Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 108 views

    Self-Study Strategies Student Success

    Uploaded by

    miketol
    The document discusses several effective learning strategies for long-term learning, including retrieval practice, elaborative self-explanation, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. Retrieval practice, such as self-testing, improves long-term memory more than restudying. Elaborative self-explanation, using questions to explain content to oneself, enhances understanding. Distributed practice, spreading out study over time rather than massing it, is more effective than cramming. Interleaving different types of problems improves learning more than blocking similar problems together. These strategies are better for learning than simply increasing study time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Self-Study Strategies Student Success

    Uploaded by

    miketol
    108 views5 pages
    The document discusses several effective learning strategies for long-term learning, including retrieval practice, elaborative self-explanation, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. Retrieval practice, such as self-testing, improves long-term memory more than restudying. Elaborative self-explanation, using questions to explain content to oneself, enhances understanding. Distributed practice, spreading out study over time rather than massing it, is more effective than cramming. Interleaving different types of problems improves learning more than blocking similar problems together. These strategies are better for learning than simply increasing study time.

    Original Description:

    Self study strategies

    Original Title

    Self-study Strategies Student Success

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses several effective learning strategies for long-term learning, including retrieval practice, elaborative self-explanation, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. Retrieval practice, such as self-testing, improves long-term memory more than restudying. Elaborative self-explanation, using questions to explain content to oneself, enhances understanding. Distributed practice, spreading out study over time rather than massing it, is more effective than cramming. Interleaving different types of problems improves learning more than blocking similar problems together. These strategies are better for learning than simply increasing study time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    108 views5 pages

    Self-Study Strategies Student Success

    Uploaded by

    miketol
    The document discusses several effective learning strategies for long-term learning, including retrieval practice, elaborative self-explanation, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. Retrieval practice, such as self-testing, improves long-term memory more than restudying. Elaborative self-explanation, using questions to explain content to oneself, enhances understanding. Distributed practice, spreading out study over time rather than massing it, is more effective than cramming. Interleaving different types of problems improves learning more than blocking similar problems together. These strategies are better for learning than simply increasing study time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 5

    Leiden•Delft•Erasmus Centre for Education and Learning About Con

    Student Success
    Leiden•Delft•Erasmus

     Research ndings News and developments Conferences Get involved

    Home › News

    Self-study strategies T
    12 Mar 2017 
    Not every learning or teaching strategy is equally effective, especially for long-term 
    learning. Here we will explain several learning strategies which have been shown 
    effective for long-term learning. Importantly, this is very much different from trying to 
    make students do more, which is based on the assumption that when students do more,
    they will automatically learn more. This notion might be appealing, but the relationship R
    between invested hours and learning gains is substantially lower than what might be
    expected. By itself, the amount of study time is rarely a large predictor of academic L
    H
    success in schools and is even negatively related to some measures of academic success,
    such as SAT scores (Plant, Ericsson, Hill, & Asberg, 2005). In other words: It is not so
    much how much students do, but what they do which is important. R
    Retrieval Practice

    Tests are often exclusively used to assess what a student has learned and/or to assign a
    grade. An intuitive, but incorrect, assumption is that learning only occurs during study
    sessions while tests are simply measurements which do not directly affect learning. As
    early as over a century ago it was shown that testing has a profound positive effect on
    subsequent recall attempts (Abott, 1909). Ever since, this so-called ‘testing effect’ or
    ‘retrieval practice’ has been studied and further validated. For example, after watching a
    video students remember more when they are asked questions about the video content
    than when they simply re-watch it (Johnson & Mayer, 2009). Furthermore improves long-
    term learning (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008), and outperforms popular study methods such
    as note-taking and restudying (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013).
    When it comes to the type of tests, productive tests such as open-ended questions and
    short-answer forms are preferred over multiple-choice tests. The reason is that multiple-
    choice tests only require the student to passively recognize the correct answer, while
    production tests require active reconstruction of knowledge from memory. This is why W
    production tests generally outperform recognition tests, and should be the preferred
    format if long-term learning is the main goal (Butler & Roediger III, 2007). Although
    tests are typically employed by teachers, students can use self-testing or test each other.
    Contrary to popular belief, retrieval practice is not only suitable for learning isolated
    facts, but also stimulates deep learning and the transfer or knowledge to other types of
    problems (Roediger & Butler, 2011).

    Elaborative self-explanation

    Elaborative self-explanation is a study strategy which requires students to ask questions


    to themselves about the content and their knowledge thereof. It is bene cial for learning
    in general as well as transfer (i.e., the application of knowledge to new problems) (Rittle-
    Johnson, 2006) (Dunlosky et al., 2013). A straightforward method of using this study
    strategy is to present students with a prompt to come up with ’why’ questions about the
    content, which is bene cial for learning (Davey & McBride, 1986). Using questions to
    guide elaborative self-explanation and stimulating recall from memory also triggers
    retrieval practice, further enhancing the bene ts of this study strategy. When doing this,
    it is important to focus not only on questions about facts, but to especially focus on
    critical thinking questions aimed at getting a deep understanding of the material.
    Examples of such critical thinking questions are: ‘what would happen if …?’, ‘explain how
    … can be used to …?’ and ‘what are the plausible explanations of …?’ (Maudsley &
    Strivens, 2000; McMillan, 1987).

