Learning Strategies
Abstract
Building on our conception of information literacy and our understanding of learning and teaching, this chapter looks at research on learning strategies. If we accept that learning and information literacy are inextricably entwined, then deepening our understanding of effective and not so effective strategies for learning should allow us to better help our students become life-long, information literate learners. In this chapter, we also attempt to point out the inherent affinity between effective (deep) learning strategies, and the thoughts and actions of an information literate knowledge seeker.
Keywords
Learning strategies; learning techniques; testing effect; elaborative processing
According to his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, cognitive science pioneer Herbert Simon was fond of saying that “learning results from what the student does and thinks, and only from what the student does and thinks” (quoted in Ambrose et al., 2010, p. 1).
If Simon was right, then one obvious implication is that as teachers, we should take a keen interest in what our students do, not only when they are in our immediate proximity, but also when they are working by themselves or in groups outside of the classroom.
In this chapter, we will review the research on learning strategies and explore how it can contribute to an IL teacher’s repertoire of teaching tools.
4.1 Student Learning Strategies—What is Effective?
A crack team of learning strategy researchers led by John Dunlosky recently provided a broad and thorough review assessing the utility, i.e., the effectiveness and applicability, of 10 different learning strategies based on extant research (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013). The findings and conclusions are enlightening for anyone working with teaching and learning.
Among the strategies with lower utility, we find highlighting or underlining text, rereading material, and summarizing material. If we were to provide a common, descriptive label for these techniques, we might venture to call them passive techniques. It is quite possible to perform them all without really engaging deeply and actively with the ideas dealt with in the study materials. Highlighting, for instance, induces little or no processing over and above simply reading, particularly when a relatively large proportion of text is marked. Rereading text, whether previously highlighted or not, may induce feelings of recognition, and thus contribute to overconfident judgements of learning. And again, it requires little or no active processing. Summarizing a text may seem like a more active technique, but in fact, evidence for its effectiveness is relatively sparse and varied (Dunlosky et al., 2013, p. 15). This last conclusion is somewhat tempered by findings that indicate that the quality of the summaries is related to learning as measured by a test (e.g., Bednall & Kehoe, 2011).
In contrast, the techniques Dunlosky and colleagues classified as being of moderate utility seem intuitively to be more cognitively demanding. They include elaborative interrogation and self-explanation. Elaborative interrogation is the process of trying to explain why a particular fact (or concept or rule) is valid or true. As the label implies, this is likely to induce some amount of elaborative processing, of deep thinking. Consider a student studying the factors leading to volcanic eruptions. She comes across some new information concerning the role of magma buoyancy. Asking herself why magma buoyancy increases the likelihood of an eruption, exemplifies the use of elaborative interrogation. To answer, she needs to make a connection between this fact and previous knowledge, or recently learned related facts or concepts. Furthermore, in formulating an explanation, the new information needs to be embedded in a logical manner in the semantic context that these other, related facts or concepts constitute.
Self-explanation is very similar to elaborative interrogation, but is usually defined as explaining to oneself the steps of a problem-solving procedure, or how new information is related to what is already known. The core feature that distinguishes self-explanation from elaborative interrogation is that self-explanation involves an element of introspection, of observing and commenting on one’s own thought processes during learning or problem solving. If our geology student was to ask herself what the processes of volcanic eruptions remind her of, and whether this analogy would be helpful or confusing, she would be engaging in self-explanation.
Interestingly, the two learning strategies deemed to have the highest utility by Dunlosky et al. (2013) are perhaps neither obviously passive and shallow, nor do they intuitively seem conducive to deep or elaborative processing. They are practice testing or self-testing and distributed practice. Practice testing is quite simply to take a test where the primary purpose is not to document performance, but to support learning—to practice recalling to-be-learned material or to practice performing procedures. These tests can be small or comprehensive, supplied by the teacher or composed by the students themselves, in multiple-choice format, as free recall, problem-solving practice, etc. Evidence for the superior effectiveness of practice testing relative to more passive restudy is strong and abundant (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011; Larsen, Butler, & Roediger III, 2008; McDaniel, Agarwal, Huelser, McDermott, & Roediger III, 2011; McDermott, Agarwal, D’Antonio, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014; Roediger III, Agarwal, McDaniel, & McDermott, 2011). A recent meta-analysis of studies of the test effect confirms this, finding substantial average learning gains from studies comparing retrieval practice to other forms of study (Rowland, 2014).
