Learning Scientists Posts

Cover Image by huoadg5888 from PixabayBy Althea Need KaminskeWhen I meet with a student to discuss why their performance in a class isn’t where they want it to be, I remind them that there are many factors that affect how well they do in a course. Many of those things are under their control -…

ResultsIn Experiment 1, participants who justified their answers scored about 10% higher on the test than those who did not. Importantly, that’s their MC correctness; the researchers didn’t examine their actual justifications (which happens to be great news for busy teachers). When looking at how students thought they would do, there was an interesting interaction.…

Cover image by Prawny from PixabayBy Megan SumerackiIn the first year that our blog was created—2016—I wrote a piece titled, Retrieval Practice Improves Learning, But Will it Help ALL of My Students? In this piece, I covered an experiment conducted by Pooja Agarwal and colleagues (1) about the benefits of retrieval practice for students with…

Participants received feedback about their percentile after every task they did. After receiving all of the tasks, they were again assessed on their anxiety and motivation as well as their perception of their performance.ResultsDespite receiving varied feedback, there were no actual performance differences on any of the tasks. However, there were differences for perceived performance.…

Generative chatbots like ChatGPT also have a remarkable ability to pass for human-like performance in some limited social contexts, scoring well on standardized exams assessments typically used to measure aptitude and performance in a field (2). However, the lack of agency in chatbots means that they are unable to take responsibility for their actions.They cannot…

Cover Image by cottonbro studio from PexelsBy Althea Need KaminskeNote: To the best of my knowledge I did not use generative AI to write this post. Any mistakes or insights are my own. AI is big right now. It’s been big for a while, but it seems to be more and more aggressive in the…

References:(1) Roediger, H. L., Putnam, A. L., & Smith, M. A. (2011). Ten benefits of testing and their applications to educational practice. Chapter in J. Mester, & B. Ross (Eds.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Cognition in Education. (pp. 1-36). Oxford: Elsevier.(2) Fritz, C. O., Morris, P. E., Nolan, D., & Singleton, J. (2007).…

Cover image by Sebastián García from PixabayIn this week’s post, Cindy and I (Althea) talk about our work with medical student learners. We have both worked for medical schools for a little over a year now and we’ve learned some things! We discuss common challenges for learning in medical school, efficient learning strategies, learning in…

Thank you to our guest bloggers and podcast interviewees! We’ve learned so much from your different perspectives and experiences and we’re proud to be able to share that with our readers. As Learning Scientists we, of course, love to talk about learning, but we also love getting to learn ourselves! (Have something interesting to share…

Cover image by Kei from PixabayBy Megan SumerackiLast week, my blog post covered a paper by Simon Cullen and Daniel Oppenheimer. Their paper is titled Choosing to Learn: The Importance of Student Autonomy in Higher Education (1). In their paper, they present two studies. The first study, covered in Part 1, was a randomized controlled…