Projects

New!

• Try Stencils 1.(12 to 20 minutes for 60 item exercise)
• Try Stencils 2.(10 to 20 minutes for 20 item exercise)
• Retrieve your Stencils 1 results
• Retrieve your Stencils 2 results
• The Nature of Metacognition
• Understanding Stencils Results
• Stencils interview results (How people think while doing the task)

Metacognitive behaviour has been recognized as a key part of learning. It appears in such behaviours as planning, and reflecting upon, predicting, or estimating cognitive performance. It is typically present during early stages of learning a new skill or new knowledge, and gradually subsides as skill and knowledge become automatic. For example, during the early stages of learning to drive novice drivers will go through steps in their heads, try to recall rules they had learned, and perhaps consciously guide their hand-foot control if they're learning to drive a standard. For most, it's not long before all this conscious activity disappears, and driving knowledge and skill become automatic. In fact introducing metacognitive thought into an already automated behaviour disrupts it. Skilled drivers will notice that if they try to consciously monitor their driving behaviour, driving will become more difficult (and more dangerous).

Stencil Stacking

The Stencil Stacking task is an exercise that demonstrates one of the many metacognitive behaviours: reflection. It is assumed that the delay typically present following a failed attempt is due to reflective behaviour. If you ask learners what they were thinking following their mistakes, they will typically answer they were trying to figure out where they went wrong, or trying to verify that they had actually made a mistake. Both of these behaviours are metacognitive in nature. Little reflection occurs following passed attempts. The reflective behaviour that occurs following failed attempts can be interpreted as "learning from one's mistakes", perhaps one of the most effective learning strategies

Stencil Stacking Tasks

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Stencils 1

Stencils 1 (12 to 20 minutes for 60 item version)
This exercise is primarily one of visual deductive reasoning. Users must determine whether a set of stencil images, when stacked in order, produces a target-stacked image. To try the task, register as a user on the Stencils 1 Login screen, then login.

Stencils 2

Stencils 2 (10 to 20 minutes for 20 item version)
This challenging exercise is generally completed with a combination of both inductive and deductive reasoning strategies. Users must select from a collection of 12 stencils, the ones that stack to produce the target-stacked image. This task is more difficult than the Stencils 1 task. If you created a username and password for Stencils1, they will work here.

The Stencils Stacking tasks are intended to help users discover the behaviour of "learning from one's mistakes". By studying their results, users will notice that it generally takes longer to continue after failed responses than it does after passed responses. This reflective behaviour is a generalizable learning strategy that learners can apply to many learning situations. The goal should be to understand when reflective behaviour occurs, and to apply the strategy to other learning situations.