Northwestern Events Calendar

Oct
24
2017

TEACHxperts: Make It Stick: A “Tool-Kit” for Teachers to Improve Student Learning and Retention

When: Tuesday, October 24, 2017
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CT

Where: University Library, Ver Steeg Faculty Lounge, 3rd Floor, 1970 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: IT Communications   (847) 491-2699

Group: Northwestern Information Technology

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

A “Tool-Kit” for Teachers to Improve Student Learning and Retention
Refreshments will be provided for this lunchtime talk

From this talk you will learn 4 (at least!) tangible techniques that you can apply to your classes to improve student learning.

For many students their typical study activities such as rereading text and lecture notes seem to heavily engage repetitive recycling of target information. One implication for education from basic memory research is that typical student study activities just mentioned may not be overly effective for learning and retention. Memory research would favor instead activities that promote elaborative processing. Several concrete techniques to stimulate elaborative learning will be illustrated.

Another well-supported memory principle is that of spacing review, instead of cramming, to increase long-term retention. I present research from middle school to medical school classrooms that reinforces this principle for authentic educational contexts. Similarly, I present research with authentic materials showing that practice on concepts and problems that are close in similarity should be mixed rather than blocked. Unfortunately, in many educational contexts practice is blocked by concept or problem, leading to poor transfer. Finally, I present a number of experimental demonstrations of test-enhanced learning in college classrooms showing that quizzing results in subsequent improvement on exam performances relative to target content that is not quizzed or that is presented for restudy.

This talk is a part of the TEACHxpert speaker series.

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