Distributed practice is best defined by contrasting it with massed practice. In massed practice, the same topic or procedure is studied and restudied numerous times in a relatively short span of time. The unprepared student cramming for an imminent exam exemplifies massed practice. Massed practice is effective in that it will allow the learner to quickly reach a satisfactory level of performance. This technique therefore may indeed save the day, and let the unprepared student pass her upcoming exam. Coupled with the fact that intense, massed repetition tends to produce feelings of mastery and cognitive ease, it is perhaps not so strange that this technique is a popular choice in the busy student's toolbox. Unfortunately, learning resulting from massed practice is usually relatively transient and temporary.
Distributed practice or spaced practice is simply distributing study and restudy over time. Instead of spending all the study time on a topic in one (or very few) sessions, distributed practice is characterized by many short sessions with time spent on other topics or activities in between. In combination with practice testing, distributed practice is a very powerful learning technique. There is evidence that this combination, often called successive relearning, is effective also for classroom use (Dunlosky & Rawson, 2015; Rawson, Dunlosky, & Sciartelli, 2013; more on this later).
Why would distributed practice testing lead to just as good, or even better (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011), learning than techniques that seem intuitively to be a better match with the idea of a deep approach to learning as outlined in Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens? While practicing retrieval from memory may seem like mere rote learning (i.e., mindless or unthinking memorization), there is evidence that it does in fact provide deeper learning (Carpenter, 2012; Karpicke, 2012; Zaromb & Roediger, 2010). For instance, the very act of attempting to retrieve a particular idea or concept may force us to trace various associative pathways to it, thereby strengthening its connections to previous knowledge and relevant contexts (Rawson, Vaughn, & Carpenter, 2015). Furthermore, when struggling to recall, which we are more likely to do when retrieval practice is spaced, we are forced to actively process the semantic and contextual cues available to us, in the hope that they may lead us to and help us retrieve from memory what we are trying to recall. Thus, when practice is distributed, the effects of practice testing become more pronounced. Yet another benefit of practice testing is that it generates feedback that can inform our own judgments of learning, allowing better metacognitive control and regulation of our learning activities.
So, in terms of learning strategies, then, the ideal student is someone who (1) schedules her sessions of study to ensure proper spacing, (2) thinks deeply on selected topics by asking herself questions prompting elaborative processing and self-explanation, (3) tests her own ability to recall, apply, and explain what she is trying to master.
4.2 How Students Really Study
To what extent does students’ study behavior conform to this ideal? Do they actually employ effective learning strategies? When students spend time on their own, studying to learn, and preparing for exams, do they use distributed practice testing or elaboration?
Most higher education teachers have some idea of how their students spend their study time when left to their own devices, and may suspect that it is not always spent to the best effect. Occasionally, for instance, we happen to see the inside of a student's textbook. These are usually abundantly highlighted in a variety of colors, indicating that this technique is one of the more popular ones, despite not being very effective. Similarly, near to the end of term exams, we usually see signs of slightly panicky massed practice, another technique that brings little durable learning.
Research into student study behavior is somewhat sparse, and not entirely clear in its implications (for a review, see R. A. Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013). Yet, to some extent, it does confirm that the less effective strategies are popular, and that students tend not to be very well aware of which strategies will actually help them learn. A study by Gurung, Weidert, and Jeske (2010) found that students reported using highlighting and rereading, and that the extent to which they engaged in these behaviors was negatively related to their exam performance. In another study, McCabe (2011) asked students to predict which one of each of six pairs of learning strategies, where one half were evidence based (e.g., practice testing) and the other not (e.g., rereading), would yield a better performance in an exam. Most students consistently chose the least effective, not evidence-based, strategy for all but one of the six scenario pairs, indicating little awareness of what sort of study behavior leads to better learning. These findings have later been replicated (Morehead, Rhodes, & DeLozier, 2015).
