Engaging students in effective study strategies

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image of students in a classroom Engaging students in effective study strategies

Modeling effective study strategies in the classroom promotes greater learning comprehension, information retention, and metacognition. Teachers can help students use their memory more effectively with spaced retrieval practice, elaboration, and interleaving strategies.

Instructors and scientists agree that cramming is a less effective way to learn material for the long term, but it is often the favorite form of studying for college students. Instructors can design their courses to help students master effective learning techniques for optimum long-term information retention and comprehension.

Ideas to integrate study strategies into your class:

  1. Talk about study strategies on day one. Learningscientists.org has downloadable materials you can pass out to your students to illustrate concepts.
  2. Model effective learning strategies throughout the semester.

Spaced Practice

  • Provide frequent cumulative low-stakes quizzes to help students to revisit and reapply past lessons and see connections throughout the semester.
  • Schedule periodic review sessions, not just before exams. These sessions can revisit key concepts and tie together different parts of the course content.
  • Educate students on the benefits of spaced practice and guide them on how to schedule their study time effectively to incorporate spacing.

Interleaving

Instructors make decisions on when to introduce topics, and the timing of learning exposures can actually have a big impact on learning outcomes. When students learn new concepts, topics are typically mass practiced in blocks until mastery is evident, then the instructor moves on to the next topic. However, studies have shown (Firth et al., 2021; Kornell & Bjork, 2008; Rohrer, 2012; Rohrer & Taylor, 2007) that intentionally shuffling different concepts, or interleaving, is superior to blocked mass practice.

Elaboration

Having students add more details in their own words about key concepts is important for cognitive retention. Elaboration also involves making connections among ideas students are trying to learn with prior knowledge or experiences. Guide students to think deeper about topics past definitions and into questioning how it works and why it is relevant. Instructors can help students elaborate on concepts by providing real world examples or case studies, prompt students to explain concepts in their own words, encourage deeper thinking about how and why principles work, and facilitate meaningful group discussion so peers can build off each other’s ideas and perspectives.

Retrieval practice

Provide opportunities to force students to recall as much as they can about a concept without any learning aids, such as notes or a textbook. After that is complete, tell them to review notes or their textbook to see what they forgot. They should examine what they explained well and what they could have explained better. This is a good metacognitive exercise to challenge them to see if they know what they think they know.

Direct students on how to effectively do retrieval practice while studying. Provide practice tests or direct students to develop their own questions to what they think will be tested. Encourage them to sketch pictures of concepts from memory. After retrieval practice they would re-examine their notes and the textbook to see what was missed, fill in any gaps, and practice concepts missed.

Dual coding

Provide multiple formats of representation of key concepts, and model how students can visually represent ideas in their notes.Visual representations could be doodling, graphic organizers, timelines, cartoon strips, diagrams, or infographics to name a few. Students will remember concepts far better when they explain the concept in their own words and visually represent it.

Spaced Practice
Spaced practice harnesses principles of cognitive psychology to optimize learning and memory retention. When information is revisited after a long break, the brain needs to work harder to recall it, therefore strengthening the memory trace each time. This process enhances long-term retention compared to cramming. With spaced practice, each review session interrupts the forgetting process and strengthens the neural pathways. 

It is also a more efficient form of learning. Instead of spending long hours on a single topic, spaced practice allows learners to allocate more manageable study sessions over time. This reduces cognitive overload and fatigue while maximizing retention.

Dual Coding
The learning science behind dual coding gets its roots in Allan Paivio's Dual-Coding Theory published in his book Imagery and Verbal Processes (1971). According to the Dual-Coding Theory, if a student receives visual and verbal explanations simultaneously, they are more likely to process the knowledge and retain it more effectively. Scientific study supports the advantages of dual coding in education. Research indicates that integrating visual aids, such as mind maps, diagrams, graphs, or illustrations, with verbal explanations improves learners' comprehension and retention of information. This approach reduces cognitive overload and facilitates the formation of connections between various pieces of information, resulting in a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Samples (downloadable files)

Template
Learning Scientists’ downloadable materials

Research

Videos