Episode 53 - An interview with Applied Linguist and Author Alex Poole
Feb 11, 2021
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Show Notes:
In Episode 53, Althea interviews applied linguist and author of Learning a Foreign Language: Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics, Alex Poole. You can pick up a copy of his book on Amazon, through the publisher, or wherever you buy your books!
Oxford, R. (2016). Teaching and researching language learning strategies: Self-regulation in context. New York: Oxford University Press.
Episode 52 - Two University Students Share Their Experiences with Online Learning During A Pandemic
Dec 03, 2020
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Show Notes:
In Episode 52, Carolina interviews two of her students, Ellie Brownlie and Alicja Turek, about their experiences with online learning since the global COVID-19 pandemic changed our way of teaching. The students share some positive outcomes and some things they wish were done differently or happened more.
Episode 51 - An Interview with Memory Expert Boris Konrad
Nov 05, 2020
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Show Notes:
In Episode 51, Cindy interviews memory expert Boris Konrad (@borisnkonrad). Boris is an eight-time world memory champion, he has four entries in the Guinness Book of World Records, and he is the current president of MemoryXL. Cindy and Boris discuss memory techniques. Importantly, Boris discusses differences between memory techniques and learning techniques, the underlying neuroscience, and why they are both important for students.
Episode 50 - Metacognitive Monitoring of Adolescents and Young Adults
Sep 17, 2020
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Show Notes:
In today’s episode, Althea covers a paper about metacognitive monitoring and differences between adolescents (ages 11-12) and traditional university-aged adults (ages 18-25) when using different learning strategies.
Students learned word pairs (moon - galaxy). Then, they either just restudied them, engaged in elaborative encoding by coming up with a third word that connected the two words (like space), or practiced retrieval (given the word moon, and asked to retrieve galaxy). During learning, the students made judgments of learning (or JOLs) about how well they thought they would do on an upcoming test. The researchers tested the students’ memories to see how well they learned the pairs.
The pattern of performance on the final test was generally the same. Retrieval practice led to the best performance, followed by elaborative encoding, and then the worst performance was restudying.
However, this isn’t new. The researchers are most interested in how well the students were able to monitor their own learning and predict how well they had learned the pairs. For the adolescents, their ability to judge how well they would do on a later test was not very accurate when they restudied or engaged in elaborative encoding. Their relative accuracy at judging how well they would perform was better for retrieval practice. So, the strategy that worked best also produced the best relative accuracy at predicting
The young adults showed the same relative accuracy as the adolescents in the restudy and the retrieval conditions. Their ability to predict was very poor after restudying and was better after retrieval practice. Interestingly, the young adults had the best relative accuracy after elaborative encoding, meaning that this was the condition where they were best able to predict how well they would perform on the test later.
When young adults in College (University) are utilizing a strategy that helps them learn more, like elaborative encoding or retrieval practice, they are better able to predict their own learning. However, this was not always true for adolescents in middle school. When using elaborative encoding, a strategy that helped them compared to just restudying, their predictions were not very accurate at all.
References:
Hughes, G. I, Taylor, H. A., & Thomas, A. K. (2018). Study techniques differentially influence the delayed judgment of learning accuracy of adolescent children and college-aged adults. Metacognition Learning, 13, 109-126.
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page. In today’s episode, we feature Peter Horneffer. Peter has been heavily involved in making medical education accessible, and one way has been through lecturio.com. You can learn more about his efforts by watching his TEDx talk.
Show Notes:
In today’s episode, Megan and Althea cover a paper that tests learning styles and dual coding theories within one experiment. The paper was written by Cuevas and Dawson (2018) and you can see the paper here.
References:
Cuevas, J., & Dawson, B. L. (2018). A test of two alternative cognitive processing models: Learning styles and dual coding. Theory and Research in Education, 16(1), 40-64.
Episode 48 - Prevalence-Induced Concept Change
Jun 11, 2020
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Show Notes:
In today’s episode, Cindy talks about prevalence-induced concept change and implications for society and the classroom!
References:
Levari, D. E., Gilbert, D. T., Wilson, T. D., Sievers, B., Amodio, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (2018). Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment. Science, 360(6396), 1465-1467.
This episode was funded by listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, Cynthia Bandet from Bow Valley College.
We also want to say thank you to all of our patrons. We would not be able to produce this podcast or maintain the free resources on the website without you. If you aren’t a supporter and are able, please consider donating. Even $1 per month can make a difference, and if you donate at least $5 per month you’ll gain access to exclusive content. Visit our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/learningscientists.
Show Notes:
In today’s episode, Megan shares her current thoughts about the pivot to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. She mentions a lot of resources throughout the podcast, and these links along with a few others are below!
Episode 46 - The Application of Research with Pooja Agarwal
Mar 05, 2020
This episode was funded by listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, David Handel and his flashcard app iDoRecall.com.
We also want to say thank you to all of our patrons. We would not be able to produce this podcast or maintain the free resources on the website without you. If you aren’t a supporter and are able, please consider donating. Even $1 per month can make a difference, and if you donate at least $5 per month you’ll gain access to exclusive content. Visit our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/learningscientists.
Show Notes:
In today’s episode, Cindy interviews Pooja Agarwal (@PoojaAgarwal). Pooja is a Cognitive Scientist and now teachers Science, Psychological Science, and Neuroscience at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Pooja founded retrievalpractice.org. There, you can find resources like practice guides for teachers.
Episode 45 - Bite-Size Research on Seductive Details
Jan 16, 2020
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. We’re also on Stitcher!
Show Notes:
In this bite-size research episode, Carolina discusses research on seductive details—the details we include in our teaching that are not necessarily relevant for understanding the topic but make the lesson more interesting.
Fries, L., DeCaro, M. S., & Ramirez, G. (2019). The lure of seductive details during lecture learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(4), 736–749.
Rey, G. D. (2012). A review of research and a meta-analysis of the seductive detail effect. Educational Research Review, 7, 216-237.
Episode 44 - Literacy and Making Mistakes with Kristen McQuillan
Nov 14, 2019
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. We’re also on Stitcher!
Show Notes:
In this episode, Cindy Nebel interviews Kristen McQuillan (@mcglynn3), her student in the Vanderbilt EdD program in Leadership and Learning in Organization. Kristen is a director at TNTP (@TNTP), a non-profit organization that helps schools reach goals for students. Cindy and Kristen talk about learning mistakes in literacy.
You can find the blog that Cindy mentions in the episode about learning from errors here.
Episode 43 - Evidence-based Strategies and the Whole Learning Process
Sep 26, 2019
In this episode, Megan and Althea discuss a listener question about the focus on evidence-based strategies and other important aspects of the whole learning process.
Episode 42 - Bite-Size Research on Attention and Retrieval Practice
Aug 08, 2019
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. We’re also on Stitcher!
Show Notes:
In this bite-size research episode, Althea describes a study about how attention affects learning with retrieval practice when students are studying on their own by Neil Mulligan and Milton Picklesimer (2016).
Generally, they found students tend to forget after a delay, but retrieval practice improves memory after a delay. It is better not to be distracted (divided attention) when rereading. However, the students’ learning was not as affected by divided attention when they practiced retrieval. Retrieval practice seems to be a particularly resilient strategy!
Re-created figure from Mullican & Picklesimer (2016) study 2.
References:
Mulligan, N. W., & Picklesimer, M. (2016). Attention and the testing effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(6), 938-950.
Episode 41 - Feedback with Dr. Naomi Winstone
May 23, 2019
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode, Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel interviews Dr. Naomi Winstone (@DocWinstone) an expert in assessment and feedback. Naomi is the Head of the Department of Higher Education and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey.
You can read more about feedback on our blog, where Naomi has co-authored guest posts:
Episode 40 - Memorizing Facts vs Using Information with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath
May 02, 2019
This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode, Cindy Nebel interviews Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath (@JCHorvath), neuroscientist and educator affiliated with University of Melbourne and author of Stop Talking Start Influencing: 12 Insights From Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick. During the interview, they discuss how we take information in, and how do we use it, or transfer it to new situations. Jared Cooney Horvath is a cognitive neuroscientist with expertise in human learning, memory, and brain stimulation. In 2018, Dr. Horvath co-founded LME Global, a mission-driven company serving teachers, students and schools through applied learning sciences. To learn more, visit www.lmeglobal.net.
Episode 39 - Bite-Size Research on Awareness of Evidence-Based Practice
Mar 21, 2019
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this bite-size research episode, Megan describes a paper by Kayla Morehead and colleagues (2016) about student and instructor knowledge about evidence-based study strategies. This episode is a follow-up to the last bite-size research (Episode 37). If you haven’t listened to that one, we recommend you listen to it first!
Reference:
Morehead, K., Rhodes, M. G., & DeLozier, S. (2016). Instructor and student knowledge of study strategies. Memory, 24, 257-271.
Episode 38 - A (pseudo) Randomized Control Experiment about Teaching Effective Learning Strategies
Mar 08, 2019
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode, Megan and Cindy talk about their massive research project at Washburn University investigating the effectiveness of an intervention to teach first-year college students effective study strategies. The Project is huge, but asks an important question: how can we teach students to utilize strategies that we know are effective on their own to improve learning and academic success. We know these strategies work, we just don’t know a whole lot about the best way to help students learn about them and then transfer the use of the strategies to their own studying.
In a huge pseudo-randomized control trial at Washburn University, we taught half of the WU 101 students (a first-year seminar course) about effective learning strategies. In our first wave of data collection during the 2017-2018 school year, we found that first-generation college students actually had a lower GPA in the intervention group compared to the control, while non-first-generation college students had a higher GPA in the intervention group compared to the control.
NOTE: we have to say this with extreme caution! We need to replicate this finding before we decide to run with it. If we do replicate this during the 2018-2019 school year, future research will need to examine why this happened. Note, we’re not saying the strategies don’t improve learning in first-generation students. Instead, it’s possible that this interaction did something that led the students to perform slightly worse in courses! This could be because the intervention didn’t explain the strategies, or that first-generation students were overwhelmed, perhaps they didn’t know how to use the strategies strategically. There are a lot of potential reasons to investigate. Of course, this result could also be a fluke, and we need to replicate. (And honestly, we hope it is a fluke, but the data are the data!)
