Making judgments of learning (JOLs) can directly affect learning outcomes. The present study investigated whether providing JOLs during inductive learning tasks improves learning of new material (forw...

Among the “desirable difficulty” (DD) strategies developed by cognitive scientists, retrieval practice and distributed practice are two of the most robust and advantageous. This study evaluated a three-component intervention to enhance student learning that consisted of instruction about the advantages of retrieval and distributed practices, encouragement of independent application of these methods, and the use of pop quizzes to facilitate retrieval and foster distributed studying. Student exam scores were compared in two sections of a university sports nutrition course that differed in only one experimentally relevant way: one received the three-component intervention (DD Strategy Group), whereas the other did not (Control Group). During the DD Strategy Group’s first class meeting, the instructor gave the students a 30-minute tutorial in which he introduced retrieval and distributed practices and then summarized the evidence demonstrating the learning advantages of each. The DD Strategy Group also completed 10 pop retrieval quizzes during the semester, each of which consisted of three to five short-answer questions and took roughly 10 min to complete. A multivariate ANOVA with follow up t tests revealed that the DD Strategy Group outscored the Control Group on course exam 1 (t45 = 2.50, P = 0.02, d = 0.8), exam 2 (t45 = 3.35, P < 0.001, d = 1.0), exam 3 (t45 = 4.38, P < 0.001, d = 1.3), and exam 4 (t45 = 4.33, P < 0.001, d = 1.3). In summary, the DD Strategy improved exam performance by nearly 16%, making it a practical and effective way to enhance student learning. NEW & NOTEWORTHY A three-component strategy that included educating students about the counterintuitive benefits of retrieval and distributed practices, encouraging independent application of these methods, and utilizing pop quizzes to facilitate retrieval and foster distributed studying habits resulted in significant increases in student exam performance in a university course.

Interleaving items from different categories is often better for learning than blocking items by category, but research on the interleaving effect has neglected situations in which people can take not...

A large body of research indicates that testing results in better long-term retention compared to restudying. Given the relevance of such effects for education, there is interest in the conditions ...

Generative drawing, or drawing-to-learn, has been studied as an effective learning strategy primarily used in science learning. However, drawing can be cognitively demanding, requiring instructional s...

Request PDF | Breaking Down Text Complexity: The Impact of Element Interactivity on Text Comprehension Beyond Readability and Cohesion | Text complexity, an important factor of text-based learning, is...

Developmental dyslexia can significantly impact educational achievement. This study shows that dyslexia-related disadvantages in the memorization of vocabulary are modality-specific: processing textu....

Scientific Reports - Practice testing enhances learning but not attitude change from persuasive texts

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The present study modeled how students' interest in a course of study changes and how those changes fit into their broader course experiences.The pres…

Im Beitrag wird ein Entwurf eines Interessenmodells f&#252;r die Naturwissenschaften vorgestellt, das sich auf zentrale Aspekte von Interesse als I) zeitlich stabile Disposition (Voraussetzung f&#252;...

For decades, in German-speaking areas, well-founded recommendations for practice formats in the mathematics classroom have been available, and instructional models of practice are also examined in empirical research on learning and instruction. While empirical studies often focus on consolidating factual knowledge and skills, suggestions typically adopt a broader view of goals for practice: Consolidation then refers to both skills and conceptual understanding, often in connection with each other. This article discusses the research available as well as the possible implications for practice in mathematics classrooms and for desirable further research on practicing.For the design of practice phases, it is first necessary to specify the goals (especially mathematical concepts and mathematical procedures and strategies) and then identify the associated psychological types of knowledge (factual knowledge, skills, and understanding) and the function of the practicing (securing, flexibilizing, or deepening). These determinations then allow for the selection and design of suitable practice formats, of which the following five types—each with their theoretical foundation, empirical evidence, and considerations for practical implementation—are presented: (1) Retrieval practice, (2) distributed practice (primarily for declarative factual knowledge or simple skills), (3) interleaved practice with the implicit possibility for comparisons (especially for easily confusable facts or skills) or with explicit comparison prompts (also for more complex types of knowledge, such as procedural flexibility or understanding), (4) elaborative practice (with a focus on understanding), and (5) combinatory practice as an “intelligent” integration of multiple practice goals. While the first three practice formats have been systematically researched, the last two are more commonly found under the umbrella term “productive practice” in theoretically justifiable but less extensively studied practical recommendations.

Supporting consolidation, understood as the strengthening of declarative knowledge and the automation of procedural knowledge, represents a central dimension of teaching quality. Despite its importance, research on teaching quality has largely overlooked this aspect. This article brings together perspectives from educational psychology and subject-specific pedagogy to examine the key mechanisms of consolidation and to clarify its role in disciplinary learning processes. The analysis focuses on two main functions of consolidation: the stabilization of declarative knowledge and the optimization of procedural knowledge. From a subject-specific pedagogical perspective, the article presents instructional designs and task formats that effectively support these functions in classroom practice.The article concludes with a comparative analysis of the contributions in this thematic section. From the perspective of educational psychology, the mechanisms of consolidation are well understood, but their implementation in school settings remains insufficiently studied. From the perspectives of mathematics, language arts, and physical education pedagogy, consolidation appears as a highly relevant aspect of teaching and learning, but it remains theoretically and empirically underdeveloped. Future work should attend more closely to aligning consolidation practices with specific learning content, addressing students’ prior knowledge, and managing the frequency and intensity of consolidation opportunities in instruction.

Creating drawings to depict the content of an expository text triggers generative processes that contribute to the construction of coherent mental mod…