Boosting student metacognition skills with technology 

Boosting students’ metacognition skills can enhance their overall performance and wellbeing – and technology is playing an increasingly important role in this process

The term ‘metacognition’ refers to an individual’s ability to plan, monitor, evaluate and make changes to their own learning behaviours in order to confront challenges more effectively; it has been demonstrated to boost motivation and wellbeing, and can help students learn more efficiently and effectively.

For students, enhanced metacognitive skills enables them to recognise their own cognitive abilities, direct their own learning, evaluate their performance, understand what caused their successes or failures, and learn new strategies. It can also help them learn how to revise because it optimises their basic cognitive processes, including memory, attention, activation of prior knowledge and ability to solve or complete a task.

Technology is playing an increasingly important role in boosting students’ metacognition skills – examples to explore include: 

• Online rubrics: these can help to measure a student’s progress, identify achievement milestones and assist them in checking their understanding of topics by identifying where they succeed and where they feel challenged.

• Digital portfolios: building a digital portfolio of learning can help students to share information with both teaching staff and fellow students and provides a really useful bank of revision materials.

• Mobile device management software: MDM software can help students to regulate their screentime. 

• Classroom management software: this helps teachers to ensure students are only using websites and apps that are relevant to their learning activities. 

• Creative tools: students can create their own learning resources, such as videos, podcasts or infographics, to develop their metacognition; this will help them to start thinking more deeply about their subjects. 

Research shows that metacognition can increase student motivation as they feel more in control of their own learning, which can build a more positive attitude towards school and learning, resulting in improved academic performances and better behaviour.