Top 10 Strategies

Learning tips

  • 1. Self Testing - Taking practice test over material to be learned.

    Urge students to test their knowledge before the exam to uncover gaps in recall and understanding

    • Offer students varied opportunities for self testing, eg. graded and ungraded practice tests over the most important content
    • Include specific objectives on lecture slides and use questions as slide headers to aid students in developing good self test questions
    • Encourage students to self test until they can recall answers from memory >2 times ("successive relearning").
  • 2. Distributed Practice - Implementing a schedule of paractice that spreads out study activities over time

    Structure assessments and activities to promote ongoing study vs. cramming

    • Begin class with a review question or exercise
    • Repeat practice questions across classes
    • Test students at frequent intervals
    • Make exams cummulative
    • Encourage 2 column note taking
    • Space out instructor-led review sessions
  • 3. Interleaved Practice- A schedule of practice that mixes different types of content within a study session, eg. different problemts, cases, or disease patterns.

    Mix different types of content within a study session

    • Mix problems, cases, disease processes, examples
    • Make connections between course content and across courses
    • In integrated series courses, make frequent connections to other content
    • Use concept maps/graphic organizers to encourage connections
  • 4. Elaborative Interrogation - Generating explanations for an explicitly stated fact of concept. "Why does this occur?" "Why is this true?"
     

    Enhance the effects of self testing by prompting students to ask questions that elaborate on the facts to be learned

    • Ask students to make inferences by asking them "how" and "why" questions instead of detail-based "what" questions
    • Encourage students to ask inference-based "how" and "why" questions in class
    • Include inference-based questions in exercises and tests and instruct students to study for these types of questions
  • 5. Self Explanation - Explaining how new information is related to prior knowledge.

    Explaining how new information is related to to prior knowledge

    • Ask students to provide recaps or "working understandings" of material covered
    • Review lesson objectives and ask students to explain how that objective was met
    • Utilize small and large group discussion and emphasize general principles and structure over surface knowledge
  • 6. Re-reading - Reading/studying material again after an initial reading.

    Re-reading

    Time could be spent using another strategy.

  • 7. Highlighting/Underlining - Marking important points in material to be learned

    Highlighting and Underlining

    Not particularly helpful, but can be used as a first step with another strategy.

  • 8. Summarization - Identifying the main points and excluding unimportant or repetitive aspects of a text.

    Summarization

    Can be helpful if done well, but most students don’t summarize well.

  • 9. Keywork Mnemonic - Using a keyword to recall an unfamiliar term.

    Keyword Mnemonic

    Somewhat helpful when learning vocabulary.

  • 10. Imagery for Text - Forming mental imagery of text while reading or listening.

    Imagery for text

    Benefits are limited to descriptive writing such as literature.

References and Resources

Brown SD. A Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Approach to Teaching Medicinal Chemistry. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. 2010;74(7):121. doi:10.5688/aj7407121

Dunlosky J, Rawson KA, Marsh EJ, Nathan MJ, Willingham DT. Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 2013;14(1):4-58. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266

Stewart D, Panus P, Hagemeier N, Thigpen J, Brooks L. Pharmacy Student Self-Testing as a Predictor of Examination Performance. Am J Pharm Educ. 2014;78(2). doi:10.5688/ajpe78232 

Willingham, D. Why Don’t Students Like School? a Comprehensive Model of School Reform. 2013. Jossey Bass. https://books.google.com/books/about/Why_Don_t_Students_Like_School.html?id=8SDs8LZl41EC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Two Column Note Taking (the Cornell Method): http://lsc.cornell.edu/notes.html