WEBVTT 00:00:00.506 --> 00:00:09.576 [ Music ] 00:00:10.076 --> 00:00:11.656 I'm Hal Pashler. 00:00:11.656 --> 00:00:14.246 I am a professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science 00:00:14.246 --> 00:00:16.175 at the University of California in San Diego. 00:00:16.496 --> 00:00:21.326 Research in the fields of memory and cognitive science has some pretty broad implications 00:00:21.326 --> 00:00:24.996 for the most effective ways to organize study time and instruction time, 00:00:25.406 --> 00:00:29.026 and we thought it would be useful to produce a guide that distills some 00:00:29.026 --> 00:00:31.046 of the most concrete recommendations 00:00:31.366 --> 00:00:34.896 that have a strong research support and provide these to teachers. 00:00:34.986 --> 00:00:38.296 One of the premises of our work is that we think a lot 00:00:38.296 --> 00:00:42.886 of what people believe is educational failure actually results 00:00:43.026 --> 00:00:44.906 from a failure to retain information. 00:00:44.996 --> 00:00:51.766 If you look at the studies that show disturbing gaps in what high school graduates know, 00:00:51.896 --> 00:00:55.176 30% of them in one study can't find the Pacific Ocean on the map. 00:00:55.686 --> 00:00:58.966 And it's our belief that in most cases this information was taught, 00:00:58.966 --> 00:01:04.406 there was a moment in every high schooler's educational career when they could have pointed 00:01:04.406 --> 00:01:08.276 out where the Pacific Ocean is on a map but they have come-they have lost the information. 00:01:08.276 --> 00:01:11.886 And the field of memory has some concrete suggestions to offer 00:01:12.206 --> 00:01:15.146 about how things could be done a little differently so that forgetting would be less 00:01:15.146 --> 00:01:18.986 of a problem, and that's one of the main focuses in the guide is to try 00:01:18.986 --> 00:01:23.146 to give some concrete advice that might address the problem of forgetting. 00:01:23.816 --> 00:01:26.286 There's really two sets of ideas in the practice guide. 00:01:26.606 --> 00:01:30.636 So, one set of ideas is about reducing the rate of forgetting 00:01:30.746 --> 00:01:35.886 and making it so that information is retained better over long term. 00:01:36.346 --> 00:01:41.926 Another set of information is about improving comprehension for difficult concepts, 00:01:42.256 --> 00:01:46.686 and here we are emphasizing practical things that the teacher can do 00:01:46.986 --> 00:01:50.236 to produce better understanding at the time the information is being presented. 00:01:53.836 --> 00:01:58.316 One of our recommendations relates to spaced learning with review and quizzing. 00:01:58.446 --> 00:02:01.846 And the basic idea here is this: that you need to think about material 00:02:01.846 --> 00:02:05.946 that doesn't automatically get reviewed in the course of the ordinary curriculum. 00:02:06.416 --> 00:02:09.186 So there's lots of things you learn like in a math course you learn to add, 00:02:09.186 --> 00:02:10.626 you are going to use that over and over again. 00:02:11.066 --> 00:02:13.746 But, in something like a history course there is going to be material that's learned, 00:02:13.746 --> 00:02:17.576 it's never reviewed again, and basically there is catastrophic forgetting 00:02:17.826 --> 00:02:20.646 of material that isn't reviewed. 00:02:20.646 --> 00:02:23.736 If you pick out material that's important and you want that to be retained, 00:02:24.056 --> 00:02:28.716 you need to arrange for it to be reviewed, and here the research shows timing is very critical. 00:02:29.046 --> 00:02:32.876 A review days or just a few weeks later is probably not enough. 00:02:32.906 --> 00:02:38.106 It's much more effective if that's delayed by many weeks or ideally months. 00:02:38.316 --> 00:02:43.266 This will affect the amount that people remember years later by maybe a factor of two or three. 00:02:43.936 --> 00:02:47.786 Another element that we combine in that recommendation is the role of quizzing. 00:02:47.786 --> 00:02:52.956 So it's natural to think of tests just as assessment, but they directly promote learning. 00:02:53.596 --> 00:03:00.416 The optimal reviews procedure is to combine a delayed quiz, so that you review material 00:03:00.416 --> 00:03:06.306 and the student is prompted to actively retrieve it, and this will produce a remarkable increase 00:03:06.306 --> 00:03:09.106 in the amount of information available years later. 00:03:09.176 --> 00:03:13.916 An example of this would be if you've got some basic history facts that you don't want kids 00:03:13.916 --> 00:03:16.856 to forget, what you need to do is arrange so that a couple of months 00:03:16.856 --> 00:03:19.426 after they have been covered, they are brought up again in class 00:03:19.426 --> 00:03:21.746 and ideally in the form of a quiz. 00:03:22.106 --> 00:03:23.586 The quiz doesn't have to be graded. 00:03:23.586 --> 00:03:27.756 The important thing is that the student is prompted to retrieve the information 00:03:28.146 --> 00:03:30.016 and if they miss it, they get some feedback, 00:03:30.016 --> 00:03:33.496 but it's not important that this be a basis for their grade. 00:03:37.406 --> 00:03:42.236 One of our recommendations is to alternate between worked examples-that is examples 00:03:42.236 --> 00:03:47.366 where the teacher or the book shows the correct solution path and examples that the student has 00:03:47.366 --> 00:03:49.866 to do themselves, the problem solving exercises. 