While this finding is disappointing, and we certainly don’t want to hurt any specific group of students, this highlights the importance of the research and control groups. It is best to test things out before implementing them widely!
Episode 37 - Bite-Size Research on Learning to Learn Effectively
Feb 20, 2019
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this bite-size research episode, Megan describes a paper by Dr. Jennifer McCabe (2011) investigating whether students understand what learning strategies are most effective, and whether we can teach this to students.
Reference:
McCabe, J. (2011). Metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates. Memory & Cognition, 39, 462-476.
Episode 36 - Carolina's Research on CPD and Service Learning
Feb 06, 2019
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode, Megan interviews Carolina about her research on CPD sessions, Service Learning projects aimed at teaching students to utilize effective learning strategies, and the start of TILE.
Episode 35 - Implementing Effective Strategies
Jan 30, 2019
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode, Megan and Althea discuss things to keep in mind when trying to implement evidence-based learning strategies into your classroom.
We start out with a brief description of the six strategies for effective learning. If you haven’t listened to previous episodes yet, we recommend going back to the first set of episodes, 1 through 13, to hear more about each strategy in depth. The purpose of the review is to provide a bit of spaced practice!
Some tips to keep in mind:
Don’t try to implement all of the strategies all at once or all of the time.
Don’t try to overhaul your entire course! Start with small changes and see how it goes. You can keep making little changes with each iteration of the course.
Remember, each strategy works because it encourages processing that promotes learning. So, implementing these strategies are all about encouraging useful processing. When looking from the outside, two groups of students can look like they’re doing the exact same thing, but in reality one group may be doing something useful and the other not. Using the strategies in the classroom also won’t always look the same.
Episode 34 - An Introduction to our Team in 2019!
Jan 16, 2019
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
We’ve got some exciting things happening in 2019! Listen as Megan, Cindy, Althea, and Carolina discuss our workshops during our England 2019 tour, and the excitement around talking with teachers about the science of learning.
The team in Bedford, England - January 2019
Episode 33 - Bite-Size Research on Using Laptops to Take Notes
Dec 19, 2018
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, David Handel and his flashcard app iDoRecall.com. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Megan talks about research findings showing that taking notes with a laptop in class can lead to less learning than taking notes by hand.
The research paper, published by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014), reports 3 experiments examining learning after taking notes by hand or taking notes on laptop computers. Importantly, the laptop computers were disconnected from the internet, and only allowed the students to take notes on them eliminating distraction. Even still, taking notes by hand led to more learning across all three studies. The researchers found that students tended to type a lot more when they took notes on the computer compared to what they could write while taking notes by hand. Typing out a transcription of the material is likely what is causing less learning; when students take notes by hand, they often cannot write everything and must put the material into their own words. However, even when the students in the experiment were instructed not to transcribe the material while taking notes, and were asked to put the material into their own words, they still typed a lot more while taking notes on the laptop than when taking notes by hand. Even with this instruction, performance on an assessment later was better when the students took notes by hand.
References:
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25, 1159-1168.
Episode 32 - Attention, Learning, and Memory with Althea Kaminske
Dec 05, 2018
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode, Megan interviews Althea at the Psychonomic Society Conference in New Orleans, LA. (Note, we’re in the conference hotel, and so you can sometimes hear some street noise!!) Althea is conducting research with students on learning and distractions of cell phones and exercise and learning.
Episode 31 - Bite-Size Research on Retrieval Practice and Complex Content
Nov 21, 2018
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
In our last episode, Yana interviewed Alexander Chamessian, an MD PhD student who has been consistently utilizing evidence-based learning strategies. In this bite-size research episode, Yana follows up with a study on retrieval practice with complex medical information.
In this study by scientists at a department of Health and Kinesiology (1), students taking an exercise physiology re-read or practiced retrieval practice on background texts and journal articles, and then took critical analysis and factual texts. The debate between John Sweller (2) and Jeff Karpicke (3) on whether retrieval practice works with complex materials can be found in this special issue.
The following table shows the phases in the experiment:
Image from Dobson, Linderholm, & Perez (2018)
The main result can be found in this figure:
Image from Dobson, Linderholm, & Perez (2018)
References:
(1) Dobson, J., Linderholm, T., & Perez, J. (2018). Retrieval practice enhances the ability to evaluate complex physiology information. Medical Education, 52, 513-525.
(2) Van Gog, T., & Sweller, J. (2015). Not new, but nearly forgotten: the testing effect decreases or even disappears as the complexity of learning materials increases. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 247-264.
(3) Karpicke, J. D., & Aue, W. R. (2015). The testing effect is alive and well with complex materials. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 317-326.
Episode 30 - Learning and Applying Medical Knowledge with MD PhD student Alexander Chamessian
Nov 07, 2018
This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Over the last few months, we have been interviewing researchers who attended the the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). We enjoyed recording these interviews so much that we decided to do another one!
Alex Chamessian first wrote to us about a year ago - almost immediately after we released our first podcast episode. An MD-PhD candidate at Duke, Alex has been passionate about effective learning for years. He started using spaced repetition in 2010 in my first year of medical school, and when he noticed the benefits, he did a deep dive into more evidence-based practices, starting first with a blog, then a book. Alex asked if he could appear on our podcast, but at the time that he was writing, we hadn’t figured out whether - let alone how - we would conduct podcast interviews! A year later, Yana and Alex finally got together over Skype to record this interview.
In our conversation, we discuss the following questions:
Why/how did Alex get interested in learning strategies in medical school, and end up writing a blog and book on the subject?
Do students need to understand the reasons why effective strategies work, or is it enough for them just to experience their effectiveness?
Apart from medical school and classes and exams, how is Alex planning on applying effective learning strategies in his medical practice?
And what about in his PhD - are there strategies also effective for being a successful scholar?
Episode 29 - Developments in Brain Imaging to Foster Learning with Julien Mercier
Oct 17, 2018
This is the ninth and final episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers.
In this episode, we speak with Dr. Julien Mercier, professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal and director of NeuroLab, an educational neuroscience lab. Research in this lab focuses on cognition and affect during learning. This is done by collecting second-by-second (“on-line”) data from learners. The contexts in which these measures are collected include reading, science education, video games, and more applied workplace settings.
Because of the complexity of this type of research, experts from a diverse set of fields are needed to make the project come together. First the physiological data are collected. Then, all the data are integrated into one huge complex system, segmented, and analyzed to look for patterns in reactions. For example, in a study on video gaming, the researchers were interested in what happens when a player is given an action prompt. The researchers collected measures that tap into cognitive load and engagement, and compare the relative activation before and after the prompt was presented.
Through this research, Julien hopes to develop a methodology that will be able to handle much more complex learning situations than those currently considered in neuroscientific research.
Episode 28 - Technology and the Brain with Miriam Reiner
Oct 03, 2018
This is the eighth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers.
In this episode, we speak with Dr. Miriam Reiner, head of The Virtual Reality and Neurocognition lab at Technion (Israel Institute of Technology). Miriam uses emerging technologies for high-validity research in neuroeducation: specifically, she examines how integration of virtual/augmented reality and EEG/eyetracking etc can provide a highly valid methodology for research in neuroeducation. In addition, Miriam studies technologies that activate brain mechanisms, such as neurofeedback, for enhanced memory consolidation, insight-problem solving, and spatial intelligence.
Miriam’s research involves putting participants in a very rich virtual world where they can interact with their environment. Examples of situations might be a surgeon in the operating room who must burn specific areas in the abdomen, or someone trying to catch a falling pendulum - a task that can reveal common misconceptions about physics. While in this immersive experience, participants are connected to EEG, so that events in the world and in the brain can be correlated. This helps her to determine what brain activation relates to best performance (in terms of speed and accuracy) in problem-solving situations.
Miriam believes that schools will evolve to mainly be places for social learning, whereas technology will replace some of the more traditional learning environments. In another line of research, Miriam investigates whether neurofeedback can be used to enable the typical learner to control their own brainwaves, and how this relates to the consolidation process that happens while we sleep (1) (see also this episode on sleep and learning). In the episode, Miriam discusses how these techniques might be used in education.
References:
(1) Reiner, M., Rozengurt, R., & Barnea, A. (2014). Better than sleep: Theta neurofeedback training accelerates memory consolidation. Biological Psychology, 95, 45-53.
Episode 27 - Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Dyspraxia with Jane Emerson
Sep 19, 2018
This is the seventh episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers.
In this episode, we speak with Jane Emerson who started off as a speech and language therapist, did her Masters in Human Communication, and after years of experience working with dyslexic students in schools founded a center, Emerson House, with a colleague. This center helps children with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and dyscalculia. Jane has taught children for many years, lectured widely, and written a number of books including The Dyscalculia Assessment and The Dyscalculia Solution. You can find her on Facebook at Jane Emerson - Freelance SEND Advisor.
Image from CPD College on YouTube
Dyslexic children have difficulties with phonics or phonological awareness, language, vocabulary, memory (both short- and long-term). Dyslexic students tend to have problems with spelling both because of difficulties with phonics, but also because of poorer visual recall. However, dyslexia is not only about spelling, but can have more pervasive effects on academic performance due to the impacts on memory.
Dyscalculia might present itself as lack of common sense about numbers. That is, some students may have trouble transferring their understanding of a specific example (e.g., 1 + 2) to a similar but slightly different situation (e.g., 2 + 3), treating it as an entirely new problem and not applying a previously learned rule. For example, unlike others of their age, students with these difficulties may not be able to infer the answer to 13 x 2 after having memorized the 2 x tables up to 12. One way to help alleviate is to use physical manipulatives to demonstrate relationships between numbers.
Dyspraxia is described as a developmental co-ordination delay or disorder. At the extreme, this disorder can result in the inability to learn to drive and great reluctance to use any machinery. At school, the first sign is often poor handwriting, and learning to touch-type as early as possible can help with this. Students with this disorder may receive accommodations such as having a scribe.
Other accommodations such as extra time alone may not always be helpful, since often students may not know what to do with this extra time. The important thing is to learn skills to implement during that time. On the podcast, we discuss the subtle difference between learning styles and learning preferences, and how this plays out in students with learning difficulties.
