Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology

Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology

In the field of education, it is crucial to explore and implement effective learning techniques that can enhance students' performance and boost their long-term retention and comprehension. A study titled "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology" by John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham in 2013 sheds light on various learning techniques and their utility assessments.

The study categorizes the learning techniques into high and low utility assessments based on their effectiveness. Practice testing and distributed practice received high utility assessments as they have been shown to benefit learners of different ages and abilities and improve students' performance across various criterion tasks.

On the other hand, summarization, highlighting, the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, and rereading received low utility assessments. Despite being commonly used by students, these techniques do not consistently boost performance. Therefore, it is essential to explore and implement alternative techniques that have shown promise in research.

One potential reason for the disconnect between research on learning techniques and their use in educational practice is the overwhelming number of available techniques. Educators may find it challenging to sift through the research and determine which techniques are effective and feasible for students to implement.

Additionally, student characteristics such as working memory capacity, general fluid intelligence, and domain knowledge can influence the effectiveness of learning techniques. Students with prior knowledge about a topic may find it easier to use self-explanation and elaborative interrogation techniques, which involve answering "why" questions about a concept. Domain knowledge can also enhance the benefits of summarization and highlighting.

Elaborative interrogation is a technique that involves prompting learners to generate an explanation for a fact. It has been shown to facilitate learning by integrating new information with existing prior knowledge. The effectiveness of elaborative interrogation is often higher when elaborations are precise, when prior knowledge is higher, and when elaborations are self-generated.

Self-explanation, another technique explored in the study, involves having students explain their thought processes during learning. The active-highlighting group performed better on test items for which they had selected what to highlight compared to the passive highlighters. This suggests that the act of selecting and highlighting information can enhance memory and comprehension.

Furthermore, the study discusses the concept of underlining or highlighting important information in texts. While standard underlining can draw attention to individual concepts and support memory for facts, it may hinder performance on higher-level tasks that require inference making. This technique may be more effective when students have the necessary knowledge to highlight effectively or when dealing with difficult texts.

Distributed practice, which involves spacing out learning sessions over time, has been shown to be superior to massed practice. Students who engaged in spaced practice recalled more information compared to those who engaged in massed practice. The spacing of learning episodes is critical, and the study suggests that the lag between sessions should be approximately 10-20% of the desired retention interval for optimal performance.

In a related study mentioned in the article, students in a 6-month course outperformed students in an 8-week course on tests measuring conceptual understanding and the final exam. This suggests that longer courses and distributed practice can lead to better long-term retention and comprehension.

In conclusion, the study highlights the importance of implementing effective learning techniques in educational settings. Practice testing, distributed practice, elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, and selective highlighting have shown promise in improving students' learning outcomes. Educators should consider these techniques and tailor their implementation based on students' characteristics and prior knowledge.

Three actionable advice based on the study's findings are:

1. Encourage students to engage in practice testing and distributed practice to enhance their long-term retention and comprehension.
2. Prompt students to answer "why" questions and generate explanations to integrate new information with existing prior knowledge.
3. Teach students effective highlighting strategies that focus on connections across concepts rather than individual facts, and incentivize their use to increase performance.

By incorporating these evidence-based learning techniques into educational practice, teachers can create a more effective and engaging learning environment for students, ultimately improving their academic performance and knowledge retention.