Teach Students the ART of Learning
Learning can be viewed in three phases: Acquisition, Retention, and Transfer. Think of it as the ART of learning. Most faculty will find this information familiar, so this article has two goals. First, ELITE hopes it is a useful reminder of the reasons behind the practices professors already use. Second, this article is an invitation to teach your students about the phases of learning and the recommended practices for each phase in your course. Knowing the strategies to use can improve your students’ study habits and help them become college-level learners who thrive at Montgomery College and in 300 and 400-level courses at a transfer institution.
Acquisition
The acquisition phase involves learning the material in the first place. This phase usually involves direct instruction and in-class practice to enable students to acquire the learning. It requires skillful note-taking (How to Study Smart, LLC 2022) to capture the information delivered by the professor or the learning materials and then verify that the student’s notes are complete and accurate so they can be used for studying. Significant forgetting can occur as quickly as the first hour, which is why it is so important to edit the notes immediately after class or at least before the end of the day.
Cornell Notes & SQ3R
Cornell Notes and the SQ3R reading method are two of the most popular note-taking systems. The instructional designers in ELITE recommend both. Cornell Notes (Learning Strategies Center Cornell, 2019) enable students to use any preferred form of note-taking, such as outlining, mind mapping, or a combination. More importantly, Cornell Notes are designed for studying. Once the notes are accurate, they can serve as flashcards by adding cues in the left-hand column. Students cover the notes in the right-hand portion of the page and use the cues on the left as prompts to practice explaining the information clearly and completely in their own words.
SQ3R is one of the most effective reading and study methods. A quick search will reveal plenty of videos on the method and its variations. SQ3R (Jonson, 2013) involves the following steps: Survey the chapter. Turn each heading into a Question. Read the section beneath the heading to answer the question. Then pause. Recite in your own words how that section of the chapter answered the question formed by the heading. Write the question and the answer in your own words in your notes and periodically Review those notes. SQ3R notes can follow the Cornell Notes format by placing the question for each heading in the left-hand column. Cover the notes in the right-hand frame and use the questions as prompts, as you would with flashcards.
Require students to take notes and check their notes!
In some courses, it may be necessary to require your students to take notes. Professors Susan Blumen and Antonio Olivares del Castillo require students to submit written notes on the chapter each week using SQ3R or a variation. Susan walks around the classroom, checking each student’s notes while they are engaged in small group work. Sometimes students line up outside the door to show their notes as they walk into the classroom. That moment of one-to-one eye contact with the professor creates connections with each student, so much so that if a student does not have their notes, Susan will ask them to complete the notes and submit them in Blackboard by that evening, and most students do!
Drill to Skill
The acquisition phase often requires deliberate, concentrated practice to learn something new or to clarify parts that remain fuzzy. For declarative knowledge, such as information and concepts, drill to skill requires retrieval practice. If you have ever used flashcards, you have engaged in retrieval practice.
Retrieval practice consolidates information in long-term memory by repeatedly recalling and reciting until you can reliably recite the answers out loud in your own words without looking at the back of the flashcard or viewing the right-hand frame of your Cornell Notes. Memories are further strengthened by the practice of elaboration, that is, making connections to prior knowledge. Repeatedly reciting information aloud in your own words can lead the mind to make further connections. Think of elaboration as ropes anchoring a boat to a dock. One rope is tenuous, while several are more secure. Repeated practice at recalling, reciting, and elaborating on the information solidifies the neural pathways to the memories like students walking across a grassy quad until there is a well-worn path.
For Professors: How Do You Know When They Get It?
Checking for comprehension while lecturing can be accomplished by in-class activities or formative assessments. In courses teaching calculations such as math or chemistry, or courses teaching any physical skill such as computer repair, nursing, dance, or a sport, hands-on practice is necessary to ensure that students acquire the knowledge and skills in the first place and provides plenty of opportunities for the professor to clarify misconceptions.