The Big Takeaways
For reading, Jane says it’s very helpful to give children a lot of information about one character or set of characters so that they can really understand get into a particular genre before moving on to another one. For spelling, combining seeing and hearing words can be really important, and adding touch-typing on to that for multi-sensory learning is even better. And for math, concrete, multi-sensory materials to demonstrate the principles being learned.
Episode 26 - Classroom Noise and Learning with Jessica Massonnié
Sep 06, 2018
This is the sixth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers.
Primary school classrooms tend to be noisy (approximately as noisy as traffic or a vacuum cleaner). Jessica's work looks at how this noise affects learning outcomes. One of her first studies looked at the effect of recoded classroom noise on children's creativity in a lab environment. In the podcast, Jessica talks about some preliminary findings from this study.
More recently, Jessica has moved on to classroom-based research. In a study that takes place in France, she is looking at individual differences in how annoying children find noise. This factor appears to be related to how difficult it is for children to switch between tasks, and how often they mind-wander. Jessica is also looking at the effects of a mindfulness intervention on noise levels, noise awareness, and French/math test performance.
The big take-away
It's important to be aware of noise levels; for example you can easily download an app to check noise levels in your environment. It would also be good to identify sources of noise in the learning environment - particular noises that are completely irrelevant to learning, such as the sounds of chairs scraping on the floor - and attempt to eliminate those noises.
Relevant reading and links:
Klatte, M., Bergström, K., & Lachmann, T. (2013). Does noise affect learning? A short review on noise effects on cognitive performance in children. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 578.
Mehta, R., Zhu, R., & Cheema, A. (2012). Is noise always bad? Exploring the effects of ambient noise on creative cognition. Journal of Consumer Research, 39, 784-799.
Shield, B., & Dockrell, J. E. (2004). External and internal noise surveys of London primary schools. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 115, 730-738.
A website with yoga tutorials, created by the expert we have hired for my school study. A kit created by the association I am part of, to introduce children to the brain, to attention and distraction.
Episode 25 - An Interview with Two Teachers
Aug 16, 2018
This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, and supporters like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the fifth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers.
In this episode, we speak to Ms. Amanda Triccas and Dr. Claire Badger at The Godolphin and Latymer School. Amanda was Yana's teacher in the 1990s, and we've reconnected recently around the science of learning.
Amanda has always worked in the private sector - usually in girls' schools - and a few years ago got into the science of learning. Claire's PhD is in Chemistry, and they both work at Godolphin and Latymer School for Girls. Amanda and Claire both got interested in the science of learning when Amanda found The Learning Scientists Twitter account and recognized Yana's name. For Claire, it was starting at the school with Amanda, and reading Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load by Clark, Nguyen, and Sweller.
We discuss how cognitive psychology can help teachers and students. Amanda mentions efficiency, and Claire mentions having more time for teachers to do things in the classroom by optimizing learning. We also discuss students' resistance to change, and teachers' fear of embarrassing themselves in front of students.
Claire and Amanda integrate strategies from cognitive psychology into their teaching, but they also explain their importance to their students, as well as to parents by providing them with the 6 strategies for effective learning posters.
As a Senior Teacher in Teaching and Learning, Claire set up a teaching-learning community based on ideas by Dylan William (see this White Paper). This allowed teachers who were interested in the science of learning to come together and explore theory and practice. This community soon grew to encompass virtually all the teachers in the school. Similarly, Claire has created student learning communities, though these require more guidance to avoid misunderstandings.
Amanda and Claire have some thoughts for how we can help. The illustrated work we've done with Oliver Caviglioli has been particularly useful, and they would like to see further resources produced for younger children. Claire also likes the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which provides concrete examples of how strategies can be used in the classroom. She would like to see more comprehensive reviews and summaries of the literature, with suggestions for teachers and students.
Claire is currently pursuing her Masters in Learning and Teaching at the UCL Institute of Education.
Episode 24 - The Golden Spiral of Lifelong Learning with Ignatius Gous
Aug 02, 2018
This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, and supporters like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, please see our Patreon page.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the fourth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. This episode features Ignatius Gous.
Ignatius begins the episode with an interesting explanation about the origins of his name. Ignatius is a professor at the University of South Africa, which is primarily a distance university, with students from all over the world taking online classes. He has developed a program for students to learn better and master content more effectively. This program is used by learners at the primary, secondary, and college levels, with advanced students of medicine and law, and even in the workplace.
Ignatius has long wondered why neuromyths are so prevalent, and his theory is that people want to know about how the brain works, and these neuromyths fill the void. He thus set out to create a framework that would actually be useful and evidence-based, to help those interested in learning to do so more effectively - even those as young as primary school age.
According to Ignatius, learning is not linear - it is more of a spiral - but it still needs structure. Ignatius built his model with the Fibonacci code as the basis. The spiral includes 6 aspects involved in the learning process, with metacognition as the 7th. You can see all the steps represented here in visual form:
We talk in this episode about different mnemonic strategies that fit into this model, including the method of loci - you can read more about this method in this blog post. We also discuss the importance of learning basic facts before moving on to transferring learning to new, more complex situations. One idea Ignatius suggests is for students to memorize the headings of a chapter to use as a guideline for organizing and retrieving information. This ties in with this guest blog post by Yana’s former student, who used a similar method for retrieval practice after taking notes in class.
Ignatius emphasizes that we need to always think about how students are going to use the material we are teaching them. He calls his model “the golden spiral for life-long learning”, because learning isn’t just something you do to cram for a test - learning happens until you die.
Episode 23 - Executive Function and Computational Thinking with Rina Lai
Jul 18, 2018
This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, and supporters like you. For more details, please see our Patreon page. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, Josh Fisher, and his free math apps at Guzinta Math.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the third episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. This episode features Rina Lai. (Check out Episode 21 for our first interview with Dr. Emma Blakey and Episode 22 with Michael Hobbiss!)
Please excuse any issues with sound quality. We were quite literally recording on the fly!
Rina P.Y Lai (黎栢凝) received her B.A in psychology at the University of British Columbia and MPhil in psychology & education at Cambridge University. She is now a PhD candidate and a member of a the INSTRUCT research group, a laboratory at Cambridge university that integrates cognitive developmental science to inform learning. She is particularly interested in the cognitive underpinnings of computational thinking. Currently, she is collaborating with computer scientists to develop a new computerized assessment of computational thinking that could be used by students, teachers and researchers. Rina is the founding member and internal vice president of the Cambridge China Education Forum. She has also co-founded the LT Academy, which provides consultancy services to STEM and robotics education to education institutions. You can find her on her website at rinalai.com and on Instagram @rina_py_lai. You can also check out PEDAL: Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development & Learning to see the work she is involved with.
Rina's Masters project focused on the differences between executive function and metacognition. Both are higher cognitive domains, both linked to prefrontal cortex, and both relate to academic outcomes. Executive functioning is an umbrella term that includes a number of neuropsychological processes including working memory, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and planning. Meta-cognition is a cognitive domain concerned with how we think about our own thinking, and how we regulate our thoughts to maximize learning. For example, if a child has a question in class, they have to use inhibition to ask the question at the right time, and working memory to remember the question. Rina's group looked at educational outcomes including arithmetic, vocabulary, verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning (previous research focused on one or only a couple of outcomes). Interestingly, they found that executive function and metacognition have both shared and unique contributions to educational outcomes.
After doing her Masters, Rina volunteered at a robotics camp for kids age 8-10, and this experience changed her trajectory. Now, Rina's research direction has shifted to studying computational thinking. Computational thinking is a set of cognitive processes that help us formulate a problem and devise a solution. These processes include decomposition, abstraction, algorithms, and debugging. Contrary to what it sounds like, this is not about using a computer! This is a skill that should be integrated into different subjects, rather than taught in isolation. Rina set out to look at computational thinking skills and how they relate to educational outcomes. In her literature review, she realized that there was no good assessment for computational thinking, since most are currently tailored to computer programming specifically. This has led Rina to focus on how to measure computational thinking to identify strengths and weaknesses of different processes within this domain.
In the future, Rina hopes to use the assessment in her own research to look for the relationship between computational thinking educational outcomes, and she also hope that teachers might find it useful as a formative assessment.
The big takeaway
Rina's biggest takeaway is a quote she shared with us:
"We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist . . . using technologies that haven’t yet been invented . . . in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet."
—Richard Riley, Secretary of Education under Clinton" —Richard Riley, Secretary of Education under Clinton
Episode 22 - Attention and the Classroom with Michael Hobbiss
Jul 04, 2018
This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, and supporters like you. For more details, please see our Patreon page. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, Bob Reuter.
Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the second episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. This episode features Michael Hobbiss. (Check out Episode 21 for our first interview with Dr. Emma Blakey!)
Please excuse any issues with sound quality. We were quite literally recording on the fly!
Michael Hobbiss started his career as a teacher for 8 years, teaching psychology and biology in the UK and abroad. He is now back in the UK, pursuing his PhD with Dr. Nilli Lavie at University College London. His focus is on attention, distraction, and cognitive control in adolescents. Mike tweets at @mikehobbiss and blogs at The Hobbolog.
In the beginning of the episode, Mike describes the two main ways attention is captured:
Bottom-up: the object or stimulus itself Top-down: your prior knowledge, interest, motivation
Both of these processes are prone to distraction. But surprisingly, Mike says, we don't know all that much about how students get distracted during learning. We do know that attention is related to important educational outcomes: for example, teacher ratings of children's attention at age 5 correlate with the children's later academic success (although, teacher ratings are not always reliable and tend to vary between cultures). We also know that inattention can be related to being unhappy. For his PhD, Michael has set out to investigate attention processes in adolescents.
The irrelevant distractor task
Mike uses the "irrelevant distractor" task in his research. In this task, participants have to pick a particular object out of a visual display. For example, they might have to pick out the letter O from an array of Xs. This would be an easy task - one with low "perceptual load", because the other letters (Xs) do not look similar to the target letter (O). In a high perceptual load version of this task, participants would need to pick out the letter X from, say, letters like K or M, which are more similar. At the same time, during this task, random irrelevant distractors such as Sponge Bob will pop up on the screen.
