 You've done recently an enormous meta-analysis, an analysis of analyses and You've looked at a whole bunch of different types of learning techniques. So things that students can use or do use To try to improve their learning. Could you tell us a bit about about what you've done and and what you found? Sure With a large group of collaborators who actually worked very hard on this project for almost three years We just reviewed a lots of literatures as you said about the effectiveness of a variety of strategies What we didn't look at were strategies that involve technology because we wanted to focus on just those things that any student could use And we chose those strategies for two reasons some of them that we wanted to evaluate We thought they probably did work, but why not check out the evidence a couple other strategies However, we knew students used a lot and we want to know are these these really effective strategies Are they should they be doing something else instead? So something that all students use I still do it myself as highlighter. We like to highlight things when we're reading It's like a security blanket or something for learning, but it turns out highlighting itself doesn't really improve Student learning right it doesn't increase achievement in any way. I would never take a highlighter away from a student Again, it's like a security blanket, but it's just the beginning of the learning journey It's not the end of it Yeah, so after you highlight all the important stuff it turns out most textbooks highlighted for you anyway You need to go back and use effective techniques to learn that material So at least some of the things that students do like highlighting and rereading Really don't have a big bag for the time box so to speak so we'll spend time rereading highlighting They're really not learning a whole lot when in fact they can replace those strategies with other ones that really do boost their learning So which is exciting sure so now we just have to retrain students build a better student right to use better strategies interesting so Highlighting rereading doesn't have much of an effect. No it doesn't in that strange You'd think everybody rereads right you go back to the two Unfortunately when you go back to reread your eyes are moving across the page, right? It's probably late at night the night before an exam and your mind is somewhere else Right, so basically mind-watering as a rereading students need to do things that are more to engage them more actively Yeah, so in this analysis you you looked at some things also that that had a massive effect Yes, what Obviously, I mean it makes sense. I mean a lot of people when they when they are studying or cramming for an exam These are the things we do, but they might not be the most effective What are the most effective? What are the things that actually work? Certainly cramming is not that effective, right? Students think it's effective partly because they can squeak by potentially in the exam and then they'll just forget everything I'm not suggesting students don't study the night before a test it relieves anxiety and all this sort of thing But there are better things they can do first instead of just cramming begin studying two or three weeks before an exam Okay, so you're distributing your practice out across time, which is very important So you're studying the same material over and over again now that does take a little planning Maybe a calendar to remind yourself Jesus two weeks before the exam now I really need to hit the books versus just the night before when you're panicking and you try to cram So distributed practice is really good, but distributed practice just tells you kind of a schedule of how you should be studying Kind of like the when of studying, but there are lots of what's the things you can do instead of just rereading the material passively And one that we find is really effective and many others. There's about a hundred years of research Very exciting showing how effective this is just retrieval practice So after you mark up your book, right and about all the important things and you go back instead of just rereading everything You marked up cover it up with your hand and just try to recall from memory the content Okay, and if the student gets that answer right from memory that has a really potent effect on subsequent performance They really learn it that much better Of course if they can't recall it from memory then they can restudy at that point, but then they should come back and keep trying So just retrieval practice a really effective way to boost performance, especially if students use it to strip it across time Sure, so so it's kind of like flashcards I guess absolutely like flashcards and you know most students at least say They use flashcards right for simple paired associate learning things like foreign language vocabulary But you can use flashcards for complex materials as well Concepts so you write the key term on one side Definition on the other side and then use that to basically test yourself and then to restudy Even important concepts and textbooks right how they take notes they can take notes in better ways to actually support The use of retrieval practice, which is an effective strategy that many students don't use they underutilize it Yeah, so retrieval practice. So then it's I suppose really Pretty effortful by comparison to rereading or highlighting. So it probably takes a fair bit of Desire on the part of the student is to want to learn it absolutely does I mean it's very easy to sit there and reread right especially when your mind is somewhere else thinking about how fun It's going to be after you take your exam type of thing Where it does take a little bit more effort Engages you to try to retrieve the information the nice thing is out of all these studies that are done to compare rereading to retrieval practice The time on task is always equated So the students who are just rereading spend the same amount of time that the students are who are practicing retrieval Okay, so yeah, it might be a little bit more effortful, you know It's like a little bit more painful to try to retrieve stuff from memory But even the same amount of time used in one strategy versus the other the students who are practicing retrieval using a little bit Extra effort are getting a major Basically increase in their performance interesting. Yeah, it's huh and so the other aspect of that the the distributed Learning the spaced learning What does that entail I mean it so does that entail studying a little bit each day or is it how many days do you need is it That's a hundred dollar question or maybe even ten thousand dollar question This is how I think about it Let's say your student getting ready for an exam and maybe you decide, okay, I can give this four hours of my time Most students because they think cramming is good. They'll spend that four hours the night before the exam just study study study They're gonna do a lot better off if they take the same four hours and just basically Segment it into four one-hour study sessions that are spread across say two weeks prior to the exam Again the same amount of time but now that just spread across time where you're coming back to the same material Versus just kind of going over that material over and over again during one four-hour block How much they need to do for long-term retention a whole lot, okay? This won't be a great strategy to learn all your course content You got to decide what's most important what you think you're going to be tested on and focus on that material But the more is the better the more use the more often you come back and re-study of course and use retrieval practice The longer you're going to retain that material. So for stuff that students really need to know this is an essential strategy I'll say just forget stuff I mean you don't have to tell a student right that after they take a test that they cram for the next day they Pretty much don't remember anything that they studied Distributed practice ensures that you're going to remember that for a much longer period of time My name is John. I think about reflection