My capstone activity in an introductory meteorology course is the on-line forecasting of tomorrow's [see http://www.engin.umich.edu/class/aoss202/myforecast.html] weather for assigned cities around the United States. This exercise challenges the student to use available web resources to decide if the next day will bring warmer, unchanged or cooler temperatures; and the probability of precipitation; and wind speed and wind direction at noon. Along with each forecast the student must enter reasons for for their selection. On the subsequent day they are challenged to evaluate how well their forecasts verified and why they did or did not do so well. They are graded on the quality of their reasoning rather than the skill of their forecast.
The metacognition by the students stems from their evolution through the week as they struggle to improve their forecasts. With a few noteworthy exceptions, the students' showed marked improvement over the week in their reasoning as they became engaged in the activity and actively refined their own forecasting process