Image from a presentation by Dr. Sophie Forster
Typically, when the task has higher perceptual load, people are less likely to notice and be distracted (in other words, slowed down) by the irrelevant distractor (1). However, Mike didn't find this pattern in his research with adolescents - in the episode he describes a very different pattern of results that involved adolescents' accuracy as well as speed. Interestingly, Mike found a relationship between students' self-reported level of distraction during class and their performance on this task.
While these results are exciting, Mike warns against acting on these findings immediately in the classroom - we need to understand a lot more about how distraction varies within and between children before we build interventions to address it.
This is the first episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. First up is Dr. Emma Blakey!
Emma (@EmBlakey) is a Lecturer in Developmental Psychology at the University of Sheffield. Her research is all about investigating how young children learn to control and regulate their behavior. This can be very difficult to do! Executive functioning develops slowly throughout childhood, so young kids are having to learn how to take turns and delay their gratification.
What is executive functioning?
Executive function is the technical term that psychologist use to describe how we regulate and control our behavior. It's an umbrella term explaining a set of different skills we use to control our behvior:
Working memory - allows children to maintain and process information in mind
Inhibitory control - suppress in appropriate but automatic responses (like wanting to eat a whole chocolate cake but resisting so there is enough to share)
Cognitive flexibility - allows us to switch our attention and behavior in line with different goals or changes in the environment
Slowly! They don't fully mature until late adolescents. But there are rapid improvements in executive function during the preschool years. Specifically, between the ages of 3 and 4 children seem to get much better at regulating their behavior. This has been linked to improvements in language but also to big growth spurts in the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that supports our ability to regulate behavior.
How does executive function development relate to education?
Around this time, children are also often transitioning in school. For young kids, ages 2-3, many children are in informal school atmosphere where they are playing most of the day. But around ages 4-5, children are making the transition to formal schooling. Children's ability to regulate their behavior really predicts how they adjust to this formal school environment -- children who have better executive function are better able to regulate their attention and behavior. This is called school readiness. Children who are a little bit younger or have slower executive function development may have a difficult time focusing attention and ignoring distractions in formal school.
Formal school places a lot of heavy demands on children's executive functions. Formal school also often requires children to switch among different tasks. Because this type of switching tends to require a lot a great deal of cognitive flexibility, younger children in general will struggle with switching back and forth more than older children. Children are also required to process more information in formal school, and this places demands on working memory. For example, children often need to remember instructions or particular pieces of information, and this can be quite difficult for young children, or children who struggle with executive function compared to their peers. Emma notes that in addition to younger children having more difficulty with executive function compared to older children, there are also individual differences in executive function development. Not all children are developing at exactly the same pace! So, it is important to remember that for these children, learning in this environment can be quite difficult.
For teachers who want to learn more about working memory, this PDF is a great resource!
If switching is problematic for young kids, what does this mean for interleaving?
Interleaving is one of the six strategies for effective learning, We discussed interleaving in Episode 8 and Episode 9. The main idea behind interleaving is that switching between ideas in order to learn and understand them better. We have a very interesting chat with Emma about the potential downside of interleaving for younger children. The concern Emma has is that children may have a harder time switching and may be impaired in their learning of the skill or material when interleaving. This could even apply to adults who have lower executive functions. More research is needed!
Inattentiveness vs. ADHD
A problem that arises is that inattentiveness is often misdiagnosed as ADHD, where in fact it could be a working memory problem. Emma mentions Dr. Susan Gathercole, who has done a lot of work on how to identify children with ADHD versus working memory problems, who may need different treatments.
Improving executive function
Wouldn't it be great if we could help children with executive function problems by training them to increase their working memory? Unfortunately, however, "brain training" does not work as there is minimal transfer between the tasks people are trained on, and other more relevant tasks (see this guest post on our blog for more on the false promise of brain training, and this post by Megan about lack of transfer in education). Emma has, unfortunately, found the same lack of transfer in her lab with children.
What does Emma want teachers and parents to know?
For a child who is struggling with executive function, scaffold or adapt the environment to accommodate this: keep checklists and instructions written down so that children do not have to keep a lot in their working memory. Provide visual or tactile supports, and minimize distractions to avoid unnecessarily taxing working memory.
For children with good executive functions, one might want to challenge executive functions, such as having children repeat back from a book they're hearing, or playing games that require inhibitory control. However, we are still in the early stages of this research; the science is still evolving - and this is true for all fields.
The big takeaway
Overall, Emma wants us all to be aware of what executive functions are, that they take a while to develop, and to realize young children's limitations - their executive functions just haven't developed yet!
Emma's research into executive functions and learning has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Foundation.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of sleep for learning. We all know we are supposed to get enough sleep. But why exactly do we need to sleep? Sleep deprivation can lead to weight gain, increases in colds, heart disease, diabetes, and also deficits in cognitive abilities such as attention, decision making, and learning. And both at the high-school and college level, students are not getting the recommend amount of sleep.
We first talk about a study (1) in which students learned and were tested on French-Swahili word pairs, until they were able to remember all the pairs in both directions (i.e., French to Swahili and Swahili to French). Later, students came back and were tested at different time points depending on condition. The sleep group learned at 9pm and took the test at 9am. The no sleep group learned at 9am and took the test at 9pm. Students in the sleep group performed better, despite having the same time delay between learning and testing (12 hours). The theory is that sleeping after learning helps consolidate memories. In addition, re-learning after sleeping can lead to even bigger gains. So, if you’re going to do spaced practice, it’s a good idea to try to sleep in between practice sessions.
(Note: in the podcast we misspoke and mentioned "passages" when were talking about word pairs. Also, we didn't cover all the details of each condition, because doing so would have resulted in cognitive overload. Read this blog post for more information on this study.)
We also describe another study with a similar design but more classroom-relevant materials (2). Students watched an economics lecture either in the morning or the evening, and then took a test after the same length of time. In this study, sleep lead to an improvement not only in retrieval of facts, but also (and especially) in application questions. You can read all about this study in this blog post.
We end the podcast with suggestions for how to get the recommended amount of sleep. See this blog post for those tips.
Here are two additional resources on sleep and self-care:
(1) Mazza, S., Gerbier, E., Gustin, M., Kasikci, Z., Koenig, O., Toppino, T.C., & Magnin, M. (2016). Relearn faster and retain longer: Along with practice, sleep makes perfect. Psychological Science, 27, 1321-1330.
(2) Scullin, M., McDaniel, M., Howard, D., & Kudelka, C. (2011, June). Sleep and testing promote conceptual learning of classroom materials. Presented at the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC, Minneapolis, MN.
Episode 19 - Bite-Size Research on Benefits of Retrieval with Medical Residents
May 16, 2018
This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Megan talks research findings showing that medical residents benefit from retrieval practice after didactic conferences.
In the last episode, Alyssa Smith, a third-year medical student, talked about the effective study strategies that she has been using throughout medical school. This episode continues with the medical education theme, discussing a paper by Doug Larsen, Andrew Butler, and Henry "Roddy" Roediger (1). This paper is interesting because it looks at the importance of retrieval practice for medical residents. Much of the research we discuss was done with college students or younger children. In this case, the research was conducted with individuals who are much further along in their professional career.
The Experiment:
Medical residents across all three years of the Pediatric Residency Program and all four years of the Emergency Medicine Program participated in a didactic conference. The conference was an hour-long interactive teaching session that was pretty typical of the types of sessions medical residents would attend to learn about broad topics. This particular conference covered the treatment of status epilepticus, and the diagnosis and treatment of myasthenia gravis. The residents may run into patients with either of these in emergency medicine.
The experiment was within-subjects, meaning all of the residents participated in both of the repeated retrieval and repeated study learning conditions. In the repeated retrieval condition, residents took practice tests with feedback after the conference. They repeated this two more times at 2-week intervals. In the repeated study condition, residents reviewed a study guide after the conference. They repeated this two more times at 2-week intervals.
They were randomly assigned to one of two groups:
Group 1: practiced repeated retrieval with status epilepticus, reviewed the study guide for myasthenia gravis
Group 2: repeatedly reviewed the study guide for status epilepticus, practiced retrieval with myasthenia gravis
The residents all took one big test over both topics 6 months after initial learning at the didactic conference.
The Results:
Residents who practiced retrieval remembered a lot more than those who reviewed the study guide! So, repeated retrieval spaced out over time led to greater levels of retention compared to repeated studying spaced out over time.
Repeated retrieval is beneficial for residents, individuals who are much further along in their professions than some of the typical populations we study. The authors point out that residents are probably not repeatedly studying the information from these didactic conferences spaced out over time. So, the repeated study condition may actually be better than what the typical resident does. Yet, repeated retrieval leads to even better retention compared to repeated studying over time!
Tune in next month to learn about the importance of sleep and learning, and self care!
(1) Larsen, D. P., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Repeated testing improves long-term retention relative to repeated study: a randomized controlled trial. Medical Education, 43, 1174-1181.
Episode 18 - Effective Studying in Medical School with Alyssa Smith
May 02, 2018
Alyssa Smith with the Rosalind Franklin Statue on the Rosalind Franklin campus
In this episode, Megan interviews her little sister, Alyssa Smith, who is finishing up her 3rd year in Medical School at Chicago Medical School.
Alyssa uses many of the six strategies for effective learning that we talk about on the podcast. As the sister of a Cognitive Psychologist who specializes in learning, she has of course heard of these strategies before. But in addition, during orientation to Medical School she and her class were introduced to many of these strategies and the research behind them. The students were taught explicitly how to use the strategies, and student tutors reinforce the strategies with their younger peers.
Alyssa and her class were told during this orientation that many of the strategies they have used to get them this far, for example cramming, might not cut it in medical school. In medical school, students are required to learn an immense amount of information and retain that information over time. To do this, they will need to use the most effective learning strategies.
Alyssa explains that when she was an undergraduate, she did do a lot of cramming and she was able to do well in her classes. However, we know cramming does not tend to lead to long-term learning, and Alyssa says she has lost a lot of what she learned as an undergrad, even from class in which she did very well. This isn't uncommon; many of her peers say the same thing. She knows that as a physician she will need to remember what she is learning in medical school, and is now dedicated to ensuring that she is learning for the long-term.
So how does Alyssa use effective strategies now? She explained with some very specific examples.