Morehead et al. (2015) investigated both students' and teachers' knowledge about learning strategies and study behavior. They found that the teachers in their sample were only marginally more knowledgeable about learning strategies than students. Interestingly, although both students and teachers thought that testing was an effective study strategy, they endorsed it primarily as a monitoring tool, disregarding its considerable direct effects on learning. Surprisingly, teachers were much more likely (91%) to endorse the learning styles myth than their students (58%). Another particularly remarkable finding from this study is that while 79% of teachers reported discussing learning strategies in class, only 36% of students reported using strategies derived from classroom instruction. Thus, it seems, either the teachers are over-reporting, or the students tend to disregard or not realize that their teachers are trying to influence the way they study.
In summary, it seems fair to conclude that most students are not very knowledgeable about what study behaviors are most likely to help them learn. Nor, as a consequence (we may surmise), do they use their time as effectively as they could.
Why is this? Recall from Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens, that people tend to have some difficulty monitoring their own learning, often convincing themselves that they have learned when in fact they have not. This forms an important basis for understanding why students waste time highlighting and rereading. At the same time, it is an important source of ideas to help them adopt more appropriate learning strategies. The cognitive ease (c.f. Kahneman, 2011) or fluency experienced when using the strategies we have labeled as passive, like highlighting or rereading, or even cramming using massed practice, can cause illusions of remembering and learning. In contrast, the difficulties experienced when using spaced practice, elaboration, and self-explanation are often interpreted as signs that learning is not happening as smoothly as it should, which may lead students to avoid these strategies. This is unfortunate. The struggles associated with these types of strategies and the cognitive restructuring they seem to entail are exactly what has been termed desirable difficulties; they slow the apparent rate of learning, but they increase long-term retention and transfer (E. L. Bjork & Bjork, 2011).
4.3 Using Learning Strategies in IL Teaching
In our opinion, information literacy as a discipline affords particular advantages to stimulate the adoption of effective learning strategies. We hope to show, in the remainder of this chapter, that the pattern of cognitions resulting from applying effective learning strategies overlap with, and play important roles in, executing and practicing the skills of information literacy.
Marrying learning strategies to information literacy teaching can thus have multiple benefits. We can help our students become better learners in general, while simultaneously improving our IL instruction. In this section, we suggest four approaches that IL teachers may consider adopting to advance toward both of these very laudable goals: (1) sharing knowledge of learning strategies; (2) modeling and scaffolding effective learning strategies; (3) harnessing the power of successive relearning for classroom use; and (4) adopting teaching models and methods that are likely to support deep learning approaches.
4.3.1 Sharing knowledge of effective learning strategies
We have seen that higher education teachers cannot assume that students, nor colleagues or collaborators in the discipline-based departments, know which are the most effective learning behaviors. And although it is possible, in theory, that students might just happen upon an effective learning strategy, without any conscious consideration, perhaps through imitating classroom activities, it seems fair to assume that they would be more likely to adopt them if they knew what they were and why they work. Thus a first step in guiding our students toward effective study behavior would probably be to spend classroom time, or online time and space, going over the topic of learning strategies.
How can we do this? In an ideal world, we would be able to schedule a session or two, fully devoted to discussing learning strategies. Sadly, this rarely happens in real life, and for us IL teachers, who cannot normally wheel and deal with teaching schedules at our own discretion, the best option is likely to interweave the topic into our IL sessions. To do this effectively, and without taking too much time away from the core IL concepts, we propose two strategies: (1) providing suitable materials and learning support for learning strategies online. This would allow us to bring up the topic in face-to-face sessions, without having to go into all of the details. (2) Helping students make the conceptual connections between practicing and executing IL skills and competencies on the one hand, and learning strategies on the other, by discussing the benefits that developing these mutually reinforcing types of habits is likely to confer on the motivated student.
The techniques and strategies for using online support for face-to-face teaching are dealt with in Chapter 6, Teaching It All. In this section, we simply point out and exemplify some of the relevant conceptual connections as opportunities to introduce evidence-based learning strategies to students in an IL context.
