Agarwal (2020) shares a series of "power tools that increase student learning" (p. 77):
I want to focus on retrieval practice strategies. Using evidence-based strategies can help students recall information when needed. The following is a list of retrieval practice strategies and edtech suggestions to help you quickly embed the suggestions in your courses.
Have students use a Microsoft collaborative document or presentation to do a brain dump of information, concepts, and skills they remember after a learning experience. They can list as many things they recall about a topic as possible in a short amount of time and make a diagram showing connections among ideas.
Use Canvas Collaborations to share documents with groups of students so they can easily work together. You can create groups for students to join so they have some agency over the group they will join. Once students are more familiar with working collaboratively on documents and presentations, they can create them and invite each other to collaborate.
Have students generate quiz questions to review what they learned from a task or learning activity. The questions they generate should be based on what they believe is the most important information they learned during a task or learning activity. Those questions then become the basis of the conversation that follows. Let students know from the start that they will generate questions about what they read, see, and/or hear in a lecture, video, audio podcast, article, or another resource. They will review the materials with that purpose in mind to encourage them to focus on the most relevant information.
In an online forum, students could share them in a Flip post, Canvas Discussion, Microsoft collaborative document or presentation, or during a live Zoom with the whole group or in Breakout Rooms to practice their understanding of the concepts. When on-site, students could also jot down their questions in an app on their mobile device and share them with the group.
If you would like more information about this strategy, you can take our asynchronous Student-generated Questions webinar in our 🔗Forward-Thinking Teaching course to learn more and earn a badge for your effort! Once you are enrolled, you can scroll down and select the webinar you want to take from the list. View the video at the top of the course Home page for specific guidance. 😊
The instructor could generate a brief quiz to help students practice using the academic language they are learning from the sources of information provided in the unit of study. Make these quizzes objective and allow students to take them at least twice. The goal is to practice until the students can easily recall the answers. Once they practice with the language in the unit of study, they can apply it in Canvas Discussions, Flip discussions, Microsoft collaborative documents in Canvas Collaborations, live Zoom meetings, and on-site classes by doing a Socratic seminar, etc...
After students learn something new, you can have them take a Canvas Quiz (🔗Classic or 🔗New Quizzes), 🔗Zoom Advanced Polls & Quizzing, or 🔗Microsoft Form Quiz to check their understanding. Make objective questions where students answer multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions. Keep it brief. The goal is to practice retrieving the facts so they can use them in other contexts.
Graphic organizers can help students visualize how key terms, concepts, and ideas related to the topic are connected. Use them to help students make comparisons (Venn diagram), understand the chronology of an event (timeline), identify cause and effect (Fishbone diagram), problem and solution (flowchart), learn academic vocabulary (Frayer Model), prepare for the writing process (KWHL chart), and so on.
The diagrams could be set up ahead of time in a tool, such as Microsoft Word tables or PowerPoint SmartArt, and shared in Canvas with some (or none) of the information in the chart so students can fill in the missing elements. Students could work collaboratively to complete the chart before, during, and/or after the learning experience (i.e., before the lecture to prepare themselves for the learning, as they listen to a lecture, after reading an excerpt from a chapter...).
The instructor could also use the Zoom collaborative whiteboard tools to have students generate a graphic organizer related to the learning.
The CCIT Team can meet with you to develop graphic organizers tailored to the needs of the students and the project they will do.
Mnemonics help with the rote memorization of larger amounts of information. An example of a mnemonic is PEMDAS, which helps recall the order of mathematical operations (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction). The mnemonic helps to create connections with the desired learning. There are several kinds of mnemonics. Some examples include:
What tools can students use to create mnemonics? Flip is great for sharing songs and rhymes that could help students recall information they learn. Students could use Microsoft PowerPoint or a meme generator online to create a meme.
🎉If you would like any assistance implementing these ideas and tailoring them to fit your needs, please contact the CCIT Team!
#edtech #Canvas #retrieval #memory #recall #learning
Sources:
Agarwal, P. K. (2020). Retrieval Practice: A Power Tool for Lasting Learning. Educational Leadership, 77(8), 76-81. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may20/vol77/num08/Retrieval-Practice@-A-Power-Tool-for-Lasting-Learning.aspx
Hockley, W. E. (2017). Analyses of interresponse times in free recall. In J. H. Byrne (Ed.). Learning and memory: A comprehensive reference (pp. 417-444). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012370509-9.00157-1
Moreira, B. F. T., Pinto, T. S. S., Starling, D. S. V., Jaeger, A. (2019). Retrieval practice in classroom settings: A review of applied research. Frontiers in Education, 4(5), 1-16. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2019.00005/full
Putnam, A. L. (2015). Mnemonics in education: Current research and applications. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 1(2), 130-139. http://www.adamlputnam.com/uploads/8/3/5/6/83563830/putnam_2015.pdf
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