International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 193

Teaching Critical Thinking and Metaliteracy Through OER
ities from the badge content the most
in-depth. Notwithstanding the inherent
variation in student attention and interest,
in general, students in the political
science course understand the overall
framework. They understand the idea
that they are producers as well as simply
consumers of information, and at its
broadest level, they recognize that metaliteracy
is asking them to process information
in ways that go well beyond
the cognitive domain.
Throughout the class, the instructor
also emphasizes the accompanying
metaliterate roles. The students
in one class section asked the librarian
for more detail about what exactly each
role entailed, resulting in the development
of the clarifying role prompt OER
that has since been used in a number
of other learning settings (Jacobson,
Mackey, & O’Brien, 2018). In class, the
professor incorporates specific roles
in group activities—students pick the
roles they think they need to improve
on and at several points in the course
are asked to engage in activities that
will help them do so in conjunction
with the particular topic being studied.
If students want to become better
researchers, they are asked to generate
some new and interesting facts on the
issue under discussion. If they want to
improve as teachers, each student will
be asked to explain an idea or two to
another student.
As the instructor came to appreciate
its value and became more comfortable
explaining it to the class, the
metaliteracy framework played a larger
role in each semester. The quests,
along with the culminating badge, have
proven integral to the course. Despite
the strong comment from one student
claiming he would rather take an exam
than develop a quest, impressionistically
the students have seen the quests as
favorable alternatives to “yet another
paper.” They appreciate that many of the
quests are short and to the point. They
also like the open-ended nature of some
of the quests, particularly the “Expanding
Horizons” quest, and the flexibility
of picking their own topics for the “Design
Your Own Quest” assignment.
Despite some understandable
nervousness about formally speaking
in front of the whole class, students also
appreciate the resources used in the
class presentations. One student wrote,
“the quests not only put the students
in a more central role in learning, but
the presentations component allows
for students to see how their classmates
tackled the quests, furthering ideas of
how they could look at similar situations
in the future and how to further
use the skills and knowledge they've
gained” (E. Matott, personal communication,
July 28, 2019).
Overall success notwithstanding,
critical thinking is not easy to teach.
Students respond most readily to the
specific quests because they are the
most concrete aspect of the metaliteracy
framework. Although students come
away with a general appreciation of the
value of this set of OER, it falls to the
instructor to frequently remind them
about the broader learning context.
The incorporation of the metaliteracy
framework makes this job easier and
would not have happened without the
instructor-librarian collaboration.
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