    Distributed Practice

    Distributed practice consists of using a schedule that spreads out repeated study
    activities over a longer period of time (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Importantly, this is not
    related to ’how long you should study’ but to ’how you should schedule your studying’.
    Typically, many students prefer to mass their study time, for example in the hours before
    an exam. Instead of massing study time, it is much more effective to distribute the same
    amount of time over a longer period (Cepeda et al., 2009). An important advantage of
    distributed practice is that it does not require you to do more, but to learn better by
    merely re-arranging study time. Alternatively, students can reach the same goal with less
    invested time and effort. Note that it is not so much the distribution of any study activity,
    but primarily the distribution of repeated study of the same content. As such, students
    should be advised not to restudy a video or text multiple times in a row, but to distribute
    their study time.

    Interleaved Practice
    While distributed practice is centered around how and when you should learn from the
    same materials, interleaved practice is concerned with how you should schedule different
    sets of learning materials. Instead of presenting similar study problems in blocks (e.g.,
    AABBCC), long-term learning is improved when they interleaved (e.g., ACBCAB) (Taylor &
    Rohrer, 2010). This is especially relevant for problem- or case-based courses, such as
    when different math problems or medical cases are to be understood. This study strategy
    can both be used by students to schedule their learning, as well as by teachers to
    promote better learning through a more effective sequencing of problem types. Note that
    interleaving task types is more effective than only interleaving different representations
    of the same task type (Rau, Aleven, & Rummel, 2013). 

    References

    Abott, E. E. (1909). On the analysis of the factor of recall in the learning process. The
    Psychological Review: Monograph Supplements, 11 (1), 159.

    Bangert-Drowns, R. L., Kulik, C.-L. C., Kulik, J. A., & Morgan, M. (1991). The instructional
    effect of feedback in test-like events. Review of educational research, 61 (2), 213–238.

    Butler, A. C., & Roediger III, H. L. (2007). Testing improves long-term retention in a
    simulated classroom setting. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 19 (4-5), 514–
    527.

    Cepeda, N. J., Coburn, N., Rohrer, D., Wixted, J. T., Mozer, M. C., & Pashler, H. (2009).
    Optimizing distributed practice: Theoretical analysis and practical implications.
    Experimental psychology, 56 (4), 236–246.

    Davey, B., & McBride, S. (1986). Generating self-questions after reading: A


    comprehension assist for elementary students. The Journal of Educational Research, 80
    (1), 43–46. 

    Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013).
    Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques promising directions
    from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest,
    14 (1), 4–58.

    Johnson, C. I., & Mayer, R. E. (2009). A testing effect with multimedia learning. Journal of
    Educational Psychology, 101 (3), 621. 
    Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning.
    science, 319 (5865), 966–968.

    Konstan, J. A., Walker, J., Brooks, D. C., Brown, K., & Ekstrand, M. D. (2015). Teaching
    recommender systems at large scale: Evaluation and lessons learned from a hybrid mooc.
    ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 22 (2), 10.

    Maudsley, G., & Strivens, J. (2000). Promoting professional knowledge, experiential


    learning and critical thinking for medical students. Medical education, 34(7), 535-544.

    McMillan, J. H. (1987). Enhancing college students' critical thinking: A review of studies.


    Research in Higher Education, 26(1), 3-29.

    Plant, E. A., Ericsson, K. A., Hill, L., & Asberg, K. (2005). Why study time does not predict
    grade point average across college students: Implications of deliberate practice for
    academic performance. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30 (1), 96–116.

    Rau, M. A., Aleven, V., & Rummel, N. (2013). Interleaved practice in multi-dimensional
    learning tasks: Which dimension should we interleave? Learning and Instruction, 23 , 98–
    114.

    Rittle-Johnson, B. (2006). Promoting transfer: Effects of self-explanation and direct


    instruction. Child development, 77 (1), 1–15. 

    Roediger, H. L., & Butler, A. C. (2011). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term
    retention. Trends in cognitive sciences, 15 (1), 20–27.

    Taylor, K., & Rohrer, D. (2010). The effects of interleaved practice. Applied Cognitive
    Psychology, 24 (6), 837–848.

    Sign up for our newsletter


    For latest news, research and events, subscribe here.

    Your email address... Subscribe


    Home Research ndings News and Conferences
    developments

    Get involved

    Leiden•Delft•Erasmus
    Student Success

    You might also like