All in Learning Scientists Posts
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 …
‘It takes a village’ is a phrase that seems to ring true for me, both in my personal life and as an academic. I strongly believe that bidirectional communication among teachers and researchers is key, and I love to engage in these conversations and use those to help decide on content for the blog. …
When 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!). Today’s blog post revisits a paper that I covered …
Like with many effective learning strategies, what students think is helping them learn is not what actually helps them learn. In two experiments presented by Hillary Mullet and colleagues (2014, 1), University engineering students received relatively immediate feedback or delayed feedback …
Does test anxiety cause poorer performance on exams? Meta-analyses show that students with higher test anxiety tend to perform worse on exams (1). We also know that anxiety can affect cognitive processes through working memory capacity (2). Therefore, the general consensus is that test anxiety interferes with our working memory, which in turn leads to poorer exam performance… However, a recent study with German medical students found that test anxiety did not predict exam performance when prior knowledge was controlled for, claiming strong evidence against the interference hypothesis (3).
When I ask my students about their go-to study strategies, one strategy that is frequently mentioned is flashcards. This nicely aligns with research into the topic showing that generating and learning with flashcards is a common strategy among students (1). However, the question is whether students use flashcards effectively…