4.3.1.1 Distributed practice and the cycles of the research process
Discussing the dynamics of the research process, e.g., the back and forth between developing a research question and finding, selecting and reading sources, provides an excellent opportunity to bring up how students can plan and schedule their own learning activities in order to stimulate spaced rather than massed practice. If a student repeatedly returns to the sources on her chosen topic over time, there is a gradual, cyclical build-up of understanding of the knowledge contained in them and how it relates to a particular question. This process is very similar to, and probably involves some of the same cognitive processes as, the gradual consolidation of to-be-learned concepts and facts, when practiced in a distributed manner. The well-documented and unequivocal benefits of spaced practice would be well worth spending a few minutes of class time on under any circumstances. When coupled with IL in the manner suggested here, they are likely to be even greater. It may help students understand the nature of the research process and the role that learning plays in it. This in turn may help them plan and implement their work accordingly, while at the same time orienting them towards more effective study behavior, applicable to any learning situation.
4.3.1.2 Desirable difficulties and handling information confusion
Another opportunity to connect IL and learning strategies can be found when students struggle to make sense of their sources. Students tend to experience a dip in confidence after having made their initial forays into the literature looking for sources to help them solve a problem or answer a question (see Kuhlthau, 2004, chaps. 3–5 or Kuhlthau, Maniotes, & Caspari, 2015, chap. 4). Some students may require substantial support to navigate through this phase, and most will benefit from being forewarned and prepared for it. Thus giving them a heads up is probably a good idea. It may forestall feelings of being overwhelmed and prevent them from responding with disengagement and procrastination. An excellent way to do this is to introduce the concept of desirable difficulties. Struggling to piece together and make sense of bits of information in hard-to-read sources is much easier to endure, when you know that your struggles are a sign of learning and cognitive restructuring, and that this is necessary in order to build an understanding of your sources that will allow you to use them creatively to answer your research question. Likewise, being aware of the fact that illusions of learning and competence are dangerous side effects of the cognitive ease and fluency experienced when your expectations are met and your preconceptions remain unchallenged can help make that hard phase easier. This represents another opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, by combining discussion of IL concepts and learning techniques.
4.3.1.3 Interrogative questioning as a focus for IL practice
Perhaps more importantly, there is a clear family resemblance between the elaborative learning strategies and the practice of information literacy. The very acts of performing information literacy skills—searching for and retrieving sources, skimming, evaluating, selecting, then reading deeply, and gradually integrating concepts and information in order to answer an important question—overlap considerably with the behaviors and mental processes involved in elaborative interrogation and self-explanation.
Recall from Section 4.1 that elaborative interrogation involves generating an explanation for why something is valid or true. When simply studying a textbook to learn basic concepts and facts, this mostly involves tapping into long-term memories of related content and using the clues provided by the textbook itself. If no satisfactory explanations are forthcoming for a particularly important concept, a maturely self-regulating and information literate student might just attempt to seek out clues from other relevant sources. Unfortunately, this probably does not happen all that often, though, and it is much less likely to happen with beginner students without any established IL habits, unfamiliar with their institution's library services.
However, for assignments and projects involving extensive research and independent argument based on sources, there is really no way to avoid coming to grips with questions about the validity of claims. They are inherently a part of this type of work, and dealing with them successfully is the key to a good assignment grade. Herein lies a nugget of pure synergistic gold.
Many students find the increased demands for independent argument in higher education a real challenge. In fact, in our experience, even just approaching an understanding of what it actually means to argue consistently towards a conclusion is hard for many. A symptom of this is the common beginner’s mistake of writing descriptive, expository texts that lack direction and are not really going anywhere—merely providing information on a topic. The mediating mechanism here is often a failure to develop their research questions properly. We call this phenomenon “being caught in the topic trap.”
For many, the simple question “why is this true?” can act as a wonderfully focusing mental aid that guides them toward developing their own arguments. It is appropriate to ask this question at many levels and almost at any stage of the research and writing process. With a nudge from an IL teacher, the student can pose this question to (1) the conclusion of her work, (2) the main premises of the same work, and (3) the results and conclusions of the sources used in her work.
