Student Learning Techniques

As we near the end of yet another semester, I thought it might be helpful to share this 2013 article, "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques" by Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham for students studying for exams. The authors share easy-to-use learning techniques that could help students achieve their learning goals. They divide each method into sections:

1. General description of the technique and why it should work

2. How general are the effects of this technique? (Learning conditions, Student characteristics, Materials, Criterion tasks)

3. Effects in representative educational contexts

4. Issues for implementation

5. Overall assessment

They found that...

Practice testing and distributed practice received high utility assessments.

Elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, and interleaved practice received moderate utility assessments.

Five techniques received a low utility assessment: summarization, highlighting, the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, and rereading.

They also discuss issues for how these techniques could be implemented by teachers and for future research.