The Learning Scientists Podcast

This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, David Handel and his flashcard app iDoRecall.com. 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:This is a bite-size research episode, where we briefly describe research findings on a specific topic. This week, Megan talks about research findings showing that taking notes with a laptop in class can lead to less learning than taking notes by hand. The research paper, published by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014), reports 3 experiments examining learning after taking notes by hand or taking notes on laptop computers. Importantly, the laptop computers were disconnected from the internet, and only allowed the students to take notes on them eliminating distraction. Even still, taking notes by hand led to more learning across all three studies. The researchers found that students tended to type a lot more when they took notes on the computer compared to what they could write while taking notes by hand. Typing out a transcription of the material is likely what is causing less learning; when students take notes by hand, they often cannot write everything and must put the material into their own words. However, even when the students in the experiment were instructed not to transcribe the material while taking notes, and were asked to put the material into their own words, they still typed a lot more while taking notes on the laptop than when taking notes by hand. Even with this instruction, performance on an assessment later was better when the students took notes by hand.References:Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25, 1159-1168.

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: Megan and Althea at the Psychonomic Society Conference in New Orleans, LA (November, 2018) Megan and Althea at the Psychonomic Society Conference in New Orleans, LA (November, 2018) Althea Kaminske is an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY, our newest member of the Learning Scientists, co-Director of CALM (the Center for Attention, Learning and Memory), and author of the book 5 Teaching and Learning Myths Debunked: A Guide for Teachers. In this episode, Megan interviews Althea at the Psychonomic Society Conference in New Orleans, LA. (Note, we’re in the conference hotel, and so you can sometimes hear some street noise!!) Althea is conducting research with students on learning and distractions of cell phones and exercise and learning.

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 our last episode, Yana interviewed Alexander Chamessian, an MD PhD student who has been consistently utilizing evidence-based learning strategies. In this bite-size research episode, Yana follows up with a study on retrieval practice with complex medical information.In this study by scientists at a department of Health and Kinesiology (1), students taking an exercise physiology re-read or practiced retrieval practice on background texts and journal articles, and then took critical analysis and factual texts. The debate between John Sweller (2) and Jeff Karpicke (3) on whether retrieval practice works with complex materials can be found in this special issue.The following table shows the phases in the experiment: Image from Dobson, Linderholm, & Perez (2018) The main result can be found in this figure: Image from Dobson, Linderholm, & Perez (2018) References:(1) Dobson, J., Linderholm, T., & Perez, J. (2018). Retrieval practice enhances the ability to evaluate complex physiology information. Medical Education, 52, 513-525.(2) Van Gog, T., & Sweller, J. (2015). Not new, but nearly forgotten: the testing effect decreases or even disappears as the complexity of learning materials increases. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 247-264.(3) Karpicke, J. D., & Aue, W. R. (2015). The testing effect is alive and well with complex materials. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 317-326.

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:Over the last few months, we have been interviewing researchers who attended the the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). We enjoyed recording these interviews so much that we decided to do another one! Alex Chamessian first wrote to us about a year ago - almost immediately after we released our first podcast episode. An MD-PhD candidate at Duke, Alex has been passionate about effective learning for years. He started using spaced repetition in 2010 in my first year of medical school, and when he noticed the benefits, he did a deep dive into more evidence-based practices, starting first with a blog, then a book. Alex asked if he could appear on our podcast, but at the time that he was writing, we hadn’t figured out whether - let alone how - we would conduct podcast interviews! A year later, Yana and Alex finally got together over Skype to record this interview. In our conversation, we discuss the following questions:Why/how did Alex get interested in learning strategies in medical school, and end up writing a blog and book on the subject? Do students need to understand the reasons why effective strategies work, or is it enough for them just to experience their effectiveness?Apart from medical school and classes and exams, how is Alex planning on applying effective learning strategies in his medical practice?And what about in his PhD - are there strategies also effective for being a successful scholar?

This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, 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:This is the ninth and final episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Julien Mercier, professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal and director of NeuroLab, an educational neuroscience lab. Research in this lab focuses on cognition and affect during learning. This is done by collecting second-by-second (“on-line”) data from learners. The contexts in which these measures are collected include reading, science education, video games, and more applied workplace settings.Because of the complexity of this type of research, experts from a diverse set of fields are needed to make the project come together. First the physiological data are collected. Then, all the data are integrated into one huge complex system, segmented, and analyzed to look for patterns in reactions. For example, in a study on video gaming, the researchers were interested in what happens when a player is given an action prompt. The researchers collected measures that tap into cognitive load and engagement, and compare the relative activation before and after the prompt was presented.Through this research, Julien hopes to develop a methodology that will be able to handle much more complex learning situations than those currently considered in neuroscientific research.

