAUGH] >> But anyways, so this is just another
way of introducing students to material, that they wouldn't normally see.
And I think this is a great method, because as a developer, which is what
we're training people to become, you have to be up to date with current news.
You have to be up to date with the current thoughts on whatever technology
it is you're working with.
And R&R is just a great way to reflect that.
So, its not replacing anything and
I don't think its necessarily a better way to learn.
It's just another way of introducing students to the world around them.
I like it a lot because it doesn't just teach you the content
that you're learning about.
It doesn't teach you how to design a form or how to write a line of code.
But it also teaches you that in the future when you encounter a problem that
you don't know how to solve, how would you go out and solve it?
And that's almost more important.
It's one thing to teach someone something but
it's something else to teach them how to solve their future problems.
>> And not to mention it also introduces students to developer communities.
You start meeting other people or seeing other people who are interested in
the same technologies and it gives students a chance to get involved.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
So since this is an Ed Tech class though, one question I would have is,
is technology, aside from us being in computer science, so let's imagine for
a second we're doing R&R in an English class or
something like that, how does technology actually help with this?
Is it a core part of the R&R process, or is it just that, because we're teaching
computer science here at Udacity we tend to use technology along with this.
>> Well, I think technology in this case is just a better way to do paperwork.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> You know,
you could easily do this in the class.
Millions of teachers probably have.
You assign a reading to your students, you get them to read.
And that's essentially all we're doing here.
And technology just makes it easier.
It's not necessarily better or worse,
it's just easier and more accessible to students.
>> Yeah, it sounds like it introduces a more rapid feedback cycle because
instead of having to go to the library, find an encyclopedia,
read about it, go home and realize I read the wrong thing,
I can go through that cycle in a minute instead of in a day.
So it really let's them go through that more often.
So if we have any students in the class who want to apply an approach like this,
an R&R style approach, or an approach that really fosters metacognition in
their project that they develop for this class, do you have any suggestions for
what they should think about while they're doing it?
>> Yeah, sure.
So one of the nice things about R&R is it let's students go at their own pace,
and gives them control over what they're learning, and
then what they do with what they're learning.
Because they're simply reflecting on it, and maybe they hate the article,
maybe they love the article, maybe they want to share it, maybe they don't.
But either way they have the power to do all these things.
And that actually is a huge part of learning is having the power to control
what you're learning and how you're learning and
what you're going to do with what you've learned.
And so any kind of tool that gives students that kind of power is
obviously a good way to go.
>> Great. Well, thank you so much for
talking to us.
>> Yeah. Happy to be here.