Promoting Metacognitive Skills Among Undergraduate First Year Students Studying Computer Programming Using Mobile Devices
Abstract: This paper explores the effects of metacognitive prompts on the development of metacognitive skills among first year undergraduate computer programming students when learning in a mobile learning environment. The adoption of metacognitive prompts is aimed at encouraging students to see themselves as active thinkers who are capable of solving computer programming problems. Hence, this intervention formed part of the pedagogical approaches employed in a computer programming module in the second semester of 2014 in a South African university. To achieve the study aim, we developed metacognitive strategy prompts which were sent to the students via the Whatsapp platform on their mobile devices three days in a week over a whole academic semester. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis were employed to investigate students’ metacognitive awareness. The outcomes and implications of research are discussed in this paper.