Time Management: What is it, who has it, and can you improve it?
Time management can refer to a wide range of behaviors and can look very different from person to person. There are lots of different systems and approaches to time management. Making a to-do list, keeping a planner, setting event reminders in your phone, setting goals, prioritizing tasks, and marking events on a calendar can all…
Book Review: How Learning Happens (Kirschner & Hendrick)
By Carolina Kuepper-TetzelA few weeks ago, Paul Kirschner contacted us and said that he co-wrote a new book with Carl Hendrick and wondered whether we would be interested in reviewing it in form of a blog post. So, here I am now, sitting in my living room: laptop on my lap, book by my side,…
Elaboration as Self-explanation
Self-explanation has been shown to be related to better understanding of concepts (2). In a correlational study, where the researchers identified which students used self-explanation naturally and compared this to performance on a concept test, Chi and colleagues showed that those who self-explained performed better. Chi and his research team wanted to know whether engaging…
Learning “Useless” Things in School is (Usually) NOT Useless
The challenge facing teachers is to prepare a diverse set of students for later situations that are not only varied, but likely different from ones we can even imagine in our current time. As technology rapidly changes our world, our instructors are set with the task of attempting to make students ready for whatever that…
Teaching Effectiveness vs. Teaching Evaluations
Header note, this quote appears at the top of the cited article by Kornell and Hausman (1)By Megan SumerackiFor most of us who teach in higher education, the end of the semester means administering teaching evaluations and can be a bit stressful for some. However, the beginning of each semester means reading those evaluations. In…
How to Choose the Right Way to Study for You: Advice for Students
On the other hand, something that does not offer any challenge at all is also not worth your time. If you practice a study technique and find that you are 100% accurate 100% of the time then you should start to get suspicious. You may need to increase the difficulty level, add in new material,…
Six Strategies for Effective Learning: A Summary for Teachers
By Megan Sumeracki If you read our blog often, you are familiar with the six strategies for effective learning. We have a number of resources already, but this guide provides a brief explanation of each strategy and compiles a set of links on the website all in one place. So, if you’re wanting a single…
Engagement and Interest
Another aspect of engagement seems to be interest and attention. If we focus on this aspect of engagement the definition is closer to ‘participating in activities that capture interest and attention in a subject matter’. In this view interest and attention are, in and of themselves, effective processes that promote understanding and learning, or they…
Making Tests (More) Fun Through Hints Increases Student Uptake Of Self-Testing
As you can see: Students picked the 4-letter option more often than any of the other options. Furthermore, students reported that the 4-letter option was “the most fun” with 71% agreement for that option compared to only 11% agreement for the 6-letter option. Interestingly, the 0-letter option received an agreement score of 0% (the 2-letter…
Mistakes or Opportunities? Learning from Errors
While errors can be beneficial for learning, true guesses are not terribly useful. As the confidence in an error increases, learning from the error also increases (called the hypercorrection effect). There is quite a bit of research to support the idea that participants have heightened attention or perhaps surprise when they believe an answer is…