How she has used spacing and interleaving
Alyssa Smith at her White Coat Ceremony
At the beginning of each week, Alyssa created a study schedule and made sure to schedule time for at least 2 or 3 different courses each day. One thing that really helped her to stick to her schedule was to plan a little bit of flexible time each week. Alyssa planned Monday through Friday, but left the weekends for studying whatever she was struggling with the most. This helped her stick to her schedule. If she was struggling with something, in the past she might have been tempted to ignore her other courses and focus on the difficult topics. But, with her flexible schedule, she would say to herself "I have to do well on every course. I can't neglect the others, so I'm going to stick to my schedule." Then on the weekends she would go back to the things she felt she needed to revist, and often found she actually knew it better than she thought she did!
How she has used retrieval
To help with classes like Anatomy and Pharmacology, Alyssa used flashcard programs, like Anki. One great thing about Anki is that it incorporates spacing. You can input your confidence on different terms, and based on your confidence it will show up sooner (like 10 minutes) or later (like 2 days). But importantly, they always come back to make sure you're engaging in repeated retrieval. They can also utilize interleaving if you make different decks.
How she has used dual coding, combined with other strategies
Alyssa's diagrams for dual coding retrieval practice!
Alyssa found dual coding to be effective and fun. (She says she knows it's nerdy, but it's true!!!) Alyssa talks about online programs that utilize dual coding, like SketchyMedical. They show videos that tell a little story and as you go along include symbols that are associated with specific concepts. These programs are not free, but Alyssa said she personally found them useful.
She also created her own dual coding retrieval practice by drawing diagrams of things she needed to learn on her closet door mirror, so that she could practice retrieving the information using the diagrams as cues whenever she was getting ready! (Introducing spacing, too.)
Has learning styles come up as a med student?
Unfortunately, this is something she has heard from both students and professors. But, during her initial orientation the class was told that the learning styles theory is not true. Instead, the class was told to integrate lots of different methods!
What would you recommend to incoming medical students?
Alyssa recommends learning how to use evidence-based study strategies right away. Start out by creating a schedule where you're studying your classes each day if you can, and at least 2-3 days per week. Then, stick to the schedule so you're not cramming!
What would you say to premed students who are hoping to get into medical school?
Start incorporating these strategies now, there's a learning curve and it was difficult at first but it was frustrating. Get into the habit now, and
Stay tuned for a bite-size research episode about learning medical concepts later this month!
Today's episode is the second of two episodes that we recorded specifically for parents. Our goal was to take what we know about the science of learning and focus on how it can be used by you - parents - to help your children with their learning and performance on tests, exams, and other types of assessments. We hope that these 2 episodes will be applicable to parents of a range of students, regardless of age and specific subject(s) being studied.
You may be a parent of a child whose school is implementing effective strategies from cognitive psychology, or you may be interested in helping your child utilize these strategies at home even if they are not part of the school's regular practice. We talk about the strategies from both of these perspectives.
In the previous episode, we talked about how parents can help their children with spaced practice and retrieval practice, and we touched on interleaving. In this episode, we talk about elaboration, concrete examples, and dual coding.
Elaboration involves adding details to our memories. One way to do that is to simply have conversations with your children about topics that may relate to concepts that they have learned in class. You can also encourage elaborative interrogation by posing how and why questions. If your child isn't ready to answer them yet, that's OK - you can look up the answer together, or even ask their teachers.
Concrete examples are important for your children to experience when trying to learn an abstract idea. Because concrete information is easier to understand and remember, finding and generating concrete examples for the abstract ideas they are studying will help your children learn more. It's important to ensure that your child understands the connection between the concrete example and the abstract idea, so that they don't just remember the example alone.
Dual coding involves combining words and visuals to provide multiple ways for information to be understood and later remembered. You can help your children connects words and visuals by drawing with them, or having them describe a picture to you. However, it's important to note that this technique is not just for children who like art; be careful with labeling your child as a "visual learner", as this does not appear to be a useful categorization.
Today's episode is specifically for parents. Our goal was to take what we know about the science of learning and focus on how it can be used by you - parents - to help your children with their learning and performance on tests, exams, and other types of assessments. We hope that this episode will be applicable to parents of a range of students, regardless of age and specific subject(s) being studied.
You may be a parent of a child whose school is implementing effective strategies from cognitive psychology, or you may be interested in helping your child utilize these strategies at home even if they are not part of the school's regular practice. We talk about the strategies from both of these perspectives.
In this episode, we talk about the two most important study strategies: spaced practice and retrieval practice. These two strategies have the most evidence for their effectiveness, and are the most broadly applicable across a huge variety of different skills and subjects.
Spaced practice is the opposite of cramming. We tend to find that students often end up cramming for their tests. However, if your child spaces out their study episodes over time instead, they will be learning more for the long-term, rather than just forgetting most of the information soon after the test.
You can help your child integrate informal spaced practice by asking them about something they mentioned a few weeks ago. This will help your child refresh the information in their memory rather than move on and forget it. That's where retrieval practice comes in. The idea behind this strategy is to bring information to mind from memory. Your child can do this in many ways - writing or sketching what they know from memory, teaching someone else the material, or even just telling you a story about what they are learning. This act of bringing the information to mind from memory - producing the information without their classroom materials in front of them - will actually increase their memory for the material.
If your children are a little more independent, you might try to help them plan out their own study schedules. And once they get to high school, you can point them to our podcast - our last two episodes (Episode 14 and Episode 15) were recorded specifcally for students.
Today's episode is specifically for students. It is the follow-up to our previous episode (Episode 14) for students. Our goal for this pair of episodes was to take what we know about the science of learning and focus on how it can be used by you - students - to improve how much you're learning and your performance on tests, exams, and other types of assessments. We hope that this episode will be applicable to a range of students, regardless of age and specific subject(s) being studied.
The two most important study strategies are spaced practice and retrieval practice. They have the most evidence for their effectiveness, and are the most broadly applicable across a huge variety of different skills and subjects. We focused Episode 14 on these two strategies, and we begin the current episode by reviewing them.
In this follow-up episode, we discuss 4 additional techniques that also have merit. Interleaving is a way of planning out your studying so that ideas and concepts are studied together and in different orders, rather than separately and/or always in the same order. This might allow you to learn how to use information more flexibly and discriminate between similar ideas. It is a technique that is particularly useful in subjects that involve problem solving, like maths and physics.
Elaboration involves adding details to our memories. We talk about how one way to do that might be to ask yourself how and why questions while you are studying. This can be difficult, especially when you are not very familiar with the material, so do make sure to check your explanations with your teacher.
Dual coding involves combining words and visuals to provide multiple ways for information to be understood and later remembered. It's important to note that this technique is useful not only if you like pictures, or feel that you have a visual learning style.
Finally, concrete examples are important to use when you are trying to learn an abstract idea. Because concrete information is easier to understand and remember, finding and generating concrete examples for the abstract ideas you are studying will help learn more. As with elaboration, make sure to check the accuracy of your concrete examples with your teacher.
You can find videos about these study strategies here.
Today's episode is specifically for students. Our goal was to take what we know about the science of learning and focus on how it can be used by you - students - to increase how much you're learning and improve your performance on tests, exams, and other types of assessments. We hope that this episode will be applicable to a range of students, regardless of age and specific subject(s) being studied.
The two most important study strategies are spaced practice and retrieval practice. They have the most evidence for their effectiveness, and are the most broadly applicable across a huge variety of different skills and subjects.
Spaced practice is the opposite of cramming. We tend to find that students often end up cramming for their tests. However, if you space out your study episodes over time instead, you will be learning more for the long-term, rather than just forgetting most of the information soon after the test. If you think you don't need that information again, you are probably mistaken! Most of what we learn would be useful to remember in the future - for example, the next class might build on the previous class, and if you've forgotten everything from that previous class, you will have to re-learn a lot of information.
You can't decide to space out your studying at the last minute. You have to plan ahead and schedule spaced study sessions. But, it's important to be realistic! Don't plan to study for an unrealistic amount of time, or you will be frustrated by your inability to reach your goals. It's also important to adjust your study schedule if it doesn't work for you.
What should you actually do during these study sessions? That's where retrieval practice comes in. The idea behind this strategy is to bring information to mind from memory. You can do this in many ways - writing or sketching what you know from memory, teaching someone else the material, or even just telling someone a story about what you are learning. This act of bringing the information to mind from memory - producing the information without the notes or textbook in front of you - will actually improve your memory for the material.
You should try to take as many practice tests as you can get your hands on, or if you don't have any of those, just write out everything you can remember about the topic from memory. Afterwards, go back to your notes or textbooks to verify that the information you produced is correct, and check for any errors.
Unfortunately, we find that students do not frequently use this study strategy. Some students do take practice tests, but they say they do it to check how much they learn - not to actually increase learning through retrieval practice. The strategy students tend to use more often is reading and re-reading. This can feel easier than retrieval practice, because the information on the page gets more and more familiar. Retrieval practice, on the other hand, can feel difficult because of the effort involved in bringing the information to mind from memory. This difficulty and struggle, however, are crucial to learning.
Spaced practice and retrieval practice work really well together, so do try out these two important study strategies. In the next episode, we'll talk about another 4 effective learning strategies.
This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Yana talks about an experiment that examined the impact of dual coding on second language learning.
In the last episode, we talked about the research on dual coding. (If you haven't listened to that episode yet, we recommend listening to it before listening to this one). The basic premise is that combining words with visuals can be beneficial to learning - but not only to those who claim to be “visual learners”.
In the paper described in the current episode (1), the author looked at Korean middle school students learning English. The materials for the experiment were pairs of words that, when translated from English into Korean, essentially mean the same thing. But if you switch one out for another in English, you drastically change the meaning.
Here is an example from the paper:
They key manipulation was that during learning, some students would see these pictures, whereas others would instead see an explanation of why the incorrect words was in correct, in Korean.
The learning styles matching hypothesis was pitted against the dual coding hypothesis. If learning style matching is important, then those who prefer pictures should benefit more from seeing the pictures during study, whereas those who prefer words should benefit more from getting the verbal explanations in Korean. Instead, however, all learners generally benefited from dual coding, regardless of their preferred learning style.
