INTRODUCTION:
Many underlying processes influence and guide our learning. We can help improve our learning experience by better understanding these processes. Consider, for instance, optimal challenge. This is the balance between difficulty level of a task and the individual's abilities to perform the task. An optimal task is neither too difficult nor too easy for a learner. Procrastination, or the tendency to put off completing tasks, can be a result of tasks that are out of alignment with a person's optimal level of challenge for a given task. Someone might avoid or delay completing a task as a result of that perceived challenge or a variety of other factors. Metacognition is a cognitive psychology term that loosely means “thinking about your thinking.” Being a reflective learner can help you identify challenges, set reasonable goals, and make forward progress on your work.
Learning about these skills can help you to become even more aware of your own thinking and learning processes and how to enhance them. For this assessment, you will reflect on your own learning processes to better understand your learning strengths and challenges. You will also formulate a plan for growth.
OVERVIEW:
For this assessment, you will reflect on your own learning processes to better understand your learning strengths and challenges as well as formulate a plan for growth.
PREPARATION:
Use the resources for this assessment to explore each of the following cognitive concepts:
- Metacognition.
- Optimal challenge and performance.
- Motivation and procrastination.
As you learn about metacognition, optimal challenge and performance, and motivation and procrastination, think about your areas of strength and greatest areas for growth in relation to these learning topics. Be prepared to describe these strengths and areas for growth.
Professional Sources and Scholarly Research
In your paper, you will support your analysis through the use of professional sources, such as textbooks, information from professional organizations and educational sites, and research findings from scholarly professional journals. You can use the resources provided, or you can find professional and scholarly sources of your own choosing from the Capella library.
If you are unfamiliar with scholarly journals, review these library resources:
INSTRUCTIONS:
Using the Personal Learning Analysis Template [DOCX], write a 5–7 page paper that addresses your learning processes in the following areas:
- Metacognition.
- Optimal challenge and performance.
- Motivation and procrastination.
In your paper, do the following:
- Analyze your skills in specific areas of metacognition, supporting your thinking with information from professional and scholarly sources.
- Analyze the role of optimal challenge in your academic performance, supporting your thinking with information from professional and scholarly sources.
- Analyze the role of motivation and procrastination in your academic performance, supporting your thinking with information from professional and scholarly sources.
- Describe your areas of strength and areas for growth in learning.
- Describe your strengths in one or two paragraphs.
- Describe your areas for growth in at least one fully developed paragraph.
- Choose one area of growth and create a plan to strengthen this area. Identify some strategies and steps that you'll take to continue to build this area of skill. Support your strategies with information from professional or scholarly sources.
REQUIREMENTS:
Your assessment should also meet the following requirements:
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- Check your spelling and grammar. Visit the Writing Center's Microsoft Editor page for tips on using Microsoft Editor to support your writing.
- Please feel free to write in first person (I, me, et cetera).
- Sources: Use a minimum of four resources. Sources can be a combination of course resources, professional sources (such as a textbook), and peer-reviewed scholarly articles (no more than eight years old).
- Note on the scoring rubric that to reach distinguished scoring, you will need to apply information from professional scholarly journals to support your analysis.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA style and formatting guidelines. Refer to Evidence and APA page on Campus for guidance.
- Use in-text citations throughout your work and provide full references at the end of your paper.
- Template: Use the Personal Learning Analysis Template [DOCX]for your paper.
- Length: 5–7 typed, double-spaced pages of content in addition to a title page and references page.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
SOURCES:
Motivation
The following chapter in your Adult Learning: Linking Theory and Practice text will help you learn more about motivational processes related to learning:
- Chapter 8, “Motivation and Learning.”
Optimal Challenge
View the following interactive media, which introduces some of the theory and research behind the idea of optimal challenge and how it relates to performance:
- Optimal Challenge and Flow.
Use this section of your reading list for additional resources related to optimal challenge, flow, and optimal work environments:
- Assessment 3: Optimal Challenge and Performance.
Use this section of your reading list to access resources that introduce metacognition, discuss some of the history and research, and provide examples:
- Assessment 3: Metacognition.
Depending on what sources you read, you will discover that there are three or more components of metacognition. For the purpose of this assessment, focus your research on these three broad components of metacognition:
- Planning—self-regulation.
- Monitoring—self-monitoring.
- Evaluating—self-assessing.
Procrastination happens for many reasons. You may be a person who doesn't procrastinate, or who procrastinates on certain tasks but not others.
- For a self-directed assessment of your personal procrastination style, access the following Capella Campus resource:
- Overcoming Procrastination.
- From this page, click the link for the Procrastination Quiz.
- Answer the questions under the heading “Discover Your Style: The Six Styles of Procrastination.”
- Overcoming Procrastination.
Keep in mind that the six categories are generalizations (not scientific) and are only meant to give you an idea of where you might be having some challenges in accomplishing what you desire in the timeframe needed. This can give you the opportunity to reflect on what might be interfering in your work.
- Read additional resources in this section of your reading list:
- Assessment 3: Procrastination.
Familiarize yourself with what critical thinking entails. The ability to think critically is an important skill to have in your personal and professional skill toolbox.
- Adult Learning: Linking Theory and Practice:
- Chapter 11, "Critical Thinking and Critical Perspectives."
- In this chapter, learn about the basis for critical thinking and about what critical thinking is not.
- Chapter 11, "Critical Thinking and Critical Perspectives."
Paul and Elder
Two leaders in the field of critical thinking, Linda Elder and Richard Paul, established a model of critical thinking and the Foundation for Critical Thought. The Foundation’s website, linked in the section of your reading list below, is open and full of good information on critical thinking and its elements and standards.
- Assessment 3: Universal Intellectual Standards.
From this Capella Campus page, listen to Elder and Paul discuss the elements of thought and the intellectual standards of critical thinking:
- Qualities of Thinking.
- Click into the Analytic Stage of Thinking to read about the elements that Richard Paul described in the audio:
- Concepts.
- Point of view.
- Information.
- Interpretation and Inference.
- Question at issue.
- Assumptions.
- Implications and consequences.
- Purpose.
- Click into the Analytic Stage of Thinking to read about the elements that Richard Paul described in the audio:
The Wheel of Reason
Visit the following section of your reading list to read about the wheel of reason:
- Assessment 3: Critical Thinking Community: The Wheel of Reason.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page to view an interactive piece of the Elements of Thought wheel. You can hold your cursor over various elements in the wheel to read more about them. Also note the intellectual standards at the top of the wheel—specifically those on how the elements and standards work together. Be sure to view and read more about the elements of reasoning.
To wrap up this section, visit the following self-assessment, found on your Capella Campus;
GRADING COMPETENCIES:
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
- Competency 2: Analyze a personal learning process through theory and research.
- Analyze optimal challenge and performance in personal learning processes and support analysis with professional sources.
- Analyze procrastination and motivation in personal learning processes and support analysis with professional sources.
- Competency 4: Apply metacognitive strategies to assess personal performance quality.
- Analyze metacognition in personal learning processes and support analysis with professional sources.
- Describe areas of personal strength and areas for growth in learning.
- Describe a plan to strengthen an area for personal learning.
- Competency 5: Communicate with clear purpose, organization, evidence, tone, and sentence structure.
- Address the assessment purpose in a well-organized text, incorporating appropriate evidence and tone in grammatically sound sentences.
- Apply APA style, including in-text citations and full references for sources.