The conclusion of a research paper should be based on sound arguments developed throughout the text. This seems trivial and obvious to most teachers in higher education, but this perception is probably a consequence of the curse of knowledge. For a beginning student, it may not be at all obvious. Asking the “why is this true?” question (hereafter referred to as “the question”) about their own conclusion can be helpful here. It allows students to see what elements of their own text contribute to answering their research question and supporting their conclusion. By implication, they can more easily identify those elements that are superfluous and play no part in developing their argument.
Asking the same question of the various elements of a text that constitute the premises of the main argument has similar but distinct effects. At this level, the question is likely to lead to the need for support from a relevant source. Premises are often assumptions or assertions about how the world works, and answers to the question are likely to be reports or summaries of scientific evidence relating to it. Thus posing the question in these contexts leads the student to look for relevant sources and apply them with a specific aim: developing her argument. This is exactly the sort of thing that can lead her out of the topic trap.
At this level, the question has another distinct advantage, particularly in the early stages of the research/writing process. It can help students develop their research question. Research questions posed by students are often initially difficult to come to grips with. Sometimes they are seemingly simple but at the same time too broad, sometimes much too complex. If prompted, students can often state some vague ideas about what the main elements of their argument are, and often in the form of an assumption about how the world works. This is a great opportunity to point out appropriate use of sources—“you'd need to support this claim, somehow”—and to suggest they pose the question. When attempting to answer the question in these situations, students often discover hidden layers of complexity in what they assumed was a valid premise. This sometimes leads them to abandon their original research question for a more specific and focused one, built on what used to be a premise. In other words, posing the question helps students through, what is for some, the hardest part of the research/writing process: shaping and sharpening their initial interest and topic into a focused and answerable research question.
The question is also applicable even further down. We can ask it of the findings and conclusions of the sources used to support our claims and develop our arguments. Often, the best way to answer the question at this level is to find and study other sources dealing with the same issues. Again, this is likely to help students build a rich, interconnected network of facts, concepts, hypotheses, and theories that allows them to tackle their own research question in the best possible way, while gaining a lot of knowledge in the process.
In Section 4.1, we saw that the science of learning strategies suggests that a habit of asking “why is this true?” (and similar questions), and trying to come up with an explanation, is likely to help us learn. Here we have argued that the very same question can act as a guide when trying to build support for our premises and conclusions in a line of argument—which, of course, is a process that in itself involves learning.
4.3.1.4 Explaining to apply our selves
We previously described self-explanation as similar to elaborative interrogation, but with an element of introspection—of observing and commenting on our own thought processes. If what is to be learned is somehow procedural, say computing a confidence interval, then self-explanation simply means explaining to oneself the steps involved. If what is to be learned is more in the line of declarative knowledge, a set of facts or concepts, perhaps, then self-explanation could involve thinking about what comes to mind when studying or rehearsing said concepts. As in “this idea here of ______, reminds me of _____.”
While the application of elaborative interrogation to the process of research and source evaluation typically involved in larger student assignments is intuitive and seems natural, the possible role of self-explanation may be a bit harder to spot. Still, we think it may have some advantages, and thus, are prepared to make a few suggestions.
First, consider a couple of minor twists to the elaborative interrogation question (“Why is this true?”), e.g., “Do I trust the conclusions of this research report?” or “If I want to argue that […], what would make me confident that my readers will agree with me?” These questions are slightly more complex than the simple elaborative interrogation question, but in a particular manner: they focus our attention on our own thought processes, and the thought processes of our readers. Thus, these kinds of questions invite metacognition—thinking about thinking. This can sometimes help us see aspects of our own work, such as flaws in our reasoning, that we otherwise would not spot, and can provide new impetus if we are somehow stuck. It has the added advantage of switching focus a little bit, away from the mere logical and formal qualities of our argument, and onto our emotions and intuitions. This can infuse the sometimes hard and dry work of developing a tight, well-supported argument structure with a bit more life and engagement.