Today, in our last of the 6 learning strategy podcasts, we are talking about dual coding, which involves combining words and pictures while learning. Dual coding can help learning in the following ways:
1) Adding images to verbal explanations can make ideas more concrete
It is easier for us to remember concrete information than abstract information (1). (You can listen to the Concrete Examples episode for more than this.) It is harder to visually depict abstract concepts, so by engaging in the process of expressing an idea in a picture, you are effectively making it more concrete.
2) Images can provide additional cues at retrieval
According to the original dual coding theory, the combination of words with visuals provides us with two different channels for later recall (2). Another way to think about this is that we are adding another retrieval cue by representing the information as a picture in addition to words. For example, a student could forget the verbal description of a process, but still remember a diagram and reconstruct their understanding of the process on the exam from their memory of that picture.
The difference between Learning Styles and Dual Coding
Learning Styles is the idea that each individual has a "style" of learning, such as auditory, kinesthetic, etc., and that it is a good idea to identify that style for each student and teach them accordingly (the "matching hypothesis) (3). However, there is very little evidence that this hypothesis plays out. Instead, we all learn best when we combine these formats. Of course, students do have preferences! But, that does not mean that students will perform better when they study in their preferred style. On the other hand, certain information certainly lends itself better to one presentation style than another. Instead of focusing on which student requires which type of format, we should be focusing on providing all students with multiple relevant representations of the information they are trying to learn.
Too much of a good thing?
It is important not to overdo it by including numerous pictures, as they may distract from learning instead of enhancing it. This is particularly an issue when pictures are not relevant to the information being learned, and are just included for decoration.
Irrelevant image from Pixabay
At this point, images can become distracting "seductive details" (4). See this post for more on the pitfalls of overusing dual coding.
We end the episode by highlighting some ways that teachers and students can combine words with visuals during learning.
(1)Gorman, A. M. (1961). Recognition memory for nouns as a function of abstractedness and frequency. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 23–39.
(2) Paivio, A., & Csapo, K. (1973). Picture superiority in free recall: Imagery or dual coding? Cognitive Psychology, 5, 176–206.
(3) Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105–119.
(4) Harp, S. F., & Mayer, R. E. (1998). How seductive details do their damage. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 414–434.
Episode 11 - Bite-Size Research on Providing Multiple Concrete Examples
Jan 17, 2018
This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Megan talks about the need for multiple concrete examples in order for students to transfer the underlying idea to new problems.
In the last episode, we talked about the research on concrete examples. (If you haven't listened to that episode yet, we recommend listening to it before listening to this one.) One of the points we made was the need for multiple concrete examples. Students need multiple examples, preferably with different surface details, to help them understand the underlying idea and to increase the likelihood that they will be able to apply that underlying idea to novel problems int he future. Research by Gick and Holyoak (1, 2) illustrates this point.
In one experiment (1), students read a story about a general and a fortress, and then were given a new problem, called the tumor problem:
General and fortress story used in Gick and Holyoak (1, 2)
Tumor problem used in Gick and Holyoak (1, 2)
Visual depiction of the general and fortress story and tumor problem
Spontaneous transfer from the general and fortress story to the tumor problem is quite low (20%). When students are given a hint, more are able to transfer (92%). However, a hint is not always feasible.
In 1983, Gick and Holyoak (2) experimented with a lot of different ways to try to improve spontaneous transfer. Unfortunately, many did not increase spontaneous transfer very much:
Having students summarize the solution doesn't help much
Providing a verbal description of the underlying structure doesn't help much
Providing a digram depicting the underlying structure doesn't help much
Diagram depicting the underlying structure, used in Gick and Holyoak, 1983 (2)
But, spontaneous transfer does improve when students are given multiple concrete examples with different surface details.
In one experiment (2), students were given two stories, the general story and a fire chief story, that were similar in underlying structure but different in surface details. At the end of the stories the underlying structure was summarized. After reading these stories, the students were asked to summarize both stories, and make some other ratings. Now, 62% of students spontaneously transfer the solution from the two stories to the tumor problem before the hint. After being given a hint, 82% in total can transfer. This is still not 100%, but is moving in the right direction!
These experiments highlight the importance of providing multiple concrete examples with different surface details. It also demonstrates how difficult transfer can be, even when we're trying to transfer information in the same physical context (in this case, a lab) and close in time (in this case, during the same experimental session). To read more about transfer, check out this blog and this blog.
Tune in next month to learn about the remaining strategy, dual coding!
Today, we are talking about concrete examples. Abstract ideas and concepts are harder to remember than those that are concrete (1). One way of getting around this issue is to use concrete examples to illustrate abstract ideas. For a concrete example of a concrete example, see this post.
Surface features vs. underlying concepts
Novices will tend to focus on the surface features of the examples you give them. For example, if you show novices examples of different physics problems, they will group together the problems that look similar, rather than those that actually are similar in terms of the underlying structure (2) - see this blog post.
When Megan taught her first class as a graduate student, in one class she gave her students candy to demonstrate operant conditioning, specifically "positive reinforcement". At the end of the semester, students just remembered that she gave them candy - not the concepts she was trying to demonstrate with the candy!
How many examples?
Giving multiple examples with different surface features will help students understand the underlying abstract idea better than if you just give them the abstract idea with its definition, and better than if you give them the abstract idea and just one example. See this blog post for a discussion of why we need to use multiple examples (3), (4).
Making the link
But, it's not enough to just give students all of these examples. Due to the "curse of knowledge", we as teachers might feel that it is obvious how the examples connect to the abstract ideas. It's important for us to also make the link between the concrete examples to the abstract ideas. We, as teachers, need to make this link explicit, explaining why and how the examples illustrate the abstract concepts. We can also point out which specific features of the examples match up to the abstract concept. Otherwise, we risk the students only remembering the concrete example itself, and not how it relates to the abstract idea itself.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast! Check back in 2 weeks, when we’ll be releasing a “bite-size research” episode describing an interesting paper on concrete examples.
(1) Paivio, A., Walsh, M., & Bons, T. (1994). Concreteness effects on memory: When and why? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1196-1204.
(2) Chi, M. T. H., Feltovich, P. J., & Glaser, R. (1981). Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices. Cognitive Science, 5, 121-152.
(3) Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 306-355.
(4) Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1983). Schema induction and analogical transfer. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 1-38.
Episode 9 - Bite-Size Research on Interleaving Categories
Dec 20, 2017
This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Yana talks about interleaving while trying to learn how to categorize things.
In the last episode, we talked about the research on interleaving. The idea behind interleaving is that students might switch up their studying so that they are not studying the same idea or concept for a long time, but instead are alternating the material they are studying. Mainly, the benefits that we discussed come from studies of motor learning (1) or problem solving (2). So, we talked about studies where students were given math homework based on one type of problem, or math homework with problems from different areas that required different approaches to solve them (2).
In this episode, Yana talks about a different type of learning that has also been shown to benefit from interleaving: learning which items are part of one category, and which are part of another. Earlier research on this topic looked at how people learn to classify paintings by different artists (3), or different types of birds into a taxonomy (4). In these studies, students aren’t interleaving problem solving or retrieval practice. Instead, they are just studying examples from different categories. And in these studies, interleaving examples from different categories generally helps the learner extract the main features of each category.
The set of studies described in this episode (5) applied this type of design to students learning chemistry. In this set of experiments, students studied visual representations of chemicals, as shown below. Each diagram shows the structure of the elements, and how they form the chemicals.
Image from Eglington and Kang (2017)
They saw 12 examples of chemicals in each of 5 categories - 60 examples in total. Then, when they came back two days later, students were shown new visual representations from these 5 chemical categories, and were asked to determine which category they fit into. What differed between the two groups of students was whether the examples from the 5 categories had appeared interleaved or blocked during the study phase. Those who had seen the chemicals interleaved during study got an average to 85% on the categorization quiz 2 days later, compared to only 71% in the blocked condition. In a follow-up experiment with more complex materials, students who interleaved performed at 65% and students who blocked performed at 49% on the later test, showing the same pattern of results. The authors also found that participants in the interleaving group outperformed those in the blocking group even when both groups were given cues about similarities and differences between categories.
This type of learning - that is, learning how to categorize visual representations of chemical elements - may seem quite basic, but it is actually very important for those who want to go on and study chemistry in more depth. For example, knowing which chemicals belong to which category is essential to understanding how the chemicals interact. And, the same can be said for any subject: knowing the basics is essential to later understanding of more complex abstract ideas.
Tune in over the next two months to learn about the remaining two strategies, concrete examples and dual coding!
(1) Shea, J. B., & Morgan, R. L. (1979). Contextual interference effects on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a motor skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5, 179-187.
(2) Taylor, K., & Rohrer, D. (2010). The effects of interleaved practice. Applied Cognitive Psychology,24, 837-848.
(3) Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2008). Learning concepts and categories: Is spacing the “enemy of induction”? Psychological Science, 19, 585-592.
(4) Tauber, S. K., Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Wahlheim, C. N., & Jacoby, L. L. (2013). Self-regulated learning of a natural category: Do people interleave or block exemplars during study?. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 356-363.
(5) Eglington, L. G., & Kang, S. H. (2017). Interleaved Presentation Benefits Science Category Learning. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6, 475-485.
Today, we are talking about interleaving. Be sure to listen to our spaced practice and retrieval practice episodes, as those are the most important strategies!
Interleaving is a learning strategy that involves switching between topics and ideas, which has been shown to improve long-term learning relative to blocking study of the same idea or topic (1). We recently spoke with a 12-year-old student in the UK, who described a similar strategy that he uses, and called it "jumbling it up". We loved this term so much, that we wrote a blog post about it!
Early research in interleaving focused a lot on motor skills (2), but more recently there has been renewed interest in this strategy as it applies to problem-solving, for example in maths (3), as well as how it applies to music (4). In the podcast, Yana talks about an adorable concrete example of interleaving involving her 5-year-old daughter who was trying to interleave addition and subtraction problems.
Interleaving might work because it helps students learn to distinguish between concepts and learn when to apply which strategy (5). Machine learning studies have also attempted to simulate the processes involved in interleaving (6). However, there is still much we do not know about interleaving! For example, while we know that it's not worth interleaving completely unrelated material from different subjects (7), we don't yet know exactly how related the interleaved material should be, or what effect interleaving has on attention. Yana recently submitted a grant proposal with Dr. Sophie Forster at Sussex University to explore these unanswered questions.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast! Check back in 2 weeks, when we’ll be releasing a “bite-size research” episode describe an interesting paper about interleaving.
