Hall Houston has a Master’s degree in Foreign Language Education from The University of Texas at Austin. He recently completed the Trinity CertPT course. He wrote several books about ELT, including 101 EFL Activities for Teaching University Students. He does presentations and teacher training for Cambridge Assessment and British Council. He currently teaches undergraduate students at National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences in Taipei, Taiwan. e-mail: hallhouston@yahoo.com

 

Background

The science of learning is a field that explores how findings from cognitive science about teaching and learning can help educators understand the most effective and efficient ways to learn and teach.  Mayer (2011) states “the science of learning is the scientific study of how people learn…The goal of the science of learning is to create a research-based model of how learning works.” In this short article, I will explain the relevance of the science of learning to university lecturers and professors, and emphasize the need for all university faculty to expand their teaching repertoire beyond traditional lecturing.

Techniques from the science of learning, such as retrieval practice, spaced practice and predicting, have shown to beneficial in helping students more effectively and retain the target knowledge for longer periods of time. Books such as Powerful Teaching, Small Teaching, Teaching Rebooted, and Uncommon Sense Teaching have done a lot to promote the key ideas and techniques from the science of learning and demonstrated a number of ways teachers can use them in the classroom.

In his book, Small Teaching, Professor James Lang (2021) points out two benefits that reading up on the science of learning can offer teachers in any context: 1) techniques and activities that can improve teaching and learning but don’t take a lot of time and preparation, and 2) a positive impact on student learning, as well as performance and retention of course material.

In this next section, I will cover five well-known techniques from the science of learning: retrieval practice, spaced practice, interleaving, elaboration and metacognition. I will explain these techniques and how they benefit learners. Additionally, I will list a few quick and simple ways to implement them in the classroom. In the words of Jones (2019), activities and resources based on educational research should be “low effort, high impact”, which means that they should be “simple and easy to adapt and use.”

 

Retrieval practice

Retrieval practice (also known as self-testing or the testing effect) is the most well-known techniques in the science of learning. It’s supported by a lot of research and it’s considered by many experts in the science of learning as one of the most effective study methods. Retrieval practice is a study technique where a student recalls information from long-term memory, without referring to books or notes. Research suggests that retrieval practice is most effective when conducted repeatedly over the days and weeks of a course.

For the most effective results, retrieval practice in the classroom must follow several rules. First, students should not refer to course materials or notes during the retrieval activity. They should only access their own long-term memories. Second, all students should retrieve together. If the teacher calls on one student to answer a question, only that student will benefit. Third, retrieval should always be low stakes or no stakes. This means that the retrieval practice should not have much (or any) impact on a student’s grade, which encourages students to think of retrieval not as testing, but as learning. Fourth, students should get feedback immediately after retrieval, so that they are clear on what answers they got correctly.

When preparing to teach a university course, it’s important to go over the course content and decide what specific course material is the most important for students to retain. Retrieval practice activities should always cover the material that you want students to remember for the long term.

Agarwal and Bain (2019) introduce the retrieval practice activity known as brain dump. It’s also been called “blurting” on TikTok videos, as described by Ellefson (2023). A brain dump is an activity where students close their books and write down everything they remember about a topic they recently studied, without referring to books or notes. Students can challenge themselves to fill up an entire sheet of paper with everything they know about the subject.

Opening questions and closing questions are additional ways to add retrieval practice to a lesson without much additional preparation or class time. Lang (2021) describes these activities as “asking questions, either orally or in writing, about material that either you or the students have covered already.” Opening questions involve beginning a lesson by asking the class about the topic of the previous class session. Closing questions involve ending a lesson by asking the class about the main points of that day’s lesson.

One additional idea for retrieval practice is retrieval bingo, described by Jones (2021). In this activity, students have a grid with an item for testing in each box, either a question to be answered or a word to be defined. Students walk around the classroom and find one student to quiz. If the student can answer the question or define the word correctly, that student’s name is written down in the corresponding box. However, students can only ask a classmate once, so they must circulate and ask a different student every time. Following the traditional rules of bingo, if a student has all items in a row or column completed, he or she shouts out “Bingo!” For additional practice, the activity can continue until at least half the class has finished a column or row and shouted “Bingo!”

 

Spaced practice

Spaced practice (or spacing) is also one of the most respected study techniques, and it works together well with retrieval practice. Spaced practice involves studying in short periods of time throughout a course, instead of studying in one long, intensive session (often referred to as massed practice or cramming). The benefit of spaced practice is that it allows time to pass between study sessions, thus making it more of a challenge to remember information. This challenge ultimately makes the memory of the information stronger and easier to access when needed.

Spaced practice can be integrated with retrieval practice in simple review activities in any lesson. As Watson and Busch (2021) indicate, “teachers can help students improve their long-term memory by spacing out the material and revisiting it regularly.” Students can answer quiz questions about material covered in different weeks of the course. If students only retrieve information about the current lesson, there is less of a spacing effect. Students can create flash cards, either with index cards or using a flashcard app, and review in their leisure time.

Agarwal and Bain (2019) recommend using an activity called blast from the past to add spacing to a lesson. In this activity, students turn to a partner and retrieve information about a topic that came up in a previous lesson, whether that be last week or last month, or even during the first week of class. 