This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, 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:This is the eighth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Miriam Reiner, head of The Virtual Reality and Neurocognition lab at Technion (Israel Institute of Technology). Miriam uses emerging technologies for high-validity research in neuroeducation: specifically, she examines how integration of virtual/augmented reality and EEG/eyetracking etc can provide a highly valid methodology for research in neuroeducation. In addition, Miriam studies technologies that activate brain mechanisms, such as neurofeedback, for enhanced memory consolidation, insight-problem solving, and spatial intelligence.Miriam’s research involves putting participants in a very rich virtual world where they can interact with their environment. Examples of situations might be a surgeon in the operating room who must burn specific areas in the abdomen, or someone trying to catch a falling pendulum - a task that can reveal common misconceptions about physics. While in this immersive experience, participants are connected to EEG, so that events in the world and in the brain can be correlated. This helps her to determine what brain activation relates to best performance (in terms of speed and accuracy) in problem-solving situations. Miriam believes that schools will evolve to mainly be places for social learning, whereas technology will replace some of the more traditional learning environments. In another line of research, Miriam investigates whether neurofeedback can be used to enable the typical learner to control their own brainwaves, and how this relates to the consolidation process that happens while we sleep (1) (see also this episode on sleep and learning). In the episode, Miriam discusses how these techniques might be used in education. References:(1) Reiner, M., Rozengurt, R., & Barnea, A. (2014). Better than sleep: Theta neurofeedback training accelerates memory consolidation. Biological Psychology, 95, 45-53.

This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, Chartered College of Teaching, and supporters like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, 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:This is the seventh episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. In this episode, we speak with Jane Emerson who started off as a speech and language therapist, did her Masters in Human Communication, and after years of experience working with dyslexic students in schools founded a center, Emerson House, with a colleague. This center helps children with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and dyscalculia. Jane has taught children for many years, lectured widely, and written a number of books including The Dyscalculia Assessment and The Dyscalculia Solution. You can find her on Facebook at Jane Emerson - Freelance SEND Advisor. Image from CPD College on YouTube Dyslexic children have difficulties with phonics or phonological awareness, language, vocabulary, memory (both short- and long-term). Dyslexic students tend to have problems with spelling both because of difficulties with phonics, but also because of poorer visual recall. However, dyslexia is not only about spelling, but can have more pervasive effects on academic performance due to the impacts on memory.Dyscalculia might present itself as lack of common sense about numbers. That is, some students may have trouble transferring their understanding of a specific example (e.g., 1 + 2) to a similar but slightly different situation (e.g., 2 + 3), treating it as an entirely new problem and not applying a previously learned rule. For example, unlike others of their age, students with these difficulties may not be able to infer the answer to 13 x 2 after having memorized the 2 x tables up to 12. One way to help alleviate is to use physical manipulatives to demonstrate relationships between numbers.Dyspraxia is described as a developmental co-ordination delay or disorder. At the extreme, this disorder can result in the inability to learn to drive and great reluctance to use any machinery. At school, the first sign is often poor handwriting, and learning to touch-type as early as possible can help with this. Students with this disorder may receive accommodations such as having a scribe.Other accommodations such as extra time alone may not always be helpful, since often students may not know what to do with this extra time. The important thing is to learn skills to implement during that time. On the podcast, we discuss the subtle difference between learning styles and learning preferences, and how this plays out in students with learning difficulties.The Big TakeawaysFor reading, Jane says it’s very helpful to give children a lot of information about one character or set of characters so that they can really understand get into a particular genre before moving on to another one. For spelling, combining seeing and hearing words can be really important, and adding touch-typing on to that for multi-sensory learning is even better. And for math, concrete, multi-sensory materials to demonstrate the principles being learned.