(1) Taylor, K., & Rohrer, D. (2010). The effects of interleaved practice. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 837-848.
(2) Shea, J. B., & Morgan, R. L. (1979). Contextual interference effects on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a motor skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5, 179-187.
(3) Rohrer, D., Dedrick, R. F., & Stershic, S. (2015). Interleaved practice improves mathematics learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107, 900-908.
(4) Carter, C. E., & Grahn, J. A. (2016). Optimizing music learning: Exploring how blocked and interleaved practice schedules affect advanced performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 7.
(5) Rohrer, D. (2012). Interleaving helps students distinguish among similar concepts. Educational Psychology Review, 24, 355-367.
(6) Li, N., Cohen, W. W., & Koedinger, K. R. (2012, June). Problem Order Implications for Learning Transfer. In ITS (pp. 185-194).
(7) Hausman, H., & Kornell, N. (2014). Mixing topics while studying does not enhance learning. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 3, 153-160.
Episode 7 - Bite-Size Research on Elaborative Interrogation
Nov 15, 2017
This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Megan Sumeracki talks about elaborative interrogation with middle school students.
In the study Megan describes (1), elaborative interrogation worked well for students who were working independently, and with a partner. In this study, 6th and 7th grade students learned two types of science facts: those that were consistent with their prior knowledge, and those that were inconsistent. An example of a consistent or unsurprising science fact from their research is "the larger an animal is, the more oxygen it needs to live". But take, for example, this fact: "the sun is made up of every color, including blue and violet". This type of fact might be more surprising to students. The study looked at how elaborative interrogation impacted learning of both types of facts.
The students worked either independently, or in pairs - and in one of the following three learning conditions: 1) Elaborative interrogation: answering the question "why is that fact true?" and using their class materials to help. 2) Select their own study strategy: students were told to study the facts in whatever way they think will help them learn them best, and think back to strategies that have worked in the past. 3) Read the information for understanding, out loud.
Learning was assessed both immediately, and 60 days after the study session. Learning in pairs versus independently did not make a difference, but students who practiced elaborative interrogation learned more than those in the other two learning conditions. This was true both for facts that were consistent, and those that were inconsistent with prior knowledge. Importantly, this learning was durable - 60 days after the study session, students who practiced elaborative interrogation still performed best. It's interesting to note that students who selected their own study strategy did not better than those who just read for understanding.
Here's an important caveat to the findings: the quality of the elaborative interrogation answers mattered. Students performed best when they produced an adequate response to the question. However, producing an "inadequate" response was still better than providing no response at all. And finally, studying in pairs did not lead to a larger number of adequate responses than studying alone.
So far, we’ve covered retrieval practice, spaced practice, and elaborative interrogation in our podcasts. Over the next three months we’ll be talking about interleaving, concrete examples, and dual coding!
(1) Woloshyn, V. E., & Stockley, D. B. (1995). Helping students acquire belief-inconsistent and belief-consistent science facts: Comparisons between individual and dyad study using elaborative interrogation self-selected study and repetitious-reading. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 75-89.
Episode 6 - Elaborative Interrogation
Nov 01, 2017
Today, we are talking about elaboration. Be sure to listen to our spaced practice and retrieval practice episodes, as those are the most important strategies!
Elaboration is a really broad concept - at its core, it just means connecting or adding information. "Elaborative interrogation" is a strategy within this broad idea, and it involves asking “how" and “why" questions and finding those answers (1). Students can do this independently, with the teacher helping, or in pairs of groups. Once they come up with the questions, students must also find the answers!
For example, how might you learn about the physics of flying? You could do it by answering lots of fact-based questions, but you can also supplement this by asking and then answering elaboration questions, such as "why does a plane need an engine?" and "how does a plane take off?"
Elaborative interrogation can be a tricky strategy to implement, because students won’t always focus on the right information, or have the content knowledge necessary to carry out the task effectively. In the podcast episode, we use lots of examples from younger and older students, demonstrating how hard it can be to pick out the right information to ask questions about, or even come up with “how” and “why” questions at all.
Students may also produce incorrect explanations in answer to their own questions. Elaboration has been shown to help students who are more familiar with the topic, while those who are less familiar don’t benefit as much (2); some studies (3) have even found elaboration to be less effective than re-reading, when students are unable to produce useful elaborations (see this guest blog post). Teachers will need to guide students towards the right kinds of questions, and give feedback on explanations.
Ideally, students would be able to describe and explain ideas from memory - that is, retrieval practice using elaborative interrogation!
We hope you enjoyed this podcast! Check back in 2 weeks, when we’ll be releasing a “bite-size research” episode describing an interesting paper on elaborative interrogation.
(1)Pressley, M., Symons, S., McDaniel, M. A., Snyder, B. L., & Turnure, J. E. (1988). Elaborative interrogation facilitates acquisition of confusing facts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 268-278.
(2) Woloshyn, V. E., Pressley, M., & Schneider, W. (1992). Elaborative-interrogation and prior-knowledge effects on learning of facts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 115-124.
(3) Clinton, V., Alibali, M. W., & Nathan, M. J. (2016). Learning about posterior probability: Do diagrams and elaborative interrogation help? The Journal of Experimental Education, 84, 579-599.
Episode 5 - Bite-Size Research on Spaced Retrieval
Oct 18, 2017
This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Yana Weinstein talks about combining spacing and retrieval practice.
In Episode 2 we introduced retrieval practice, and in Episode 4 we introduced spaced practice. We are often asked whether these effective strategies for learning are only applicable to fact learning - at a recent workshop with K-12 teachers, we were asked:
What do these strategies do to students’ abilities to make inferences, apply what they know, and think creatively?
Megan responded to this question with a blog post aptly entitled "Retrieval and Spaced Practice Sound Great, but Are They Just for Memorization?". In this episode, I continue answering that question by describing the results of a study on spaced retrieval practice that looked not only at performance on factual questions. but also on higher-order (application) questions (1). The goal of this study was to extend the already huge evidence for the benefits of spaced retrieval practice to a situation where students were engaging in what they called higher-order learning.
The take-away points from this study are that spaced retrieval practice works not only in basic lab studies, but can also work in highly realistic classroom settings. Also, spaced retrieval can help not only memory of factual information, but also performance on more complex application questions. Thus, a very simple tweak in the timing of students’ retrieval practice can have a measurable impact on later performance.
Next month, we’ll continue by talking about Elaboration.
(1) Kapler, I. V., Weston, T., & Wiseheart, M. (2015). Spacing in a simulated undergraduate classroom: Long-term benefits for factual and higher-level learning. Learning and Instruction, 36, 38-45.
Today we’re introducing spaced practice - spacing out studying the same information over multiple sessions rather than cramming it all into one (1).
What is spaced practice?
We talk about how the idea is really simple in theory, but harder to implement. The benefits of spaced practice have been demonstrated in many domains, from fact learning (2), to problem solving (3), and even to musical instrument learning (4). We also talk about how the benefits of spaced practice appear on a delayed test rather than an immediate test (5).
For more about how spaced practice can be helpful and instructions for how to implement it during studying, see this blog post.
How can we get students to space out their learning?
It's hard! You can try to help students set aside blocks of time to study: first have them log how they spend their time for a week, and then have them look for times in their schedule that they could dedicate to studying. Even if they only plan to study 5 minutes each day, that's infinitely more than 0 minutes! You might want to use a time log to use with your students to help them plan for spaced practice. On the podcast, we describe our own attempts at implementing spaced practice in our real lives - with variable success.
If your students need help forming intentions and sticking to them - don't we all? - you can share this guest post with them.
Implementing spaced practice in the classroom
Since it is quite difficult for students to independently engaged in spaced practice, teachers might consider providing students with opportunities for spaced practice as part of the mandatory classroom experience. If you're really planning ahead, you can try to break up the topics you're teaching and space them all out throughout the semester - but this is tricky (though see here for a resource digest full of ideas for spaced teaching).
A lighter approach to introducing spacing is to give students an opportunity to practice the information you've taught at a later date, for example by implementing "lagged" homework. In this system, homework on a given topic is given a few weeks after the topic is taught.
Another idea is to combine spaced practice with retrieval practice, providing students with in-class opportunities to retrieve information from previous classes. A teacher in the UK proposed the following method:
We hope you enjoyed this podcast! Check back in 2 weeks, when we’ll be releasing a “bite-size research” episode describe an interesting paper on spaced practice.
(1) Ebbinghaus, H. (1913). Memory (HA Ruger & CE Bussenius, Trans.). New York: Columbia University, Teachers College. (Original work published 1885). Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/memory8.htm
(2) DeRemer, P., & D'Agostino, P. R. (1974). Locus of distributed lag effect in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 167-171.
(3) Grote, M. G. (1995). The effect of massed versus spaced practice on retention and problem-solving in High School physics. Ohio Journal of Science, 95, 243-247.
(4) Simmons, A. L. (2012). Distributed practice and procedural memory consolidation in musicians’ skill learning. Journal of Research in Music Education, 59, 357-368.
(5) Rawson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (2005). Rereading effects depend on time of test. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 70-80.
Episode 3 - Bite-Size Research on Retrieval Practice Formats
Sep 20, 2017
This is our first bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Megan Sumeracki talks about retrieval practice.
In our second episode, we introduced retrieval practice or bringing information to mind. We know from a century of research that retrieval practice improves learning. There are a lot of ways to practice retrieval, and this strategy seems to be very flexible and can be used in a lot of different ways.
One easy way to implement retrieval practice in the classroom is to give students frequent low-stakes or no-stakes quizzes. But the next natural question is, what retrieval format should I use?
The two most common formats are short-answer and multiple-choice formats. Some research shows that short-answer quizzes improve learning more than multiple-choice quizzes because they require the students to produce the answer (1). Yet often multiple-choice quizzes are easier to administer and to grade, and we know this is very important for busy teachers. So what to do? (Spoiler alert, based on my honors thesis and the work of others, the format does not have a huge impact on learning. The important thing is to make sure students practice retrieval in some way.)
