Articles 2A & 2B & Video - Learning strategies

2. The evidence clearly shows that cramming is not very good way to study. So, why are most students still using this approach?

• cramming: study everything all at once, right before the exam

• it feels efficient because you cover lot ina short amount of time

what are the 10 learnign stratgies that the video mentioned and how effective are they ?

• utility XX= high, XX= moderate , XX= low

• Practice testing. self-testing or raking practice test on to-be-learned material

• distributed practice: implementing a schedule of practice that spreads out study activities over time

• interleaved practice: implementing a schedule of practice that mixes different kinds of problems or a schedule of study that mixes different kinds of material within a single study session

• elaborative interrogation: generating an explanation for why and explicitly stated fact it concept is true

• self-explanation: explaining how new information is related to known information or explaining steps taken during problem solving

• Rereading: restudy text material again after an initial reading

• highlighting and underlining: marking intentionally important portions of to-be-leaned materlan while reading

• summarization: writing summaries of to-be-learned text

• Keyword mnemonic: using keywords and mental imagery to associate verbal material l

• Imagrgy for text: attempting to form mental images of text material while reading or listing

3. In his video lecture John Dunslosky argues that class size and teacher training are usually not effective to improve student performance. Why?

• class size does not have an effect more to the quality of the teachers ability to teach effectively

• teacher training depends on the type and quality of the training

• more important factors:

  • obtaining formative evaluation

  • reciprocal teaching

  • distributed practice

  • metacognitive strategies

  • study skills

4. Many investigations concerning study strategies create a contrast between massed vs. distributed practice. Provide an example of massed and distributed practice

massed practice: doing one study session that covers all the information at once ( 5 hours of constant studying)

distributed practice: distributing practice over a long period of time ( 1 hour every day)

5. To evaluate different study strategies, researchers should make sure that time on task is similar. Why is this such an important (methodological) issue?

it is so important because you want to make a comparison between the efficiency of different study strategies. This can not be reliably measured if you invest different amounts of time into the different strategies

7. Dunlosky indicates that we should use successive relearning. What is this?

successive relearning is the merging of how and when to study is known to be one of the most successful study strategies

practice testing + distributed = successive learning💛

8. Order the following strategies in term of their effectiveness: a. self-explanations, b. summaries, c. distributed practice.

c,a,b → Distributed practice, self-explanations, summaries.

9. What is shown here?

interleaved partice

10. Although not the most effective strategy, using self-explanations is often used during selfstudy. How does this strategy promote learning and comprehension?

• ability to connect new information with already know/familiar facts

  • self-reference effect

• builds upon cognitive schemata

• promote the retrieval of older information and makes it more relevant for the future

12. Imagine you have a 7-year-old child. Would you advise your child to use self-explanations for homework?

7 year old are still considered novices therefore, they have no web of background knowledge that they fall back too → self-explanation would be more difficult and less advisable

14. What is the main difference in perspective between the article by Dunlosky (Article 2a) and the next article by Rosenshine (Article 2b)?

2a focuses on how students can efficacy self study whereas 2b focuses on how teachers can aid successful learning in students

Different focus on who has the responsibility of producing successful learning outcomes

15. Good teachers provide experiential and hand-on activities, but they generally do this after the basic materials have been learned. Why?

It is important that students use most of their working memory to learn and are not overwhelmed with all of the new aspects when confronted with new problem

previous informative lectures helps students to structure the problem and recognize relevant aspects

16. “Mathematical problem solving is also improved when the basic skills (addition, multiplication, etc.) are over learned and become automatic, thus freeing working-memory capacity”. Explain in your own words the point that is made here.

Working memory is less overwhelmed when it can just retrieve the information of the long-term memory automatic knowledge) and concentrate on more difficult concepts that combine the facts for the long-term memory

17. In a study of mathematics instruction, the most effective teachers spent about 60% of their lecture on providing demonstrations, questioning, and examples. The least effective teachers only 30%. How do you explain this difference?

When teachers spend more type explaining, modeling and repeating information, the all students have a better understanding of the topic. Also good teacher empathies teaching in many short presentation with sufficient exmapels → that takes more time

19. After discussing a particular topic, your teacher asks: “are there any questions?” This might not always be the right question to ask. Why?

• leads to a false answer

  • peer pressure

  • social anxiety

  • students don’t nessisarly know if they understand it fully or not

• better question?

  • ask students to repeat concepts in their own words

  • ask a specific question about the concepts to see if students understand the matter

20. “Practice makes perfect!” This is unfortunately not always true. Why?

• you can practice the wrong concepts making you imperfect

• errors are difficulty to unlearn

21. What is the idea behind “mastery learning”?

( german: experten gruppen)

• students learn a specific topic and teach the information that they have learned to other students; class does not move on until the entire class has master the topic

22. During our previous meeting we have been discussing cognitive modelling. This article discusses “cognitive apprenticeship”. What is, if any, the difference?

Cognitive apprenticeship: a combination of modeling and providing scaffold, instructions + instruments.

23. Critically reflect on the following statement: “successful teachers support the idea that independent practice should involve the same material as guided practice”. (Note, make sure that everybody understands the difference between guided and independent practice).

individual practice: Students try to practice questions all by themself

guided practice: students to questions parallel to the professor modeling, questions come up the teacher is there to help them

to secure knowledge presented to students in class( guided practice) the independent practice question can´t be that different. if they wold, it will foster more confusion

24. Cooperative learning is a popular method of instruction. What makes it an effective form of instruction?

cooperative learning: students help each other when studying

• explaining to others strengthens understanding

• different approach in langue helps to understand topic in a different sometimes better way

• getting feedback form peers

• completion forsters better learning outcomes