All in Learning Scientists Posts
…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.
I’m sure you have done this before or seen it in presentations: That funny meme on a slide to make it more engaging. My first thought would go to seductive details and how adding irrelevant, but funny details can hinder learning. We have blogged and talked about this before (here and here). However, I recently came across an article…
When students find out that they’re wrong about something, how often does that sink in? How often do we learn from our mistakes? While this is a complex question, today I’m going to share a hot-off-the-presses study with you that looked at one aspect of this issue.
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,” …
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.
Students develop preferred approaches to studying when preparing for exams. However, many techniques they rely on are likely to be less effective (e.g., cramming, rereading) than techniques that research has identified as more durable and effective (e.g., spaced practice, retrieval practice). The question is how students can be taught and convinced to use more effective strategies…
