When is Retrieval Practice Most Efficient?
Participants spent less time doing their practice tests when they were multiple choice than when they were short answer, and because performance was about the same, multiple choice self-testing was shown to be the better choice when participant-controlled. But again, participants didn’t score as high when they dropped items after getting them right. On average,…
Notetaking Formats
As with any of the formats above, the key to making combination notes is recognizing what type of information needs to be recorded/learned and choosing the appropriate format, while making sure it’s in a format that you can practice spaced retrieval with. I really like using these different formats because they are already set up to…
Spaced Practice and Working Memory
If you need another reason to love spaced practice, Ouhao Chen and colleagues (1) provide yet another one. They conducted two experiments to investigate the relationship between spaced practice and working memory depletion. First, I’ll provide a primer on working memory and resource depletion, and then I’ll describe the experiments and results.Working memory is the…
The Potential Harm of Learning Styles
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…
Interleaving Improves Learning for All Learners
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.…
When Restudying Trumps Retrieval
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…
Pitting Learning Styles Against Dual Coding
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…
Mary Whiton Calkins
by Althea Need KaminskeIn the past month I’ve been thinking a lot about history. I was tasked with writing a brief overview of cognitive psychology for a book I’m writing with Megan, and someone wrote into the Learning Scientists interested in the history of learning and asking for some places to start. I was not…
Using Memes as a Teaching Tool
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,…
Confident and Wrong: Can Students Learn from Their Mistakes?
by Cindy NebelWe’re all wrong from time to time. We misremember something or we were taught something factually inaccurate to begin with. It happens. As an educator, I have certainly had students that come to my class with some inaccurate beliefs (see neuromyths). When students find out that they’re wrong about something, how often does…
