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Helping Students Learn How to Learn: Six Strategies for Effective Learning - Part 1

By Catherine Buscemi, Instructional Technologist

If you've ever suspected that your students don't know how to study to learn course material and earn a passing grade, you're probably right. A group of cognitive psychology scientists who call themselves the Learning Scientists, because their main research focus is on the science of learning, discovered through their teaching experience that many students don't know how to study or have a hard time concentrating in order to learn and successfully complete course requirements.

The Learning Scientists created resources based on research from cognitive psychology to help guide learning and studying, including six strategies for effective learning. In the first part of this two-part article, we present three of their six strategies: Spaced Practice, Interleaving, and Concrete Examples.

Spaced Practice

Spaced practice is spacing out studying over time, which creates "small spaces" of study time that add up. A few hours spread over two weeks is more effective than the same hours all at once.

Spaced practice and its benefits for learning are an important contribution from cognitive psychology to education. Investigations into spaced practice date back to the late 1800s with the work of German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. Ebbinghaus devised a list of 2,300 three-letter nonsense syllables. He then used that list and himself as a subject to measure the formation of mental associations. Ebbinghaus eventually concluded that memory is orderly, and his findings included the forgetting curve, which relates forgetting to the passage of time. Cognitive psychologists consider short-term memory to be a very brief period of time (15–30 seconds); as soon as we encode information, we immediately start to forget it (Understanding How We Learn, Weinstein and Sumeracki, 2018). The value of spaced practice as a learning strategy is it helps students figure out when they should study in order to retain and, therefore, learn the information.

Introduce and Apply the Spaced Practice Learning Strategy

The central tenet of spaced practice is: Do not cram for the exam!

• Introduce the spaced practice learning strategy to your students with this short Spaced Practice video.
• Help students create effective study schedules at the beginning of the semester to plan early for assignments and exams (even though due dates are weeks away) where they set aside a little bit of time every day to study.
• Encourage students to review information from each class—but not immediately after class. Additionally, encourage them to review important older information to keep it "fresh."
• Include opportunities to revisit information throughout the semester (spacing) by providing learning activities, practice exercises, and low-stakes quizzes. eLearning Instructional Design can show you how to set up learning and practice activities in Blackboard. Let us know how we can help!

To learn more about spaced practice, refer to the Learning Scientists' blog Learning How to Study Using Spaced Practice. For more information, research, and free downloadable materials, go to Spaced Practice.

Interleaving

Interleaving is a learning strategy to help students figure out when and what they should study. Rather than study one idea or topic for a long time, it is more effective to switch between ideas while studying.

Introduce and Apply the Interleaving Learning Strategy

Comprehensive assessments (e.g., final exams) require interleaving as a skill.

• Introduce the interleaving learning strategy to your students with this short Interleaving video.
• Encourage students to switch between ideas or topics during a study session rather than study just one topic.
• Students should not switch between topics too often or spend too little time on a topic. The goal is to understand the idea before switching to a new one.
• Ask students to make links between different ideas as they switch, and review topics in a different order to reinforce what they learned.
• Let your students know that interleaving may seem hard at first, but research suggests that switching between topics is more beneficial to learning than studying one topic for a long time.

To learn more about interleaving, refer to the Learning Scientists' blog Learning to Study Using Interleaving. For more information, research, and free downloadable materials, go to Interleaving.

Concrete Examples

Concrete examples as a learning strategy is the use of specific (i.e., concrete) examples to illustrate abstract concepts, which can be vague and difficult for learners to understand.

Introduce and Apply the Concrete Examples Learning Strategy

Often a significant part of assessment (e.g., essay questions) asks students to grapple with applying abstract ideas to concrete examples.

• Introduce the concrete examples learning strategy to your students with this short Concrete Examples video.
• Incorporate concrete examples that use pictures combined with words. Pictures are easier to remember, in general, and can be helpful for all learners, not just those who like pictures.
• Use more than one concrete example when you present abstract concepts.
• Encourage students to make links between the concrete examples you present and the abstract ideas you are teaching. They need to understand how the example applies to the concept.
• Ask students to come up with their own concrete examples that illustrate the abstract concept. Then verify that their examples are correct. eLearning Instructional Design can show you how to set up assignments in Blackboard (e.g., Discussions) that will help you provide this type of feedback. Let us know how we can help!

To learn more about concrete examples, refer to the Learning Scientists' blog Learning to Study Using Concrete Examples. For more information, research, and free downloadable materials, go to Concrete Examples.

Stay Tuned...

These three strategies for effective learning can be applied to any subject area. If you would like help incorporating any of these strategies into your course, visit our Instructional Design Website or send us an email, and we will be happy to assist you.

In part two, we'll look at the other three strategies for effective learning.