Reducing Math Anxiety with Expressive Writing
So what you can see here is that when working memory demands are low (easy problems), people respond pretty fast and don’t make a lot of errors, regardless of anxiety. But when they need to use more of their working memory on the hard problems (High WM demand), anxiety starts to get in the way.…
How do Learning Styles Affect Learning Predictions?
Students learned one list at a time. While the students were learning the lists, they were asked to make a judgment of learning (JOL). A JOL is just a prediction about how well they think they have learned the material. In this case, they were asked to rate the likelihood that they would remember the…
Digest #162: Teaching Water Safety
By Megan SumerackiWelcome to May! In many parts of the world, the pools have been open for a while, and in New England where I live, many neighbors will start opening their pools over Memorial Day Weekend at the end of the month. Water safety is not just about summer months (lakes even when frozen…
Digest #160: Neurodiversity Celebration Week
By Megan SumerackiThis week, March 21-27, 2022, is Neurodiversity Celebration Week. Siena Castellon founded Neurodiversity Celebration in 2018. In Siena’s words, the week was founded because “I wanted to change the way learning differences are perceived. As a teenager who is autistic and has ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia, my experience has been that people often…
Pedagogy vs. Andragogy: What’s the Difference?
References:(1) Roediger III, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological science, 17(3), 249-255.(2) Karpicke, J. D., & Bauernschmidt, A. (2011). Spaced retrieval: absolute spacing enhances learning regardless of relative spacing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(5), 1250.(3) McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K.,…
To Revise Your First Answer On A Multiple-Choice Test, Or Not, That Is The...
References(1) Kruger, J., Wirtz, D., & Miller, D. T. (2005). Counterfactual thinking and the first instinct fallacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(5), 725.(2) Merry, J. W., Elenchin, M. K., & Surma, R. N. (2021). Should students change their answers on multiple choice questions?. Advances in Physiology Education, 45(1), 182-190.(3) Couchman, J. J., Miller,…
GUEST POST: The Boxing Technique: Operationalizing Retrieval Practice to Improve Learning
Dr. James Culhane earned his B.A. in Chemistry from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the West Virginia University School of Medicine. Following the completion of his doctoral degree, he accepted a faculty appointment in the Department of Pharmaceutical…
Expanding Retrieval Practice for Preschoolers
By Megan SumerackiToday’s post features a set of experiments conducted by Catherine Fritz and colleagues (1) with preschool children. We have actually cited this paper a few times on our blog, when we covered why the spacing effect has failed to make it into mainstream practice (Part 1, Part 2), and when I wrote about…
Digest #158: Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
By Carolina Kuepper-TetzelIn education many students and staff report experiencing mental health and wellbeing challenges at some point in their studies or their work - often for prolonged periods. The pandemic has contributed to the burden on mental health many students and teachers were already facing – and they often must wait for a long…
GUEST POST: Can Math Make You Feel Better?
The methods used by the researchers were reasonably straightforward. Over a series of nine experiments, they introduced participants to affect stimuli (pictures and videos chosen to elicit emotions that were either negative, neutral, or positive). Each set of experiments randomly put participants into one of two groups. The first experienced cognitive tasks referred to as…