This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, Chartered College of Teaching, and supporters like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, please see our Patreon page. In today's episode, we feature one of our patrons, Abby Zavos.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:This is the sixth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. In this episode, we speak with Jessica Massonnié, who is pursuing her PhD at Birkbeck University on the effects of noise in primary school classrooms. She Tweets at @jess_masso and you can find her website here. Primary school classrooms tend to be noisy (approximately as noisy as traffic or a vacuum cleaner). Jessica's work looks at how this noise affects learning outcomes. One of her first studies looked at the effect of recoded classroom noise on children's creativity in a lab environment. In the podcast, Jessica talks about some preliminary findings from this study.More recently, Jessica has moved on to classroom-based research. In a study that takes place in France, she is looking at individual differences in how annoying children find noise. This factor appears to be related to how difficult it is for children to switch between tasks, and how often they mind-wander. Jessica is also looking at the effects of a mindfulness intervention on noise levels, noise awareness, and French/math test performance. The big take-awayIt's important to be aware of noise levels; for example you can easily download an app to check noise levels in your environment. It would also be good to identify sources of noise in the learning environment - particular noises that are completely irrelevant to learning, such as the sounds of chairs scraping on the floor - and attempt to eliminate those noises.Relevant reading and links:Klatte, M., Bergström, K., & Lachmann, T. (2013). Does noise affect learning? A short review on noise effects on cognitive performance in children. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 578.Mehta, R., Zhu, R., & Cheema, A. (2012). Is noise always bad? Exploring the effects of ambient noise on creative cognition. Journal of Consumer Research, 39, 784-799.Shield, B., & Dockrell, J. E. (2004). External and internal noise surveys of London primary schools. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 115, 730-738.A website with yoga tutorials, created by the expert we have hired for my school study. A kit created by the association I am part of, to introduce children to the brain, to attention and distraction.Previous Episodes from this series:Episode 21 with Dr. Emma BlakeyEpisode 22 with Michael HobbissEpisode 23 with Rina LiaEpisode 24 with Ignatius GousEpisode 25 with Amanda Triccas and Clare Badger

This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, and supporters like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, 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:This is the fifth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. In this episode, we speak to Ms. Amanda Triccas and Dr. Claire Badger at The Godolphin and Latymer School. Amanda was Yana's teacher in the 1990s, and we've reconnected recently around the science of learning. Amanda has always worked in the private sector - usually in girls' schools - and a few years ago got into the science of learning. Claire's PhD is in Chemistry, and they both work at Godolphin and Latymer School for Girls. Amanda and Claire both got interested in the science of learning when Amanda found The Learning Scientists Twitter account and recognized Yana's name. For Claire, it was starting at the school with Amanda, and reading Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load by Clark, Nguyen, and Sweller.We discuss how cognitive psychology can help teachers and students. Amanda mentions efficiency, and Claire mentions having more time for teachers to do things in the classroom by optimizing learning. We also discuss students' resistance to change, and teachers' fear of embarrassing themselves in front of students.Claire and Amanda integrate strategies from cognitive psychology into their teaching, but they also explain their importance to their students, as well as to parents by providing them with the 6 strategies for effective learning posters.As a Senior Teacher in Teaching and Learning, Claire set up a teaching-learning community based on ideas by Dylan William (see this White Paper). This allowed teachers who were interested in the science of learning to come together and explore theory and practice. This community soon grew to encompass virtually all the teachers in the school. Similarly, Claire has created student learning communities, though these require more guidance to avoid misunderstandings.Amanda and Claire have some thoughts for how we can help. The illustrated work we've done with Oliver Caviglioli has been particularly useful, and they would like to see further resources produced for younger children. Claire also likes the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which provides concrete examples of how strategies can be used in the classroom. She would like to see more comprehensive reviews and summaries of the literature, with suggestions for teachers and students.Claire is currently pursuing her Masters in Learning and Teaching at the UCL Institute of Education.Previous Episodes from this series:Episode 21 with Dr. Emma BlakeyEpisode 22 with Michael HobbissEpisode 23 with Rina LiaEpisode 24 with Ignatius Gous

This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, and supporters like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, 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:This is the fourth episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers. This episode features Ignatius Gous.Ignatius begins the episode with an interesting explanation about the origins of his name. Ignatius is a professor at the University of South Africa, which is primarily a distance university, with students from all over the world taking online classes. He has developed a program for students to learn better and master content more effectively. This program is used by learners at the primary, secondary, and college levels, with advanced students of medicine and law, and even in the workplace. Ignatius has long wondered why neuromyths are so prevalent, and his theory is that people want to know about how the brain works, and these neuromyths fill the void. He thus set out to create a framework that would actually be useful and evidence-based, to help those interested in learning to do so more effectively - even those as young as primary school age.According to Ignatius, learning is not linear - it is more of a spiral - but it still needs structure. Ignatius built his model with the Fibonacci code as the basis. The spiral includes 6 aspects involved in the learning process, with metacognition as the 7th. You can see all the steps represented here in visual form: We talk in this episode about different mnemonic strategies that fit into this model, including the method of loci - you can read more about this method in this blog post. We also discuss the importance of learning basic facts before moving on to transferring learning to new, more complex situations. One idea Ignatius suggests is for students to memorize the headings of a chapter to use as a guideline for organizing and retrieving information. This ties in with this guest blog post by Yana’s former student, who used a similar method for retrieval practice after taking notes in class.Ignatius emphasizes that we need to always think about how students are going to use the material we are teaching them. He calls his model “the golden spiral for life-long learning”, because learning isn’t just something you do to cram for a test - learning happens until you die. Previous Episodes from this series:Episode 21 with Dr. Emma BlakeyEpisode 22 with Michael HobbissEpisode 23 with Rina Lia