Learning Scientists Blog — The Learning Scientists

Nov 3

Nov 3 Self-Regulated Learning and Personality

studying can be complicated! Improving students’ knowledge and understanding of effective strategies would certainly be helpful - we’ve spent the last year writing a book hoping to do just that! - but it is only one component of effective studying and learning. When students are tasked with making choices about their learning a number of cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and contextual factors come into play. The suite of skills learners use to handle those factors is referred to as self-regulated learning (1).

Oct 28

Oct 28 Digest #166: Perfectionism in Education

Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel

Digests, For Teachers, For Students

“Perfection is the opposite of done!” I came across this statement recently and it made me think about how perfectionism really affects one’s work and studying. Growing up, I always thought of perfectionism as a good thing, as something to aspire to. However, more recently I am questioning this thought…

Oct 20

Oct 20 When Revising, Read Out Loud

Cindy Nebel

For Students, For Teachers, Learning Scientists Posts

Very frequently, I give writers (my students) the advice that they should read their work out loud while revising. I give this advice because it helps me to catch errors in writing, but I did not have evidence to back up my advice… until now.

Oct 14

Oct 14 GUEST POST: Transformational Learning & Reflection: 3 Keys for Medical Educators

Learning Scientists

Guest Posts, For Teachers

What do you think of when you hear the word “reflection”? Introspection? Done in the moment or retroactively? Something done by yourself or with others? Reflection, as a pedagogical strategy, is utilized widely in education. It is a critical component of many educational theories, especially Transformational Learning.

Oct 6

Oct 6 Prior Knowledge and Retrieval Practice

Althea Need Kaminske

Learning Scientists Posts

One of the challenges to studying the effects of prior knowledge on learning is that it is difficult to control in an experiment … This highlights one of the trade-offs that happen when we conduct research on complex topics. Prior knowledge takes a long time to develop, and our development of that knowledge is based on many factors. This makes it difficult to manipulate! … I was therefore really interested to see a recent study that attempted to do just that - manipulate prior knowledge in order to examine its effects on learning.

Sep 29

Sep 29 VLOG: The Learner Variability Project

Cindy Nebel

For Teachers

For today’s VLOG post, Cindy interviewed Jessica Jackson, Director of Professional Learning for the Learner Variability Project @DigitalPromise. In this video, Jessica talks about the concept of learner variability and walks through all the fun tools available through the Learner Variability Project.