Second, and related to the previous point: asking questions to stimulate self-explanation is likely to help the processing and encoding of new information. Remember from Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens, that a very important factor in learning is the influence of prior knowledge—of whether or not we can usefully and appropriately connect new information to the concepts and cognitive structures we already carry in our long-term memories. An important consequence of this principle for teaching, to be explored more fully in Chapter 6, Teaching It All, is that helping students activate prior, relevant knowledge, will help them learn new material. Now, a particularly well-established and often relevant concept is our concept of self. Prompting self-explanation helps activate this concept and hence make sense of what we are trying to learn. Personal relevance can be a powerful driver of understanding and learning, and questions that tend to induce self-explanation, like those above, are doubly useful. They can help students spot areas of improvement in their work with sources to support their argument, probably in part because it helps them make sense of, encode and internalize the information in their sources. Again, finding an opportunity to point out the relationship between this particular learning technique, and the work involved in a student project requiring IL skills, is relatively easy and need not take much time.
Third, when the actual steps involved in various behaviors that constitute information literate studying are unfamiliar, then using self-explanation (or even better: other-explanation—see the section on collaborative learning in Chapter 6, Teaching It All), is an excellent way to consolidate them and establish them as building blocks of more elaborate procedural schemas. For instance, an important component skill is to learn how to enter complete and correctly formatted references in a reference list. The steps involved may be obscure to the beginner student, and they frequently misstep, jumping straight into trying to enter the reference before having established which reference type they are dealing with, and which reference style (and style guide) to use. Clearly outlining the steps and then encouraging students to explain the process to themselves or to fellow students is a great use of the self-explanation technique. This provides an excellent opportunity to introduce self-explanation as an effective learning strategy in general and to scaffold its application to learning IL skills.
4.3.1.5 Interlude
In this section, we have argued that there are important family resemblances between effective, evidence-based learning strategies and the processes and behaviors involved in practicing information literacy skills. We have pointed out some of them here, and we are confident our readers will notice others for themselves. An awareness of these resemblances is likely to be useful to information literacy teachers if we let it influence our teaching.
First, it allows us to share knowledge of effective learning strategies with our students, as we have tried to show in this section. This alone is important, because that knowledge can significantly boost their learning in general, and they are not likely to come across it anywhere else. An intended and probable side effect of sharing our awareness of the similarities we have looked at here is that this may help our students see that IL is essentially about learning—that it leads to learning and that it depends on learning.
Apart from this, these family resemblances also provide opportunities to help students attain beneficial learning behavior habits, through modeling and scaffolding effective learning strategies in an IL setting. In the next section, we will take a closer look at these opportunities.
4.3.2 Modeling and scaffolding effective learning strategies
While we argue in this book that we should work towards minimizing expository, teacher-centered instruction, it is still necessary from time to time to explain concepts and demonstrate procedures. These occasions, as explained in the previous section, are excellent opportunities to point out the family resemblances between IL skills and learning strategies. They are also valuable opportunities to model the application of evidence-based learning strategies in an IL setting.
Consider an IL teacher, whose lesson plan for the day includes a mini-lecture on the idea of subject headings (i.e., controlled search vocabularies) as a tool for searching in a reference database. She introduces her topic by proclaiming the ultimate usefulness of subject headings—they help us search more efficiently; at the same time more thoroughly and precisely than if they were not available to us. Next, she details how indexers use the headings to “tag” documents in the database. They apply a heading to all the documents dealing with a particular subject, even if different authors in this field use a variety of terms for that very same subject. They also don't use a heading on a document, even if it mentions the subject, if in fact it is not primarily about that subject. Being a good lecturer, she exemplifies this exposition with an example or two. Next, and on this firm basis, she can then connect back to her initial statement by pointing out the advantages that accrue to the end user of the subject heading supported database. She might say something like “And because the headings assemble all the documents on this subject using just one label, we won't have to find and list all of the different terms; we can simply search via that heading. What's more, using a subject heading, we won't have to deal with all the irrelevant hits we normally get from documents that use the term in their abstract or something, but that aren't really about it. That is how subject headings help us search more thoroughly and more precisely at the same time.”
As a piece of explanatory lecturing, this is excellent stuff. Now, consider a slight adjustment to this scenario. Imagine that this IL teacher refrains from explicitly stating the propositions quoted at the end of the last paragraph, and instead says something like this: “Let's see if we understand this right. Given what we now know about how indexers apply the subject headings to documents, what is it about this that helps us—the end users—make better searches?”
