The Learning Scientists Podcast

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!

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.RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rssShow Notes:In this episode, Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel interviews Dr. Naomi Winstone (@DocWinstone) an expert in assessment and feedback. Naomi is the Head of the Department of Higher Education and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey.You can read more about feedback on our blog, where Naomi has co-authored guest posts:Is Your Feedback Carefully Used, or Barely Perused?When Feedback is Forgettable

In this engaging discussion, Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a cognitive neuroscientist and educator from the University of Melbourne, shares insights from his work on human learning and memory. He emphasizes the vital role of memorization as the backbone of deep understanding and critical thinking. The conversation explores bridging the gap between research and classroom practices, advocating for experiential learning to enhance retention. Dr. Horvath also introduces a new book aimed at integrating learning sciences into educational practices for leaders and coaches.

This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and 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.RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rssShow Notes:In this bite-size research episode, Megan describes a paper by Kayla Morehead and colleagues (2016) about student and instructor knowledge about evidence-based study strategies. This episode is a follow-up to the last bite-size research (Episode 37). If you haven’t listened to that one, we recommend you listen to it first!Reference:Morehead, K., Rhodes, M. G., & DeLozier, S. (2016). Instructor and student knowledge of study strategies. Memory, 24, 257-271.

This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and 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.RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rssShow Notes:In this episode, Megan and Cindy talk about their massive research project at Washburn University investigating the effectiveness of an intervention to teach first-year college students effective study strategies. The Project is huge, but asks an important question: how can we teach students to utilize strategies that we know are effective on their own to improve learning and academic success. We know these strategies work, we just don’t know a whole lot about the best way to help students learn about them and then transfer the use of the strategies to their own studying. In a huge pseudo-randomized control trial at Washburn University, we taught half of the WU 101 students (a first-year seminar course) about effective learning strategies. In our first wave of data collection during the 2017-2018 school year, we found that first-generation college students actually had a lower GPA in the intervention group compared to the control, while non-first-generation college students had a higher GPA in the intervention group compared to the control. NOTE: we have to say this with extreme caution! We need to replicate this finding before we decide to run with it. If we do replicate this during the 2018-2019 school year, future research will need to examine why this happened. Note, we’re not saying the strategies don’t improve learning in first-generation students. Instead, it’s possible that this interaction did something that led the students to perform slightly worse in courses! This could be because the intervention didn’t explain the strategies, or that first-generation students were overwhelmed, perhaps they didn’t know how to use the strategies strategically. There are a lot of potential reasons to investigate. Of course, this result could also be a fluke, and we need to replicate. (And honestly, we hope it is a fluke, but the data are the data!)While this finding is disappointing, and we certainly don’t want to hurt any specific group of students, this highlights the importance of the research and control groups. It is best to test things out before implementing them widely!

Explore the fascinating research on how well undergraduate students grasp effective learning strategies. Discover surprising gaps in their metacognitive awareness and the impact of cognitive load theory. Dive into cognitive science techniques like mnemonic devices that can enhance learning experiences. An intriguing experiment reveals students' struggles in identifying effective methods, highlighting the urgent need for improved educational practices.

This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and 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.RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rssShow Notes: Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel is an Assistant Professor at the University of Dundee in Scotland, where she is the Principle Investigator of the Learning and Teaching Lab. She is also the founder of the TILE Network (Teaching Innovation and Learning Enhancement Network).In this episode, Megan interviews Carolina about her research on CPD sessions, Service Learning projects aimed at teaching students to utilize effective learning strategies, and the start of TILE.

This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and 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.RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rssShow Notes:In this episode, Megan and Althea discuss things to keep in mind when trying to implement evidence-based learning strategies into your classroom.We start out with a brief description of the six strategies for effective learning. If you haven’t listened to previous episodes yet, we recommend going back to the first set of episodes, 1 through 13, to hear more about each strategy in depth. The purpose of the review is to provide a bit of spaced practice!Some tips to keep in mind: Don’t try to implement all of the strategies all at once or all of the time. Don’t try to overhaul your entire course! Start with small changes and see how it goes. You can keep making little changes with each iteration of the course.Remember, each strategy works because it encourages processing that promotes learning. So, implementing these strategies are all about encouraging useful processing. When looking from the outside, two groups of students can look like they’re doing the exact same thing, but in reality one group may be doing something useful and the other not. Using the strategies in the classroom also won’t always look the same.

This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and 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.RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rssShow Notes:We’ve got some exciting things happening in 2019! Listen as Megan, Cindy, Althea, and Carolina discuss our workshops during our England 2019 tour, and the excitement around talking with teachers about the science of learning. The team in Bedford, England - January 2019