Digital-driven Tools and Quadruple Helix Engagement in Accelerating Students' Metacognitive Skills

Deeper learning involves intricate neural interactions, the result of a whole learning experience that is less foreseeable and that the learners' needs and motivational shifts can rapidly emerge even beyond alignment with curriculum expected outcomes. This paper examined the respondents' learning outcomes, using digital tools and interactive-designed tasks espoused by the quadruple helix engagement framework. Respondents comprised of 116 year-1 computing informatics students in a higher technological education institution of Brunei. Guided by the tenets of Scholarship in Teaching and Learning (SoTL), the study employed the case method, following the structure of a 14-weeks lesson in Professional Ethics. It was framed by using digital-driven support teaching tools, applying extensive in-class interactions, and charting students' learning levels. Data collected from student reflections, activity feedbacks, peer scores, and other task-related artifacts were analyzed using iterative analysis and subsequently validated through periodic pedagogical exchanges between the lecturer and co-researcher in pedagogy and curriculum design, respectively. Findings showed that respondents demonstrated learning outcomes that scaled metacognitive skills such as analyzing (C4) and evaluating (C5), two-levels of higher learning outcomes than the projected conceptual-procedural-related learning outcomes such as applying (C3), understanding (C2), and remembering (C1). JEL Codes: Keywords: learning outcomes, meta cognitive skills, quadruple helix engagement, digital-driven tools, cognitive tasks, SoTL