In 2005, Park (2) created a hybrid format to try to combine the benefits of short-answer and multiple-choice formats. Sixth-grade students would first try to answer a question in short-answer format, and then could click a "next" button for the multiple-choice alternatives to select the correct answer. The catch is that the multiple-choice alternatives only show up for a brief amount of time. So, the students really had to try to produce the answer before clicking next. Park found that the hybrid quiz led to a little bit more learning than a standard multiple-choice quiz after a few days.
In 2008, I was really interested in quiz formats and decided to conduct my undergraduate honors thesis on this topic at Purdue University. In my experiments (3), students were randomly assigned to one of a few different conditions, and each condition was assigned a different retrieval-practice format. Some students answered multiple-choice questions, some answered short-answer questions, and others answered hybrid questions. Finally, some students were in a control group where they didn't answer questions at all. All of the students read a text, took a quiz (except the control group), and then read statements containing the correct answer to all of the quiz questions. One week later, we gave the students an assessment test.
My thesis advisor and I found that retrieval practice, regardless of format, improved learning over the control group.
Data from Smith & Karpicke, 2014 (3) Experiment 4
However, we also found that the type of retrieval format didn't really much matter. Across 4 experiments, any differences we found between retrieval formats were really pretty small.
Data from Smith & Karpicke, 2014 (3) Experiment 4
At first, my advisor and I were really surprised by this! But after doing a very systematic review of the literature and conducting 4 experiments of our own, it seems that the retrieval practice format does not have a huge effect on learning. Others have found little to no difference between retrieval practice formats (e.g., 4, 5, 6). In another paper that was published after mine, researchers found that there weren't format differences among younger middle school students (7).
Main Takeaway:
Retrieval practice improves learning, and we can be pretty sure of this based on a century of research. However, the type of format you use is not likely to make a huge difference to learning.
You can read a blog based on this research here. You can find the published paper containing my honors thesis experiments here. We hope you enjoyed this bite-size research podcast! Check back on the first Wednesday of next month, when we’ll be releasing a podcast about spaced practice.
(1) Kang, S. H. K., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2007). Test format and corrective feedback modify the effects of testing on long-term retention. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 19, 528-558.
(2) Park, J. (2005). Learning in a new computerised testing system. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 436-443.
(3) Smith, M. A., & Karpicke, J. D. (2014). Retrieval practice with short-answer, multiple-choice, and hybrid tests. Memory, 22, 784-802.
(4) Clariana, R. B., & Lee, D. (2001). The effects of recognition and recall study tasks with feedback in a computer-based vocabulary lesson. Educational Technology Research & Development, 49, 23-36.
(5) Williams, J. P. (1963). Comparison of several response modes in a review program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 54, 253-360.
(6) Gay, L. R. (1980). The comparative effects of multiple-choice versus short-answer tests on retention. Journal of Educational Measurement, 17, 45-50.
(7) McDermott, K. B., Agarwal, P. K., D'Antonio, L., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Both multiple-choice and short-answer quizzes enhance later exam performance in middle and high school classes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20 , 3-21.
Today we’re introducing retrieval practice – in other words, bringing information to mind.
How does retrieval practice help learning?
Retrieval practice is beneficial in many ways. The more obvious way is that doing something like a practice quiz can help you figure out what you don’t know. That’s one example of an “indirect” benefit of retrieval practice: figuring out what you know and what you don’t know leads you to do something that causes learning.
But, lots of studies have also shown direct effects of retrieval practice: the act itself of bringing information to mind makes it more durable. For more on the various direct and indirect benefits of retrieval practice, see this post.
Later on in the podcast, you'll hear about how retrieval practice can be good for application of knowledge to new situations – not just fact learning. For more about how retrieval practice can help with complex and novel situations, see this post. Retrieval practice can also help with anxiety! (2)
Do students practice retrieval on their own?
The answer is no. While students often do use quizzes as a check of how much they've learned, very few of them list retrieval practice as their go-to study strategy (1). Why not? Well, it’s hard. While doing retrieval practice, it can feel like you don’t know much – and that feels bad. This leads students to be underconfident after practicing retrieval, compared to overconfident after re-reading. For more on this illusion, see this blog post about predicted and actual learning.
Megan tells an anecdote about students who come to her office and say they studied and studied – why didn't they do well? It’s probably because they didn't use effective study strategies!
Another reason why students may not practice retrieval as often as they should is that the benefits of retrieval are delayed. Retrieval is better in the long-run - it produces durable learning - but it might not feel like it’s “working” while students are actually doing it.
How can teachers integrate retrieval practice into their classrooms?
There are many different ways for students to practice retrieval – it doesn’t have to be with a formal quiz or test. Yana’s colleague, Dr. Miko Wilford, likes to play Jeopardy with her students to help them get ready for exams. You can also do starter or exit questions, which can be low or even no stakes. You can ask students to write from memory, answer open-ended questions, draw from memory, and even create concept maps from memory(3). Be careful with having students create their own questions, though – it may not be worth it(4). Prompting questions might also help – though not always (but at least, they shouldn’t hurt). See this blog post for Megan’s recent study on retrieval practice with prompts (5).
Students actually really like frequent quizzing once they get used to it. Megan and Dr. Cindy Nebel (formerly Cindy Wooldridge) recently went to Columbus State Community College to talk to instructors there, and one of the professors, Felicia Smith, talked about giving daily quizzes in some of her classes, and how students who’d experienced this reacted when they took her other classes in which she didn’t use daily quizzing.
It’s a good idea to tell students why you are including so many quizzes. This helps students understand that we’re not just doing this to be mean to them! Dr. Althea Bauernschmidt always tells students:
"I quiz because I care."
(For Althea’s latest guest post on our blog, see here).
What about flashcards?
Flashcards can be a good way for students to practice retrieval on their own, but they have to make sure they are doing it properly: actually trying to retrieve, rather than just flipping the card. A group of students in Yana’s class recently claimed that making flashcards rather than using them to practice retrieval was what helped them learn. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out what happened with that hypothesis!
Image from Pixabay
For a different twist on flashcards, see this method described by college student Rachel Adragna, which goes beyond using flashcards for retrieving key terms and definitions –encouraging students instead to think more deeply and in new ways about the information they’re trying to learn.
One last thing: Students should not stop studying when they think they’ve learned the information. Repeated retrieval, even after retrieval success, is critical for long-term learning (6), (7).
We hope you enjoyed this podcast! Check back in 2 weeks, when we’ll be releasing a “bite-size research” episode describe an interesting paper on retrieval practice.
(1) Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practice retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17, 471-479.
(2) Smith, A. M., Floerke, V. A., & Thomas, A. K. (2016). Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress. Science, 354, 1046-1048.
(3) Blunt, J. R., & Karpicke, J. D. (2014). Learning with retrieval-based concept mapping. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106, 849-858.
(4) Weinstein, Y., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2010). A comparison of study strategies for passages: Re-reading, answering questions, and generating questions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 16, 308-316.
(5) Smith, M. A., Blunt, J. R., Whiffen, J. W., & Karpicke, J. D. (2016). Does providing prompts during retrieval practice improve learning? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30, 544-553.
(6) Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319, 966-968.
(7) Karpicke, J. D. (2009). Metacognitive control and strategy selection: Deciding to practice retrieval during learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138, 469-486.
Episode 1 - Welcome to the Learning Scientists Podcast!
Sep 05, 2017
Welcome to the Learning Scientists Podcast – a podcast for teachers, students, and parents about evidence-based practice and learning.
In this episode, the two of us – Dr. Yana Weinstein (UMass Lowell) and Dr. Megan Sumeracki (formerly Megan Smith; Rhode Island College) – introduce ourselves and tell you a bit about our backgrounds, how we came to start the Learning Scientists project, and what we’ll be talking about on this podcast.
About Us
Yana was born in Russia, grew up in England, spent a bit of time in France, and moved to the US in 2008 – first to St. Louis, MO (to do a postdoc at Washington University in St. Louis with Roddy Roediger), and then to Boston 5 years ago to start her faculty position at UMass Lowell.
Megan has lived in the United States her entire life. She grew up North of Chicago, went to Purdue University for her undergraduate education, Washington University in St. Louis for her Masters, and back to Purdue for her PhD. She then took a 1-year position at Utah State University Eastern, before settling into her position at Rhode Island College.
So, we met at Washington University in St. Louis 8 years ago, but we didn’t really work together at the time. A year and a half ago, however, everything changed as we re-discovered each other on Twitter and launched the Learning Scientists project.
The Learning Scientists project
Originally, we started searching for students who wanted help studying. Did you know that once every few minutes, someone tweets asking “how to study”? See for yourselves! To learn more about how the project emerged spontaneously from our Twitter interactions, see this story.
With the help of Samuel Sumeracki, a strategic communication expert – and now, Megan’s husband! – we started a website and blog. Our first blog post was called Communication Breakdown Between Science and Practice in Education. We got a variety of responses to this blog post, and in the past 18 months we’ve learned a lot and realized that we were somewhat naïve when we started the project and wrote that post. See here for our 1-year reflection post, where we elaborate on how the project evolved from that first post.
The Lab to Classroom model
In this first podcast episode, we discuss our experiences in the classroom, and debunk one of the myths surrounding cognitive psychology and education: that we only collect data in the lab. We do, in fact, start in the lab; but then, we build our way up to the classroom.
For an example of the lab to classroom model in practice, see this blog post.
Six Strategies for Effective Learning
Image by Oliver Caviglioli
In this podcast, we’ll be focusing on 6 strategies that have the most evidence supporting their effectiveness. Here are the 6 strategies, with links to our dedicated page for each strategy, where you can find posters, blog posts, and other free downloadable resources:
For more about the 6 strategies, see this blog post. Recently, we’ve been discussing these strategies with teachers and students. One of the 12 year olds we talked to in the UK even co-authored a blog post with us!
For the next 6 months, we’ll be taking one of these strategies in turn and presenting research evidence as well as implementation ideas, and hopefully providing even more opportunities for teachers, students, and parents to interact with us.
Speak to you soon!
You can leave a comment here, on any of our blog posts, and join us on Twitter and Facebook. Also, check out the FAQ page and submit your questions through the form at the bottom of that page. Check out this digest for all the different ways you can get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you.