5 thinking tools to add to your metacognitive toolbox

It is a set of three lists used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. They concentrate specifically on learning objectives in the cognitive domain (knowledge-based), affective (emotion-based) and psychomotor domains (action-based).

These three models were named after Benjamin Bloom, the author of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals.

• Knowledge-based objectives. Instead of just memorizing facts, the goal of this area is to be capable to remember, understand, apply, analyze, create, and evaluate our knowledge.
• Emotion-based objectives. This domain measures how much you care about what you are studying: passive attention (the lowest level), active participation, valuation, organization, and characterization (the highest level, where you care enough to generate your own take on the knowledge).
• Action-based objectives. This domain measures your ability to actually manipulate relevant tools.

DOVE stands for: Deferral of judgment; Off-beat ideas; Vast quantities of ideas; Elaboration/expansion of ideas.

The ROPE method of brainstorming stands for:

• Record all ideas
• Original ideas are encouraged (no stupid ideas)
• Put off evaluation (judgment can be done later)
• Expand on other’s ideas.

• What are the consequences of believing this?
• How consistent is the information?
• What assumptions have been made here?
• How accurate is the data or information?
• What is the meaning of this?
• What are the main points?
• What prejudice is being shown here?
• What other points of view could be expressed?
• What evidence is there to support the position or claims?
• What examples are there to back-up the position or claims?
• How relevant is the position or claims?
• How reliable is the information?

By repeating the question “why?” five times in a row, you explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem; the primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a problem.

This method means using a thinking buddy to debug a problem together, then share back what you found with the team.

• Think: each person thinks about the problem and writes down their thoughts.
• Pair: consolidate individual thoughts together.
• Share: share back with the rest of the team.