How is this different? Well, instead of immediately serving up the logical connections between the ways indexing with subject headings work and the conclusion she began her exposition with, the teacher now prompts herself with an interrogation question, thus modeling an effective learning strategy. Through this pausing-for-thought maneuver, she also allows her students to take a breath and elaborate on the information she has provided. This helps prevent working memory overload and allows students a chance to more deeply process the information and connect it with prior knowledge.
If she is teaching in a live and face-to-face setting, she now has an excellent opportunity to engage students in an activity and guide them through it. But even if she is simply recording her lecture (more on this in Chapter 6, Teaching It All), she can invite her students to engage with this question on their own. This is, in effect, what open education pioneer and video lecturer par excellence, Salman Kahn of the Kahn Academy, does when he so often says “I encourage you to pause this video and try this on your own…” The prompt is strangely compelling, and while many students probably will not take the time to follow it, some, to their betterment, undoubtedly will.
Let us look at another couple of examples, both tied to a very prominent challenge for many students: navigating the borderlands between building on the work of others and committing plagiarism. The idea of building your own work on that of others through expert use of sources can, on the face of it, seem to contradict injunctions to avoid plagiarism. The solution offered to students trying to come to grips with this problem is usually a more or less sophisticated version of “use your own voice” or “in your own words.” This answer, while broadly correct, of course, is unsatisfactory to most students. They simply cannot unpack it. “What do you mean, ‘use my own voice’?!”
An important prerequisite for students to find their own voice in amongst all the clamor and confusion of those of all of their sources is to understand and know their sources well enough. This, of course, involves learning. First, it involves reading, both broadly and deeply, and reading to identify the main message and major points of relevance to the students' own research question. This, however, is just a first step, and not nearly enough. If these bits of knowledge are not successfully encoded and consolidated in the student's long-term memory, she will not be able to use them for creative thinking, problem solving, and writing, and she will have to consult her sources directly to be able to give even a basic account of what they contain. This is an area of great potential for the application of evidence-based learning strategies.
We can support students through the first step, i.e., reading for meaning to extract the main message and argument of an important source, by helping them use a note-taking technique that naturally lends itself to the application of elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, and practice testing. The technique is that of taking double notes (Dysthe, Hertzberg, & Hoel, 2010) and is a simpler variant of the Cornell note-taking method. Briefly, it involves dividing a note-taking medium into two sections, preferably a right- and left-hand side. While reading, the students enter key words and phrases from the studied source on one side. Encouraging them to only note down the most important concepts and ideas, and to express them as succinctly as possible without copying the exact wording used in the source is important here. The other column is used for spontaneous questions and comments that come to mind while noting important ideas. If students are familiar with how to formulate questions for elaborative interrogation and self-explanation, they can use the second column for this. Notes organized in this fashion can then be used for self-testing if the questions are thoughtfully crafted to cue retrieval practice of the key ideas in the source. This helps students consolidate memory of the ideas contained in the source. Both the note-taking technique itself and the use of notes for practice testing can be modeled in class or online. A bit of helpful feedback on the students' own attempts to use double notes for deep learning in order to come to grips with their sources can provide important encouragement and support. If successful, this can develop into a very solid foundational understanding of the sources and make it considerably easier to find that “own” voice.
The next step toward being able to make concise summaries of the relevant points and conclusions they use from their sources in their own work is to practice finding their own words. This is another area where scaffolding the use of evidence-based learning strategies has a role. If students are reasonably well prepared—for instance having studied their source, using the note-taking technique outlined earlier, and a bit of self-testing, they could now attempt to explain the main points of their source to a fellow student. This turns self-explanation into other-explanation and works well as a classroom activity. Instructions might be to put away the relevant source, spend a couple of minutes explaining the main points to a fellow student, having the fellow student repeat it back and ask for clarification, and finally writing down an explanation. As teachers, we can support this process by listening in to student conversations, offering advice and encouragement.
The examples offered in this section are just that—examples. There are probably endless ways to apply the findings of the science of learning strategies for classroom use, and we are confident the reader will see possibilities for their own teaching. We would like to add, though, that while many teaching techniques and classroom activities are de facto applications of effective learning strategies, there is likely to be an added benefit of making the connection clear to our students. Given the intriguing results of Morehead et al. (2015), that students seem to be unaware of their teachers’ attempts to influence how they study, it seems like a good idea to be rather explicit about it.