00:03:50.456 --> 00:03:56.916 Most classroom and textbooks actually ask students-first of all expose them 00:03:56.916 --> 00:03:59.566 to some worked examples either in class or in the textbook, 00:04:00.076 --> 00:04:03.936 and then the student is left on their own to do a set of homework problems. 00:04:04.286 --> 00:04:06.246 But there is quite a bit of research to show 00:04:06.246 --> 00:04:08.936 that it's actually more effective to alternate between these. 00:04:09.116 --> 00:04:13.726 So usually in class the student will watch the teacher go through a bunch of examples, 00:04:14.116 --> 00:04:16.856 but then in the homework assignment the student's left on their own 00:04:16.856 --> 00:04:20.435 to solve a series of problem solving exercises. 00:04:20.435 --> 00:04:25.826 It turns out to be significantly more effective, according to a pretty serious body of research, 00:04:26.086 --> 00:04:31.236 if you alternate, so the student jumps between seeing a worked out example 00:04:31.476 --> 00:04:35.786 and having to solve their own example and then having a new worked out example and so forth. 00:04:36.006 --> 00:04:40.406 This procedure has been found to produce significantly better problem solving on new problems. 00:04:44.526 --> 00:04:49.826 Another one of our recommendations relates to making a deliberate effort to connect abstract 00:04:50.086 --> 00:04:53.476 and concrete presentations of the same principles or course content, 00:04:53.476 --> 00:04:57.006 and this applies particularly in science or math where you have some abstract principle 00:04:57.446 --> 00:05:00.226 that can be applied to an infinity of different new problems. 00:05:00.506 --> 00:05:04.556 And what's important to do here is to connect the abstract and the concrete 00:05:04.556 --> 00:05:09.086 to provide diverse examples of a principle in different domains 00:05:09.526 --> 00:05:12.666 and to connect the general principle to the way it's being applied 00:05:12.666 --> 00:05:14.416 in each of these individual cases. 00:05:14.926 --> 00:05:17.946 This is-research shows this produced significantly better learning 00:05:17.946 --> 00:05:19.756 and transfer to new problem solving. 00:05:20.126 --> 00:05:25.176 So the idea is to show how the same abstract idea can be realized in many different ways. 00:05:25.176 --> 00:05:28.756 So if you think about something like the function y=2x, 00:05:29.216 --> 00:05:33.166 that can be-you can see many examples of that in very diverse domains. 00:05:33.166 --> 00:05:38.376 You can represent that visually as a function; you can see it as a table. 00:05:38.746 --> 00:05:43.576 You can represent it concretely thinking about a walkathon where you are paid $2 for every mile 00:05:43.576 --> 00:05:48.766 that you walk, and these are all examples of the same underlying abstract idea. 00:05:49.126 --> 00:05:54.746 So the idea here is that teachers can promote later understanding and transfer of these ideas 00:05:55.036 --> 00:05:58.436 by showing numerous diverse concrete examples 00:05:58.766 --> 00:06:04.086 and explaining how the same underlying principle is exemplified by each of them. 00:06:07.026 --> 00:06:12.506 Another of our recommendations focuses on deepening students' understanding of course content 00:06:12.846 --> 00:06:16.106 by posing questions to them and what we recommend here is 00:06:16.106 --> 00:06:20.676 to pose what we call higher-order questions, and by higher-order questions we mean questions 00:06:21.216 --> 00:06:28.486 that probe the student to provide explanations, answers, causes, to ask why, why not, 00:06:28.996 --> 00:06:32.796 questions of this sort that go beyond the descriptive content of the material 00:06:32.796 --> 00:06:37.376 and ask for a deeper level of organization of the material. 00:06:37.376 --> 00:06:40.076 And it turns out there is a significant amount of research to suggest 00:06:40.076 --> 00:06:46.136 that doing this produces better retention and better performance later on new problem solving, 00:06:46.136 --> 00:06:48.436 basically better understanding and better retention. 00:06:48.686 --> 00:06:51.796 Teachers could use a variety of different kinds of support 00:06:51.796 --> 00:06:54.056 in implementing these recommendations. 00:06:54.056 --> 00:06:59.696 The recommendations about spacing and testing have strong implications for curriculum materials 00:06:59.696 --> 00:07:04.866 and textbooks, and current textbooks really promote batching of everything on one topic 00:07:04.866 --> 00:07:07.356 within a particular part of the course. 00:07:07.626 --> 00:07:09.886 I think that the changes in that could be very helpful. 00:07:10.346 --> 00:07:16.266 Some of our recommendations relating to quizzing and self-quizzing could be facilitated 00:07:16.266 --> 00:07:18.436 by new kinds of educational technologies. 00:07:18.976 --> 00:07:23.306 There is also the potential, I think, for helpful professional development work on some 00:07:23.306 --> 00:07:29.516 of our more-more higher-level recommendations we have such as the use of higher-order questions 00:07:29.516 --> 00:07:31.966 and the connecting of abstract and concrete materials, 00:07:31.966 --> 00:07:36.256 and here I think professional development courses that include lots of good examples 00:07:36.256 --> 00:07:38.896 of these practices can be very helpful. 00:07:40.076 --> 00:07:45.160 [ Music ]