The Learning Scientists Podcast

This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page. Show Notes: In Episode 51, Cindy interviews memory expert Boris Konrad (@borisnkonrad). Boris is an eight-time world memory champion, he has four entries in the Guinness Book of World Records, and he is the current president of MemoryXL. Cindy and Boris discuss memory techniques. Importantly, Boris discusses differences between memory techniques and learning techniques, the underlying neuroscience, and why they are both important for students.

This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page. Show Notes:In today’s episode, Althea covers a paper about metacognitive monitoring and differences between adolescents (ages 11-12) and traditional university-aged adults (ages 18-25) when using different learning strategies. Students learned word pairs (moon - galaxy). Then, they either just restudied them, engaged in elaborative encoding by coming up with a third word that connected the two words (like space), or practiced retrieval (given the word moon, and asked to retrieve galaxy). During learning, the students made judgments of learning (or JOLs) about how well they thought they would do on an upcoming test. The researchers tested the students’ memories to see how well they learned the pairs. The pattern of performance on the final test was generally the same. Retrieval practice led to the best performance, followed by elaborative encoding, and then the worst performance was restudying. However, this isn’t new. The researchers are most interested in how well the students were able to monitor their own learning and predict how well they had learned the pairs. For the adolescents, their ability to judge how well they would do on a later test was not very accurate when they restudied or engaged in elaborative encoding. Their relative accuracy at judging how well they would perform was better for retrieval practice. So, the strategy that worked best also produced the best relative accuracy at predictingThe young adults showed the same relative accuracy as the adolescents in the restudy and the retrieval conditions. Their ability to predict was very poor after restudying and was better after retrieval practice. Interestingly, the young adults had the best relative accuracy after elaborative encoding, meaning that this was the condition where they were best able to predict how well they would perform on the test later.When young adults in College (University) are utilizing a strategy that helps them learn more, like elaborative encoding or retrieval practice, they are better able to predict their own learning. However, this was not always true for adolescents in middle school. When using elaborative encoding, a strategy that helped them compared to just restudying, their predictions were not very accurate at all.References: Hughes, G. I, Taylor, H. A., & Thomas, A. K. (2018). Study techniques differentially influence the delayed judgment of learning accuracy of adolescent children and college-aged adults. Metacognition Learning, 13, 109-126.

This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page. In today’s episode, we feature Peter Horneffer. Peter has been heavily involved in making medical education accessible, and one way has been through lecturio.com. You can learn more about his efforts by watching his TEDx talk.Show Notes:In today’s episode, Megan and Althea cover a paper that tests learning styles and dual coding theories within one experiment. The paper was written by Cuevas and Dawson (2018) and you can see the paper here. References: Cuevas, J., & Dawson, B. L. (2018). A test of two alternative cognitive processing models: Learning styles and dual coding. Theory and Research in Education, 16(1), 40-64.

This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.Show Notes:In today’s episode, Cindy talks about prevalence-induced concept change and implications for society and the classroom!References: Levari, D. E., Gilbert, D. T., Wilson, T. D., Sievers, B., Amodio, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (2018). Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment. Science, 360(6396), 1465-1467. 

This episode was funded by listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, Cynthia Bandet from Bow Valley College.We also want to say thank you to all of our patrons. We would not be able to produce this podcast or maintain the free resources on the website without you. If you aren’t a supporter and are able, please consider donating. Even $1 per month can make a difference, and if you donate at least $5 per month you’ll gain access to exclusive content. Visit our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/learningscientists.Show Notes:In today’s episode, Megan shares her current thoughts about the pivot to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. She mentions a lot of resources throughout the podcast, and these links along with a few others are below!Open Science Framework entry from Kim Weeden and Benjamin Cornwell “The Small World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus”Twitter thread by @WeedenKim covering the above workLearning Scientists digest on self-regulated learningPandemic Metacognition blog by Jennifer McCabeChronicle of Higher Education article on 5 time-saving ways to teach onlineLearning Scientists digest of resources during COVID-19Learning Scientists blog on technology in the classroom (note specifically the section on online quizzing)Learning Scientists blog on learning from videoLearning Scientists blog on dual coding and overload

This episode was funded by listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, David Handel and his flashcard app iDoRecall.com. We also want to say thank you to all of our patrons. We would not be able to produce this podcast or maintain the free resources on the website without you. If you aren’t a supporter and are able, please consider donating. Even $1 per month can make a difference, and if you donate at least $5 per month you’ll gain access to exclusive content. Visit our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/learningscientists.Show Notes:In today’s episode, Cindy interviews Pooja Agarwal (@PoojaAgarwal). Pooja is a Cognitive Scientist and now teachers Science, Psychological Science, and Neuroscience at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Pooja founded retrievalpractice.org. There, you can find resources like practice guides for teachers.

This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. We’re also on Stitcher!Show Notes:In this bite-size research episode, Carolina discusses research on seductive details—the details we include in our teaching that are not necessarily relevant for understanding the topic but make the lesson more interesting.To read about seductive details, check out this guest blot post!References: Fries, L., DeCaro, M. S., & Ramirez, G. (2019). The lure of seductive details during lecture learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(4), 736–749.Rey, G. D. (2012). A review of research and a meta-analysis of the seductive detail effect. Educational Research Review, 7, 216-237.RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rss

This episode was funded by listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. We’re also on Stitcher!Show Notes:In this episode, Cindy Nebel interviews Kristen McQuillan (@mcglynn3), her student in the Vanderbilt EdD program in Leadership and Learning in Organization. Kristen is a director at TNTP (@TNTP), a non-profit organization that helps schools reach goals for students. Cindy and Kristen talk about learning mistakes in literacy. You can find the blog that Cindy mentions in the episode about learning from errors here.

In this episode, Megan and Althea discuss a listener question about the focus on evidence-based strategies and other important aspects of the whole learning process.

Dive into the fascinating world of how attention shapes learning! Discover how divided attention impacts students during study sessions, revealing surprising results about memory retention. The discussion emphasizes the resilience of retrieval practice, showing it can strengthen learning, even in distracting environments. Learn why focused retrieval strategies are vital for effective studying, contrasting them with less effective multitasking habits. It's a compelling look at the science behind effective learning techniques!