4.3.3 Harnessing the power of spaced practice testing
We saw in Section 4.1 that successive relearning—the combination of practice testing and distributed repetition—is a very powerful learning strategy. We also saw that most students (and teachers) are likely to be unaware of the considerable potential of this technique. In Section 4.3.1, we pointed out a number of similarities between the thought processes and component tasks involved in practicing IL, and a few phenomena and effective learning strategies from the learning strategies literature. Practice testing was not one of them. This is simply because, unlike elaborative interrogation or self-explanation, it bears little direct resemblance to anything we do while locating, selecting, and using sources for a research task.
While not obviously IL-related, practice testing is a technique that lends itself easily to classroom implementation, whatever the subject. There are numerous ways to go about this, and in this section, we make a couple of suggestions and provide some pointers.
First, consider using a student response system (SRS). An SRS consists of a receiver unit operated by the teacher and a number of response units operated by the students. The receiver unit is usually just a regular classroom computer, sometimes with dedicated software, but more often these days just running a browser-based app. Some SRSs use dedicated hardware for response units (clickers), but nowadays students mostly use their own devices—either smart phones or laptops. The teacher presents the students with a question, using any medium, sometimes the browser-based app provides for this, and the students answer using their devices. The teacher can then opt to display the answer distribution, and at some point also the correct answer. With an SRS it is relatively easy to quiz students on core concepts, thus in effect implementing practice testing in the classroom.
While most IL skills are best learned by practicing and applying principles in a realistic research/writing setting, it is sometimes useful to quickly refresh prerequisite knowledge without going through a full blown research process. Quizzing is good for this, and with an SRS it is possible to cover a fair amount of material in just a few minutes. If a group of students are seen over more than one session, a brief quiz on the concepts practiced in the previous session is a good way to start the next one. Such quizzes help activate prior knowledge, thus preparing for what comes ahead. Simultaneously they help provide effective repetition through successive relearning.
Of course, more recently covered concepts can be quizzed too. Instead of the teacher summing up—which for the students would be analogous to passive restudy—a few practice test questions at the end of a session will help consolidate main points dealt with in that same session a lot better. To maximize the effects of spaced repetition, it is a good idea to also include some items from earlier sessions, in order to provide multiple opportunities for relearning.
It is worth emphasizing that it is important at some point to provide proper feedback about not only what is the right answer to quiz questions, but also why the right answer is correct and the wrong ones are not. Contrary to popular belief, though, it may not be important that the feedback is immediate.
While using an SRS is usually convenient and most student groups are well equipped with devices, there are many other ways to implement practice testing in a classroom setting. We saw in Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens, that studies comparing the learning outcomes of traditional, lecture-based teaching with some form of active learning teaching model tend to favor the latter by a considerable margin. In Chapter 6, Teaching It All, we will look at several ways in which active learning methods can be applied in the IL classroom. Some of these are already de facto implementations of practice testing, and with the right structure and an eye on repetition and proper feedback, most such activities can be.
4.3.4 Teaching for engagement and deeper learning
Using the right learning strategies while studying in effect amounts to taking a deep approach to learning—to seeking the meaning beyond the surface of the studied information. We have argued in this chapter that we can guide students toward deeper learning by sharing research-based knowledge of effective learning strategies, by being aware of the many similarities between the processes involved in practicing IL skills and those involved in using learning strategies, and by modeling and scaffolding the use of these strategies in an IL setting. This is likely to benefit student learning in general, and their adoption of IL skills in particular.
Guiding students toward deeper learning is, however, also a matter of creating a learning environment that fosters this approach. We saw in Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens, that approaches to learning are not stable personality traits, but influenced by a number of factors, some of which are intimately connected to how we teach. Thus teaching to foster deep learning is likely to encourage the adoption of effective learning strategies, particularly if students are familiar with which strategies tend to work and which don't. In Chapter 6, Teaching It All, we discuss approaches to teaching that are likely to influence student approaches to learning.