In lecture-based courses, activities such as Think-Pair-Share (K. Patricia Cross Academy, n.d.) enable students to process the information, discuss it with peers, and check their understanding. Think-Pair-Share and other formative assessments serve as learning activities that provide a quick gauge of student comprehension and opportunities to clarify or to create teachable moments. [add a reference and link to Eric Mazure’s approach to TPS]
At the end of class, exit cards (Miller, 2023) can be used to see who gets it, who does not, and what common errors persist. On an index card or a half sheet of paper, have each student jot down the muddiest point, write a three-sentence summary, generate an example of a concept, or solve one representative problem. Then collect the cards and sort them into piles, such as correct, incorrect, and common errors. Exit cards provide valuable feedback as you prepare for the next class.
For Students: How Do You Know When You Know it?
Practicing a basketball free throw until you can make 10 of 10 throws provides a clear standard for knowing when you can successfully perform a free throw. Rehearsing a song until you can play it fluently without looking at the music sheet provides a clear standard, but a common misconception among students is that re-reading one’s notes is studying (Stromberg, 2015).
Re-reading creates the illusion of learning because the notes seem more familiar each time one reads them. However, re-reading one’s notes does not match the performance required on an upcoming quiz or exam. At a minimum, students should practice explaining course content clearly and completely in their own words. Even better, they can try explaining what they are learning at dinner with friends or family. Explaining clearly and completely in your own words sets a clear standard of performance. For more on this idea, see The Feynman Technique (Frank, 2021), named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.
So teach students to engage in self-quizzing. They can create flashcards, use flashcards apps such as Quizlet, or use their Cornell notes as flashcards by covering the right side of their notes and using the cues in the left column as prompts.
Teach students that getting an answer wrong provides valuable feedback on where to focus their time and effort and that forming study groups can be a powerful addition to studying alone.
Do your students know the standard of performance to meet? Can they distinguish between illusions of learning and knowing when they know it?
Retention
As much as 70% of learning can be forgotten within the first 24 hours. This is why math courses commonly assign homework between classes. Retention requires practice, and the key to effective practice is spaced repetition (Unleash Learning, LLC, 2003). Let’s return to our flashcards. If you plan to practice for 50 minutes per day, it is better to practice for five 10-minute intervals throughout the day than to practice in one concentrated 50-minute session. Repetition and spacing allow learning to consolidate in long-term memory.
Flashcard apps like Quizlet can make drill to skill more engaging because they automate the process of concentrating on the ones that are still fuzzy, and interleaving, or shuffling the deck, is automatic. You can ask your students to find their favorite apps and share them with the class.
The Testing Effect
The key question in the retention phase of learning is, do you still remember it? For example, can the student still explain the same concept clearly and completely in their own words a month later? If not, the learning is fading, and regular practice is needed to counter memory decay.
Retrieval practice has been extensively researched, and because it works so well, it is commonly known by another term, the testing effect (Paul, 2015). Testing is retrieval practice. So instead of just telling your students how important it is to study frequently, hold them accountable with frequent low-stakes quizzes. Students can complete the quizzes online before or during class, and quizzes administered in Blackboard can be automatically scored.
Group Quizzes
To get even more out of frequent quizzing, consider expanding them into group quizzes (K. Patricia Cross Academy, n.d.). Think of this technique is a variation of Think-Pair-Share. Here’s how it could work. First, students complete the quiz individually. Second, they collaborate in small groups to reach a consensus on the correct answers and prepare to explain their answers when called upon. Third, you release the quiz to allow a second attempt. Students individually complete the quiz a second time after class or on the Blackboard mobile app on their phones. The two scores in the grade center can be automatically averaged by using a Total column (Anthology, 2022) that is set to count only the scores on the low-stakes quizzes.
Cumulative Quizzes
So, frequent low-stakes quizzing creates regular retrieval practice, and group quizzing converts each assessment into a learning experience. Let’s extend this idea one step further by making the frequent quizzes into cumulative quizzes that include questions on material from previous weeks. Cumulative quizzing creates retrieval practice for the current week or unit and for the entire semester.
