All in Learning Scientists Posts
Many educators struggle with student motivation and, often, it feels like something that is out of our hands. But there are things that we can do to support motivation in the classroom and to keep it going, even when Johnny would rather be anywhere but here.
In today’s blog, I’m covering an older paper by Mousavi, Low, and Sweller from 1995 (1) titled Reducing Cognitive Load by Mixing Auditory and Visual Presentation Modes. The goal of their paper was to experimentally test whether heavy cognitive overload could …
Our brains - that’s the part that does the thinking - are, for better or worse, part of our bodies .... As such there are a vast number of interconnected systems that affect us and our thinking and learning as we move throughout the day. Even your mood can affect your memory and your ability to perform well on an exam.
Today I review a series of experiments that extends previous research by having students provide justifications for their MC answers. As in other techniques for retrieval, answer justification has the potential to increase understanding and retention through elaborative retrieval…
In the first year that our blog was created—2016—I wrote a piece titled, Retrieval Practice Improves Learning, but Will it Help ALL of my Students? In this piece, I covered an experiment conducted by Pooja Agarwal and colleagues (1) about the benefits …
One of the most common metaphors to describe what the first few years of medical school is like is that it is like drinking water from a fire hose. There is an overwhelming amount of information that students need to learn, and need to learn fast. One of the areas …
