Retrieval Practice and Stress (repost)
School can be stressful, and 2020 has been a particularly stressful year for many of us. So, for this week’s blog, I thought I would write about retrieval practice and stress. Fortunately, I get to share some good news! Prior research has shown that acute stress can hinder our ability to retrieve information. Acute stress is…
The Benefits of Combining Collaborative Learning and Interleaved Practice
By Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel In a recent paper, Danzglock, Berger, and Hänze (1) investigated the effects of combining collaborative learning with interleaved practice using complex material in physics in 376 secondary school students. Interleaved practice is when tasks or concepts are practiced together instead of organizing their practice in a blocked (and homogenous) fashion. To give…
Learner Perceived Similarity and Transfer
Cover image by katerinavulcova from PixabayBy Althea Need KaminskeTransfer of learning, the process by which people can recognize and apply previously learned information to different situations, is one of the primary goals of education. We can think of transfer and learning as happening along a continuum from highly similar to highly dissimilar. Learning, when people…
Feedback emPower Tools: How to Make Your Feedback Go Further
For today’s blog post, I interviewed Dr Rob Nash who together with Prof Naomi Winstone and Dr Kieran Balloo created the website Feedback emPower Tools. Feedback emPower Tools sets out to help learners engage and process feedback they receive. For learners it can be challenging to engage with feedback, perhaps because they either do not…
GUEST POST: Bridging the Gap: Using the DIGPA Framework to Connect Teaching Practice and...
Suzan Kobashigawa is a teacher educator working with pre-service teachers in higher education. She teaches courses in intercultural communication, culturally responsive teaching, and learning theories, along with TESOL courses. Suzan has been in the field of English language teaching for over 30 years, and has taught in Japan, Mexico and the United States. Suzan holds a…
Are You Sure You’re Spacing?
New StudyToday I’m reviewing a study that recently came out looking at how students choose to use spacing in their own study and how it relates to their performance (1). Importantly, the researchers recognized a limitation in the way students were being asked about their study habits in previous research on spacing. Here are common…
Choice and Mental Effort
One of the factors that can affect how we feel about completing a task is how much choice we had in the matter. A recent study by Wahlers et al. (2025) examined how autonomy (the degree of choice) influences the experience of mental effort while completing a reading comprehension task (2). In the first experiment,…
A Practical Guide to Exam Taking Strategies
Writing PhaseRead the questionsWhen the exam starts, carefully read the questions. Think about what the focus of the question is and if there are any terms you need to define or distinguish between first. Pay attention to the depth of the question. Some questions are shallower and ask for definitions, but others will require you…
The Box Metaphor for Working Memory
In a way, I have a few of those ring boxes stored in a shoe box for motor neurons. While I am no neuroanatomy expert, I do have an organizational scheme for some of this information. So when I see motor neuron, I’ve already chunked a bunch of extra information and understanding with that one…
A Framework for Training Students to Better Use Evidence-Based Learning Strategies
Cover photo by RDNE Stock project on PexelsBy Megan SumerackiIf you read our blog, even sporadically, you are almost certainly aware that investigations into evidence-based learning strategies have been ongoing for quite some time. In fact, as we near the end of 2025, I’m realizing that Ebbinghaus’ work on spaced practice was published 140 years…
