September 15, 2025

Our focus this week is the Universal Design for Learning principle of “emotional capacity.” This is a broad principle, so in this Teaching Minute, we're looking at 9.3: Promote individual and collective reflection. A key aspect of this is metacognition—reflecting on one's own learning and thinking.

The goal for metacognition is to help students go beyond learning the content to developing awareness of themselves, reflecting on the learning practices that work best for them, why they might be getting stuck or falling behind, and even what emotions come up when they're navigating coursework.

Encouraging metacognition as part of emotional capacity isn't about creating “better students,” it's about helping them become resilient thinkers who understand their own ways of learning with the ability to adapt to challenges that may arise throughout their time in higher education.

The CTL's page on metacognition outlines these 6 focal points:

1. Start with clear learning goals
   • Begin each class by sharing the learning goals out loud and/or in writing. (Tips for writing learning objectives may be helpful.)
2. Offer space to plan before a task
   • Before a reading, paper, or project, invite students to jot down how they plan to begin or what steps they'll try. Ask: What's my first step? What do I already know about how I learn best in this kind of situation?
3. Check in during learning
   • At the start of class, a brief in-class prompt might be: What do I already know about this?
   • An exit slip might prompt: What's one thing I understand better now? One thing I'm still unsure about?
4. Support reflection around major assignments
   • Use an “exam wrapper” or a short reflection prompt before and after an exam or paper:
     Before: What's my preparation plan?
     After: What helped? What would I change next time?
5. Help students track their progress over time
   • Encourage students to reflect: What's coming up? Where do I feel behind or ahead? You might ask them to post this using the Brightspace assignment tool as a text submission, so it's easy for you to quickly review.
   • Point students to Brightspace tools like Checklists or Completion Tracking.
6. Model and support strategic thinking
   • “Think aloud” as you're demonstrating how to solve a problem, or share an example: Here's how I'd approach this… or If I got stuck, I'd try…

As always, if you'd like to explore this further in your teaching, please feel free to book a consultation with one of us at the CTL.

Best regards,

The Center for Teaching & Learning
www.uvm.edu/ctl
ctl@uvm.edu