For Teachers

By Carolina Kuepper-TetzelWe have discussed the learning styles myth in different blog posts and you can find all of our posts in this topic here. Briefly, the idea of learning styles is that if you assess the learning styles in students and then match instruction accordingly to their self-reported learning style, their performance will be…

References:(1) Taylor, K., & Rohrer, D. (2010). The effect of interleaving practice. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 837-848. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1598(2) Rohrer, D., Dedrick, R. F., & Burgess, K. (2014). The benefit of interleaved mathematics practice is not limited to superficially similar kinds of problems. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 1323-1330. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0588-3(3) Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A.…

By Carolina Kuepper-TetzelOur memory capabilities are fascinating and with some tricks we can expand our memory performance quite significantly. These tricks are called mnemonic devices. Mnemonic devices let us organize, elaborate, and visualize information so that we can retrieve that information easier in the future. Mnemonic devices are best applied to learning lists of concepts…

If you use edtech in your classroom, you’ve probably seen at least one of the tools you use recently advertise their brand new “AI feature.” At Podsie, the core of what we’re building has always been research-driven, so as the AI hype rages on, we’ve been asking ourselves, “How can we leverage the recent advances in…

by Cindy Nebel(Cover image from Pixabay by squarefrog.)We have so many blogs about retrieval practice. In fact, it is the most common tag we use on our blog. If you’re new to this conversation, you can find some summary information about the benefits of retrieval practice here and some additional resources here. In short, there…

By Althea Need Kaminske(cover image by MabelAmber on Pixabay)Time management can be a challenge for learners at all levels. Generally, the farther along you are in your educational journey, the less your time is managed for you. You are given more independence and autonomy to set your own priorities and manage your own time -…

By Megan SumerackiWhen creating content and materials for the Learning Scientists website, we try to include many different types of forms (NOT because of Learning Styles, but because of preferences, and diversity in the type of media an individual can consume!). To that end, I’ve created blog versions of some bite-size research podcast episodes in…

By Carolina Kuepper-TetzelI’m sure you have done this before or seen it in presentations: That funny meme on a slide to make it more engaging. My first thought would go to seductive details and how adding irrelevant, but funny details can hinder learning. We have blogged and talked about this before (here and here). However,…

Valuable Content: This is the ‘what’ of the microlesson – the actual topic. Instructors should ask themselves – what is it I want to teach my learners with a particular microlesson? Content should be relevant and useful, and it should be a part of something that will connect to learners’ existing knowledge. Content is a…

In an article in the 2012 journal Association for Psychological Science titled “Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation,” authors Baird et. al looked at the link between solving problems in creative ways and providing an opportunity for those solutions to occur. Let’s look at what the study examined then what it could mean…