A Hallway Conversation in the Natural Sciences
I’ve said many times that I wish every consulting interaction I have were automatically recorded. Some of the most meaningful insights and breakthroughs happen when I least expect them.
Here’s one that stayed with me.
It was a cold Wednesday morning—January 22, 2020, around 10:15 a.m. I was walking through the faculty offices in the Natural Sciences Division at Denison University when Dr. Andy McCall, a biology professor, peeked out of his office and asked if I had a few minutes.
As soon as I sat down, he told me something had shifted in his course since I began working with students in the division about a year earlier. Students were engaging more deeply with the content. They were performing better. The discourse in class had become more lively and enriching. He told me he was enjoying teaching more.
Then he named a quiet doubt that many faculty carry but rarely articulate: he wasn’t sure whether he was truly challenging his students. “I think I am,” he said, “but I don’t know for sure.”
From ‘Basic’ Homework to Metacognitive Analysis
Rather than answer that abstractly, I asked him to show me his students’ most recent work. He pulled out a seven-question homework assignment—one he considered fairly basic.
Using that assignment, I guided him through a metacognitive analysis of each question, unpacking the layered cognitive work required to complete what appeared to be “simple” prompts. I also described the types of cognitive labor students would need to engage in outside of class to meet his expectations and produce the quality of knowledge he was assessing.
The Homework Set: Seven Questions, Many Demands
| Homework Questions |
| 1. What is evolution? How is it different from natural selection? |
| 2. What are Darwin’s four postulates that lead to natural selection? |
| 3. Please explain how a pesticide-resistance gene might spread in a population of planthoppers living on soybean, in terms of the four postulates. For example, your first sentence might state that there are both pesticide-resistant and pesticide-susceptible planthoppers living on the soybean (variance in phenotype). |
| 4. My friend tells me that the rabbits in his yard have been perfected by natural selection—they blend into the shrubs, reproduce fast, and have good hearing. Why is he mistaken? |
| 5. Please calculate (a) the genotypic frequencies and (b) the allelic frequencies in a population of organisms with the following composition: 15 AA individuals, 4 Aa individuals, and 10 aa individuals. |
| 6. Do natural selection and genetic drift increase or decrease the allelic richness (number of different alleles) of a population? Explain your answer. |
| 7. How can inbreeding depression lower population numbers after a bout of genetic drift in a population? |
Using the ThinkWell–LearnWell Diagram as a Shared Map
Fortunately, I had already trained on the ThinkWell-LearnWell Diagram (TLD), which gave us a shared lens and language for the conversation.
What we uncovered was both revealing and encouraging. To complete the assignment successfully, students had to do far more than follow instructions or recall information. They had to establish relationships. They had to dissect relationships.
This is the kind of empathic design experience my consultancy is built around: an expert who routinely operates at a high level of cognitive complexity, and students who are often encountering that level of thinking for the first time.
Two Lenses: Question Analysis and Academic Work
I broke each question into two parts:
- The Question Analysis
- The Effect on Academic Work
The Question Analysis: I used the TLD to identify the specific types and levels of thinking embedded within each question.
The Effect on Academic Work: I explained how each question shapes how students study, what they ultimately learn, and how closely their outcomes align with the learning goals being assessed.
In essence, I was showing him a metacognitive explanation for why some students excel while others underperform on the same assignment—and, in many cases, across the course.
Why ‘Good’ Students Miss ‘Basic’ Questions
Here is the analysis of the first three questions. (Keep in mind that I know nothing about this content and cannot provide the correct responses to any of the questions.)
My goal was to explicitly communicate the layers of thinking in each question and to show the conditions that would need to be in place for students to learn the material sufficiently. Finally, I wanted to demonstrate how easily capable, hard-working students can underperform when the proper metacognitive conditions are not in place.