Another activity mentioned by Agarwal and Bain (2019) is big basket quizzes, where students contribute quiz questions based on the course material, which are placed in a container, such as a box or a basket. Over the weeks of the course the number of questions grow larger and larger. In each lesson, the teacher can choose several questions from the basket to quiz the students. By using questions from different parts of the course, a teacher can add an element of spacing into the lesson.

 

Interleaving

Interleaving refers to studying more than one topic or skill during a single study session. Weinstein, Sumeracki and Caviglioli (2019) explain interleaving as “taking ideas you are trying to learn and mixing them up - or switching between the ideas and varying the order in which they are practiced.” This often involves weaving together or blending different parts of a course, which has the benefit of bringing together topics that were presented separately, making it much easier to remember both later on in the course. It works best when students have an opportunity to look at two similar topics for purposes of spotting similarities and differences.

Tait (2020) suggests creating worksheets that incorporate material from different parts of the course. He points out that “by creating your own worksheets that contain a series of questions or problems, interleaved amongst each other, it forces your students into an independent interleaved environment.” 

Lang (2021) advocates using some interleaving in exams and quizzes, and encourages teachers to “use quiz and exam questions that require students to connect new material to older material or to revise their understanding of previous content in light of newly learned material.” This may take extra preparation when planning quizzes and exams, but students will benefit greatly from the opportunities to interleave.

 

Elaboration

Elaboration is a technique which has numerous definitions. Weinstein, Sumeracki and Caviglioli (2019) define it as “the process of adding features to one’s memories.” Basically, it involves students’ expanding their knowledge of a topic by thinking more deeply and relating it to pre-existing knowledge. Through elaboration, students remember information much better by relating it to familiar ideas and concepts.

In the classroom, teachers can incorporate elaboration into a lesson simply by using pair work and group work activities where students ask each other questions to share the connections they have made between concepts presented in different parts of the course. Students can also talk about connections they make between course material and the world outside the classroom, such as current events, students’ work and home life, not to mention the students’ favorite movies, series, and songs. 

One well known form of elaboration is called elaborative interrogation. In elaborative interrogation, students answer a series of questions about a topic covered in the course. Throughout, they reveal more and more about their knowledge of the topic. This can be modified into a pair work or group work activity.

 

Metacognition

Metacognition refers to thinking about one’s own learning progress. Flavell (1976) lists four aspects of metacognition, which include four abilities: the ability to think about one’s own thinking, the ability to be aware of one’s self as a problem solver, the ability to monitor, plan and control one’s own mental processing, and the ability to judge one’s level of learning accurately. Through metacognition, students become more actively involved in their own learning, by becoming more aware of their own thoughts as they learn, and gain clarity about their learning strengths and weaknesses.

One method of helping students to practice metacognition is by providing them with metacognitive questions to guide them. Goh (2010) recommends a number of questions for students to add an element of metacognition to a listening activity, which include questions for goal setting (“What do I hope to achieve?”), questions for preparing to listen (“What do I know about this topic?”) and questions for evaluating listening (“Am I satisfied with what I understood? Why?”).

Agarwal and Bain (2019) describe retrieval cards and four steps of metacognition, where students follow four steps to practice metacognition. In the first step, students look over four review questions that refer to course material from previous lessons, and they simply indicate if they know the answer or not, without writing the answers down. In the second step, students answer the questions they can answer with confidence without looking at their books or notes. In the third step, students seek out their books and notes to get answers for the questions they weren’t sure about. Finally, in the fourth step, students check the answers for the questions they were sure about (the questions they answered in the second step).

The science of learning techniques mentioned here can increase motivation and add variety to a lesson, as well as improving learning. Teachers only need to use a few minutes of class time to do an activity such as retrieval bingo or big basket quizzes.

In addition to retrieval practice, spaced practice, interleaving, elaboration and metacognition, there are quite a few other techniques in the science of learning such as dual coding, concrete examples, and pre-testing that are well worth exploring. The science of learning is a field which always developing and expanding knowledge about the best ways to teach and learn. 

 

References

Agarwal, P. K., & Bain, P. M. (2019). Powerful teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Ellefson, L. (2023, November 7). Two ways to use the “Blurting” method to study. Lifehacker. https://lifehacker.com/two-ways-to-use-the-blurting-method-to-study-1850999140

Flavell, J. H. (1976). Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), The nature of intelligence (pp. 231-236). Erlbaum.

Goh, Christine. (2010). Listening as process: Learning activities for self-appraisal and self-regulation. Materials in ELT: Theory and Practice. 179-206. 

Jones, K. (2019). Retrieval practice: Research and resources for every classroom. John Catt Educational Ltd. 

Jones, K. (2021).  Retrieval practice resource guide: Ideas and activities for the classroom. John Catt Educational Ltd. 

Lang, J. M. (2021). Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. Jossey-Bass.

Mayer, R. E. (2011). Applying the science of learning. Pearson.

Overson, C. E., Hakala, C. M., Kordonowy, L. L., Benassi, V. A. (2023). In Their Own Words: What Scholars and Teachers Want You to Know About Why and How to Apply the Science of Learning in Your Academic Setting. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site: https://teachpsych.org/ebooks/itow

Tait, J. (2020). Teaching Rebooted. Bloomsbury.

Watson, E., & Busch, B. (2021). The Science of Learning: 99 Studies that Every Teacher Needs to Know. Routledge.

Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., & Caviglioli, O. (2018). Understanding how we learn: A visual guide. Routledge.

 

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