How do you ensure that students remember from one week to the next or from one unit to the next?
Transfer
Transfer involves applying the knowledge or skills in settings that are different from the setting in which they were learned. Practicing a basketball free throw in your driveway is not the same as performing a free throw in a crowded stadium at a crucial moment in a game. Practicing a song in the quiet of your home is different from performing before a live audience. And re-reading one’s notes is far from the performance required on an exam. Explicitly teaching students the standard of performance to prepare for your assessments is vital. Using frequent, low-stakes, cumulative quizzing is one way to require students to perform at that level often.
Transfer is about practicing in a way that closely matches an upcoming real-life performance. In academic settings, this usually means an exam, but it could also mean preparing to deliver a presentation to classmates, or perform in a full auditorium, or be observed in a simulated or real-life setting.
Comprehensive Practice Exams
So, how do you ensure that students retain the knowledge and skills until the midterm and comprehensive final exam or signature assignment? If you decide to use frequent, low-stakes, cumulative quizzes, the questions can be repurposed into comprehensive practice exams administered and automatically scored in Blackboard.
Here’s how it could work. For each topic, collect the questions on that topic into a question set. An assessment in Blackboard can contain an unlimited number of question sets. The assessment will randomly select a subset of questions from each set every time the assessment is generated. Here are the instructions for creating question sets in Blackboard (Anthology, Inc. 2022).
Let’s say there are 10 questions for each topic in your course. When you create each question set, you can tell Blackboard to randomly select three questions, for instance, out of each set of 10 every time a student takes the practice exam.
You can create robust, comprehensive retrieval practice by creating a question set for each topic and combining as many question sets as needed to cover every topic. One MC math professor requires students to take the practice exam, and their final score on the practice exam is worth 10% of their real exam grade.
So, consider teaching your students the ART of learning in your course to help them thrive at MC and become well-prepared for upper-division course work at their transfer institution.
References
Anthology, Inc. (2022), Question Sets (in Blackboard Assessments)
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Original/Tests_Pools_Surveys/Orig_Reuse_Questions/Question_Sets
Anthology, Inc. (2022), Calculate Grades (Total Column in the Blackboard Grade Center)
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Original/Grade/Grading_Tasks/Calculate_Grades
Frank, T. (2021, August 30) How to Use the Feynman Technique to Learn Faster (With Examples).
CollegeInfoGeek.com https://collegeinfogeek.com/feynman-technique/
How to take notes in college (2022). How to Study Smart, LLC.
https://shovelapp.io/how-to-get-good-grades/note-taking-strategies/
Jonson, Jen. (2013, June 11). SQ3R Reading Method.
[Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/0dhcSP_Myjg
Patricia Cross Academy. (n.d.) Think-Pair-Share.
[Video]. https://kpcrossacademy.org/techniques/think-pair-share/
Learning Strategies Center Cornell. (2019, December 10). How to Use Cornell Notes.
[Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/nX-xshA_0m8
Miller, M., (2003) 20 Ideas for exit tickets in the classroom. Ditch That Textbook.
https://ditchthattextbook.com/10-ideas-for-digital-exit-tickets-and-some-analog-ones-too/
Paul, A.M. (2015, August 1) Researchers Find That Frequent Tests Can Boost Learning. Scientific American.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-find-that-frequent-tests-can-boost-learning/
Stromberg, J., (2015, January 16) Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter. Vox.
https://www.vox.com/2014/6/24/5824192/study-smarter-learn-better-8-tips-from-memory-researchers
Resources
Frequent, Low-Stakes Grading: Assessment for Communication, Confidence
Scott Warnock PhD, April 18, 2013, Faculty Focus.
What is retrieval practice?
https://www.retrievalpractice.org/why-it-works
Retrieval Practice
https://www.retrievalpractice.org/retrievalpractice
Spaced Repetition
https://www.retrievalpractice.org/spacing
Interleaving
https://www.retrievalpractice.org/interleaving