Spaced Retrieval Practice Benefits Long-Term Learning and Transfer
By Megan SumerackiFor over a century cognitive psychologists have been studying spaced practice and retrieval practice, resulting in a great deal of evidence that these two strategies work very well to improve student learning. However, no single experiment or paper is going to be able to answer, in full, the question “how does this strategy…
School Meals and Academic Achievement
By Althea Need KaminskeNote: This post focuses specifically on education within U.S. school systems. When we give presentations and talk to people about effective learning strategies, one of the most common questions that we’re asked is: “If this is so effective, why isn’t it being taught in schools?”. This is a complicated question with a complicated…
Help Students Believe in Themselves: Self-efficacy Boosts Exam Scores
by Cindy NebelThe six strategies for effective learning are, indeed, effective, but only to the degree that students actually use them. And in order to change behavior, we have to consider motivation. Now, motivation is an entire area of psychology and not one that we pretend to be experts in. There are many different motivational…
The Way Learners Think About Intelligence Affects Their Own Study Choices
The authors explained that when the participants were told intelligence can be improved, they may have thought that restudying the words they had not learned very well would lead to the most growth. When the participants were told intelligence is fixed, the words they thought they had not learned very well may have been reminded…
Informal Science Education and Interest Development
The survey revealed that students’ self-reported level of competence in science skills increased steadily through the study, with competence significantly higher at the midpoint survey than baseline and significantly higher at post survey than midpoint. A similar pattern emerged for students’ engagement with science outside of the program, however the only significant difference was from…
Reflective Class Feedback: Enriching In-Class Quizzes With Discussion
By Carolina Kuepper-TetzelOne way to engage students and foster their learning is through in-class quizzes (1). In-class quizzes have gained in popularity due to the open access to polling software that teachers can easily set up and students can engage with via their phones, tablets, or laptops (e.g., Kahoot, Slido, Poll Everywhere). Therefore, quick in-class…
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…
The Benefits of Reducing Smartphone Use
Given the harmful effects of excessive smartphone use, researchers have investigated the effects of reducing smartphone use. A recent study by Brailovskaia and colleagues (2022) examined the effects of smartphone use reduction and abstinence on well-being (3). A total of 619 participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Abstinence, Reduction, or Control. The…
Digest #161: Guide to Effective Presentations
4) A Scientist’s Guide to Making Successful Presentations to High School Students by Gloria Seelman of the NIH Office of Science EducationThis resource really is for science teachers, but again, the lessons included could and should be considered by anyone hoping to present an effective presentation. Consider your audience and goals, engage the learners, but…
