Today I’m reviewing a study that recently came out looking at how students choose to use spacing in their own study and how it relates to their performance…
The Learning Scientist Blog TEN YEAR Anniversary!
February 5, 2026 marks the 10 year anniversary of the Learning Scientists Blog. In late January, 2016, Jude Weinstein (who went by Yana at that time) and I started what we thought would be a fun little project to try to help students learn more. We started …
Choice and Mental Effort
Thinking is hard. In general, we don’t like to put forth mental effort when we can avoid it. Further, when we do exert mental effort, we tend to not like it. And yet… there are times when we actually enjoy doing the hard work of thinking through something. There are times when we may even feel we’ve entered into a flow state, where difficult tasks feel relatively effortless (1). How we feel about completing a task appears to be about more than just effort.
Digest #183: The Importance of Belonging for Student Success
The feeling of belonging has been identified as an important factor in education (1) (2). The main components of student belonging are being connected to peers/teachers/institution; feeling safe and as a part of the community;…
Reading Rates Among American Adults
…the amount of time Americans spend reading for pleasure has decreased, on average, 3% each year for the past 20 years. In 2004, when I graduated high school, 28% of Americans read for pleasure. I think I had a vague awareness of this at the time, and prior to reading this article if you had asked me how often people read for pleasure I would have guessed somewhere in that range. By 2023, however, that number had dropped to 16%.
A Practical Guide to Exam Taking Strategies
Taking exams is often associated with discomfort and anxiety in students. Students will feel nervous as these are high-stake performance situations. Exams require students to commit information to memory and to obtain an in-depth understanding of taught concepts...