THE
UNIVERSITY AND BEYOND
Teaching for Long-Term Retention
and Transfer
Editor’s Note:
This issue of the Teaching Times features comments from University of
Pittsburgh faculty who were invited to reflect on the “10 validated
principles” for teaching in the article below by Diane F. Halpern and
Milton D. Hakel.*
The preparation
of most college teachers consists of in-depth study in an academic discipline,
with little, if any, formal training that addresses topics like adult
learning, memory, or transfer of learning. The study of human cognition
is an empirical science with a solid theoretical foundation and research-based
applications that we can use in college classrooms.
How can we apply
what research on human learning can tell us to higher education institutions?
About 30 experts from different areas of the learning sciences recently
met to answer this question. They included cognitive, developmental,
educational, motivational, social, cultural, and organizational psychologists,
physicists and other science instructors, and representatives from such
bodies as the National Science Foundation and regional accrediting agencies.
The empirically
validated principles in this article are based on discussions at that
meeting. They can be applied regardless of class size or format—in lecture
halls, in laboratories, in seminar rooms, or online. As college faculty,
we can have a lifelong effect on what our students remember, and, consequently,
on what they will think and do, depending on how we design and direct
learning activities.
1) The
single most important variable in promoting long-term retention and
transfer is “practice at retrieval.” This principle means that
learners need to generate responses, with minimal cues, repeatedly over
time with varied applications so that recall becomes fluent and is more
likely to occur across different contexts and content domains. Students
can practice retrieval by teaching learned concepts and skills to other
students, or by responding to frequent questions asked in class or posed
online.
2) Varying
the conditions under which learning takes place makes learning harder
for learners but results in better learning. In the jargon
of cognitive psychology, when learning occurs under varied conditions,
key ideas have “multiple retrieval cues” and thus are more “available”
in memory. For example, educational research suggests that significant
learning gains can occur when different types of problems and solutions
are mixed in the same lesson, even though the initial learning can take
significantly longer.
3) Learning
is generally enhanced when learners are required to take information
that is presented in one format and “re-represent” it in an alternative
format. Cognitive research has established that humans process
information by means of two distinct channels—one for visuospatial information
and one for auditory-verbal information. According to dual-coding theory,
information that is represented in both formats is more likely to be
recalled than information that is stored in either format alone.
For example, requiring
learners to draw visuospatial “concept maps” makes them (a) create an
organizational framework in terms of which to arrange the information
they are learning, and (b) communicate this framework visually through
a “network” of ideas—both of which are activities that enhance learning.
Complex concepts can be related to one another in numerous ways, and
depicting correct relationships among concepts is central to all graphic
organizing techniques. Similarly, requiring students to write about
or explain verbally what they have learned in a mathematical or schematic
learning task also takes advantage of dual coding.
4) What
and how much is learned in any situation depends heavily on prior knowledge
and experience. Psychologists use the term “construction of
knowledge” because each learner creates new meaning using what he or
she already knows. Thus, the best predictor of what is learned at the
completion of any lesson, course, or program of study is what the learner
thinks and knows at the start of the experience.
We need to assess
learner knowledge and understanding at the start of every instructional
encounter, probing for often-unstated underlying assumptions and beliefs
that may influence the knowledge, skills, and abilities that we want
students to acquire. We also need to test continually for changes in
knowledge structures as learning progresses—and look especially for
post-learning drifts, because student understanding can easily revert
to pre-instructional levels.
5) Learning
is influenced by both our students’ and our own epistemologies. Academic
motivation is related to underlying epistemological beliefs about learning
itself and about how learning works. Learning and remembering involve
multiple, interdependent processes. Some types of learning occur implicitly,
without conscious awareness. Others occur consciously but are relatively
easy. Still other types of learning involve considerable effort, and
are perhaps even painful and aversive. It is only after an initial investment
in the hard work of learning that additional learning in these fields
becomes more automatic, and consequently becomes easier.
Determining the
best way for students to learn and recall something will thus depend
on what you want learners to learn and be able to recall, what they
already know, and what their own beliefs are about the nature of learning.
College faculty can help students articulate their implicit beliefs
about learning so that these beliefs can be explicitly examined. And
based on this knowledge, instructors’ construction of the learning task
itself can also help students construct new models of how they learn.
6) Experience
alone is a poor teacher. What people learn from experience can be systematically
wrong. People, therefore, frequently end up with confidence
in their erroneous beliefs. Confidence is not a reliable indicator of
depth or quality of learning. In fact, research in metacognition has
shown that most people are poor judges of how well they comprehend a
complex topic.
There is a popular
belief that all learning and assessment should be “authentic,” that
is, nearly identical in content and context to the situation in which
the information to be learned will be used. However, missing from most
authentic situations—and from most real-life situations as well—is systematic
and corrective feedback about the consequences of various actions.
7) Lectures
work well for learning assessed with recognition tests, but work badly
for understanding. A lecture, in which a lone teacher mostly
talks and writes on the board while students take notes, is a satisfactory
arrangement for learning if the desired outcome is to produce learners
who can repeat or recognize the information presented. But lecturing
alone is not optimal to foster deep learning. Understanding is an interpretive
process in which students must be active participants.
Learners need
“cues” that trigger interpretation and force them to engage the material
actively, even if they are sitting silently in a large lecture hall.
For example, it is possible to get students to elaborate on information
that is presented in lectures by relating it to information that they
already know through the use of imagery or probing questions that test
for understanding.
The ability to simply recognize a correct answer on an examination is
not a good indicator of whether the learner can recognize other instances
in which a concept applies outside the classroom. Thus, the type of
assessment needs to match the learning objectives.
8) The
act of remembering itself influences what learners will and will not
remember in the future. Asking learners to recall particular
pieces of the information they’ve been taught often leads to “selective
forgetting” of related information that they were not asked to recall.
Principles of
learning are difficult to discuss in isolation because learning activities
that occur at different times—at the point of initial learning, during
the retention interval, and at the point of recall—are all interdependent.
They work together to determine what is remembered well after the first
recall test is administered. According to standard “memory trace” theories
of how we remember, the act of remembering strengthens some memory traces
and weakens—or at least fails to strengthen—others.
9) Less
is more, especially when we think about long-term retention and transfer.
Faculty need to consider carefully the balance between how much and
how well something is learned. An emphasis on in-depth understanding
of basic principles often constitutes a better instructional design
than more encyclopedic coverage of a broad range of topics. If cursory
knowledge of a broad area is indeed desirable, as it sometimes is, then
learners and instructors should be collectively conscious of this goal
so that they can learn and teach in ways that will achieve broad coverage.
But if deep understanding
of basic principles is what is wanted, then the teaching and learning
process needs to be structured accordingly. This means that instructors
and learners must have clearly articulated goal statements that guide
instructional design and learning activities. And they must carefully
match the learning activities to these goals.
10) What learners do determines what and how much is learned, how well
it will be remembered, and the conditions under which it will be recalled.
There is an old saying in psychology, “The head remembers what it does.”
What professors do in their classes matters far less than what they
ask students to do.
_______
Diane F. Halpern is professor of psychology and director
of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont
McKenna College. She is author of numerous books including Thought and
Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking 4th ed. (2003, Erlbaum
Publishers) and Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities 3rd edition (2000,
Erlbaum Publishers). Milton D. Hakel is the Ohio Board of Regents Eminent
Scholar in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Bowling Green
State University. He published Beyond Multiple Choice: Evaluating Alternatives
to Traditional Testing for Selection in 1998. He serves on the board
on Testing and Assessment of the National Academy of Sciences.
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