Table 1. Metacognitive Homework Analysis and Effects on Academic Work
| Homework Question | Question Analysis | Effect on Academic Work |
| What is evolution? How is it different from natural selection? | The first part is a Level 1 (Remembering) task within the TLD. It requires recall of a definition. The second part is a Level 4 (Analyzing) task. It requires students to compare and differentiate evolution and natural selection. Students who can clearly articulate the relationship between these concepts will perform best. | Across several class sessions, the instructor may provide definitions and examples of both concepts. Well-intentioned students will focus on memorizing definitions and mentally representing each process. Regardless of their study tactics, they will work toward these outcomes and stop once they feel they have “learned” them—often without engaging in the comparative thinking the question actually requires. |
| What are Darwin’s four postulates that lead to natural selection? | This question can operate at Level 1 (Remembering) or Level 5 (Evaluating), depending on how the content was taught. | Scenario 1: If the postulates were explicitly presented, students only need to store and recall them (Level 1). Scenario 2: If students encountered the ideas implicitly through readings, they must evaluate and extract the postulates themselves (higher-level thinking). |
| Please explain how a pesticide-resistance gene might spread in a population of planthoppers living on soybean, in terms of the four postulates. | This is a cognitively complex question, requiring multiple layers of thinking. While “explain” suggests Level 2 (Understanding), the task actually requires Level 3 (Applying), as indicated by the context. Students must engage in abstraction—the ability to separate core principles from specific examples—and apply their understanding of genes and Darwin’s postulates to a new scenario. They must also draw on prior knowledge of genetic processes and apply it within the framework of natural selection. The prompt further implies differentiation (Level 4), as students must account for differences between pesticide-resistant and pesticide-susceptible organisms. | This question illustrates why metacognitive skill is so critical. A metacognitively skilled student can unpack these requirements and align their study tactics accordingly, rather than simply “studying hard.” The enduring value of this question lies in its abstraction—understanding the relationships among genes, postulates, and natural selection—not in the specific example of planthoppers. Most students will believe they have “learned” the material (evolution, natural selection, postulates, genetics), but they have not activated the deeper thinking required. When faced with this kind of question on an exam, they often feel as though they are being tricked. While, in reality, they are underprepared for the level of thinking being assessed. |
Making Cognitive Demand Visible in Learning Centers
I’ll be sharing this artifact, along with others, in more detail in an upcoming issue of The Learning Assistance Review (TLAR), the peer-reviewed journal of the International College Learning Center Association (ICLCA).
This is another example of how learning centers and teaching and learning centers can help make cognitive work more visible and academic performance problems more solvable.
I had no idea that a brief hallway interaction with Andy would lead to such a powerful artifact, one that influenced not just a single assignment, but the trajectory of his course and the broader division.
Andy definitely noticed growth among his students.
“The response from my class was very positive. All the students bought into the value of metacognitive work. I saw a gradual increase in the class’s ability to tackle more complex questions over the term, accompanied by increases in grades.”
When Students Learn to Do This Themselves
And when students began to apply this kind of analysis themselves, the impact extended beyond the natural sciences into their work in other disciplines.
Here’s how Mitchell, a sophomore student who was trained as a Peer Learning Strategist, expressed the impact this work had on him and those who assisted.
After being trained in what metacognition means and helping other students with this form of thinking strategy, it has not only had a positive impact on my ability to learn but has helped a number of my students improve their grades. Metacognition helped to expand my mindset and home in on my weaknesses in order to become a more efficient student and effective learner.
This is academic work at its best.
An Invitation to Your Own Homework Analysis
What part of the homework analysis resonates with you?
Have you ever conducted a homework analysis?
Would you like to learn how to use this simple, powerful tool to make the challenges in your learning environment visible and solvable?
Stick Around
Don’t be shy — leave a thoughtful comment ⬇️ before you say goodbye. 👋🏿
1 comment
Leonard Geddes
In my experience, most faculty are not formally equipped or have the time to do this kind of metacognitive homework analysis. We ask them to design rigorous courses, but we rarely give them tools for making the underlying cognitive demands visible.
Over time, I’ve come to see four developmental “levels” for this work:
Level 1 – Individual Faculty Practice
Faculty learn to analyze their own assignments through a metacognitive lens: What levels of thinking are embedded here? How do these questions quietly shape how students study?
Level 2 – Department or Division Practice
A department or division begins to do this work together, using a shared framework (like the ThinkWell–LearnWell Diagram) to audit homework, exams, and major assessments across a curriculum.
Level 3 – Faculty–Student Practice
Faculty explicitly teach students how to do this analysis themselves—narrating the cognitive demand of tasks, modeling metacognitive questioning, and integrating this into class time, office hours, and reviews.
Level 4 – Institutional Practice
A dedicated entity—such as a learning center or a teaching and learning office—leads a coordinated initiative to embed this kind of analysis into course design, instructor development, and academic support across the institution.
Ultimately, the goal is not just to have experts analyzing assignments; it’s to get students doing this work for themselves. That’s how you build a culture of independent learners and effective workers who can recognize, plan for, and navigate complex cognitive demands long after the course ends.
If you or your institution are interested in partnering to develop this capacity—at any of these levels—I’d be glad to talk about what that could look like in your context.