Learning Scientists Blog — The Learning Scientists

Aug 24

Aug 24 Mary Whiton Calkins

Learning Scientists Posts, For Researchers, For Students

…even if you have a degree in Psychology the only thing you probably know about Mary Whiton Calkins is that she was the first female president of the American Psychological Association. She was also, separately, the first female president of the American Philosophical Association. I was also delighted to find out that her early work focused on memory. Her ideas and theories about paired associate learning and the effects of primacy and recency predated modern memory research by about 70 years. She also was never awarded her PhD.

Aug 10

Aug 10 GUEST POST: Let’s focus on ‘Learning’ in MicroLearning

Learning Scientists

Guest Posts, For Teachers, For Researchers

…I’ve come to realize that the term “microlearning” has become somewhat meaningless in the literature. Yet, there is something valuable about a well-designed microlesson that we need to identify and understand. Microlessons have tremendous appeal. They are ubiquitous on YouTube, TikTok and other platforms and they’re wonderful for informal, just-in-time learning applications…

Jul 27

Jul 27 Learning Math from Errors

Megan Sumeracki

For Researchers, For Teachers, Learning Scientists Posts

When we talk about effective, evidence-based learning strategies, we often note how hard these strategies can feel. This is not a bad thing in itself—challenges can be really good! However, what can be problematic for individual learners is that the difficulty is often misconstrued as “not learning as much,” …

Jul 6

Jul 6 Sources of Cognitive Load

Althea Need Kaminske

Learning Scientists Posts, For Researchers, For Teachers

Cognitive Load Theory is an influential theory from educational psychology that describes how various factors affect our ability to use our working memory resources. We’ve done a digest about cognitive load theory here and talked about it here and here, but haven’t provided an overview of the theory so I want to give an overview here.

Jun 1

Jun 1 Announcing Our New “Ace That Test” Book!! And Other Books We Enjoy (Digest #169)

Megan Sumeracki

Digests, For Teachers, For Students, For Parents, For Researchers

We have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! Our newest book, Ace That Test: A Student’s Guide To Better Learning is coming out this summer—July 19 to be exact. You can preorder here. We are SUPER excited about this one! It’s a brief book written for students—young adult and adult learners—with many …

Apr 27

Apr 27 The Need For Flexible and Nuanced Recommendations

Megan Sumeracki

Learning Scientists Posts, For Teachers, For Researchers

Last week, Emily Oster wrote a ParentData newsletter titled What to do when what’s best is impossible: How to embrace the “second best” option. The main idea is that in parenting, and in life, there are recommendations based on some perfect ideal and this is the first best option. But …