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Course of Mind
Course of Mind
Power learning with retrieval practice
Forgetting what you were taught a week ago isn’t a shortcoming; it’s just part of being human. The inability to recall information may say more about teaching methods than your intellectual capacity. To help students really learn takes an understanding of how the brain works. Something as simple as changing the way a teacher asks questions can help ensure that learning is taking place. That’s the message of Dr. Pooja Agarwal, a cognitive scientist and former K-12 teacher, who has long sought to bridge the gap between the learning sciences and the classroom. In this episode of Course of Mind, she presents what scientists know about learning and how teachers can put it to use.
This podcast is produced by NarayanKripa Sundararajan (@KripaSundar) as part of the Course of Mind project, an ISTE initiative made possible in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
How is your memory, are you one of those folks who has a crystal clear recollection of all the facts salient or not from a given conversation
Speaker 2:or are you someone who finds themselves struggling to remember what was discussed and decided in a faculty meeting as soon as it's over? Chances are you're somewhere in between, but why and what about your students? What are key considerations for helping them retain and retrieve content important to their learning? I'm Shaina white and I'm Zach Chase and your listening to course of mind, the learning sciences podcast from misty. In this episode we learned from Doctor Pooja Agarwal and assistant professor at the Berklee College of music in Boston where she teaches psychological science to undergraduate musicians. She is also an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University's and Peabody college and a former K12 classroom teacher. We talked with Pooja about what makes learning sticky and how teachers might utilize insights from learning sciences research to shift their practices and improve student memory and learning. How might we better understand memory and retrieval as components of learning. Welcome to course of mine.
Speaker 1:Hi Pooja. How are you? Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It is such a pleasure. I am so thrilled. I know Shanna, you are also thrilled. Absolutely. I am thrilled beyond measure. There was a lot of high pressure for for being through two. I realize that this forcing upon I'll address, um, for our listers. Would you give just a quick overview of, of what you bring to, to learning sciences and where your focus is?
Speaker 3:I am a cognitive scientist. I've been doing research on how students learn for about 15 years and a lot of my research was at Washington University in Saint Louis in a range of middle school and high school classrooms. I also teach college students at the Berklee College of music in Boston. I teach psychology and neuroscience. I'm actually not a musician, um, but it's a lot of fun to teach psychology with musicians. I also have a book coming out in June called powerful teaching. I am so excited. I'm coauthoring it with a veteran, middle school teacher, Patrice Spain. And it's such a great opportunity to bring a lot of this research for my field and bring it into the classroom. To teachers to translate the science of learning, make it actionable so that we can really use it in classrooms immediately.
Speaker 1:I'm going to let go of the fact that you're not a musician because, cause I think you could do so much at Berkeley
Speaker 3:playing violin, but I'm not so sure that counts because they never practiced.
Speaker 1:So I
Speaker 4:grew up owning a lot of instruments, but I wouldn't say, Hey, now I'm able to do anything with them. Um, could we start maybe this conversation, um, around your website,
Speaker 3:website retrieval practice, that org sort of evolved, uh, about, Gosh, three years ago, maybe in 2016 and it's something that had just been percolating in my head for a really long time. I've always been passionate about this phenomenal research on how people learn. And in college I got certified in elementary education and while I was taking my methods classes and student teaching, I was taking all of these phenomenal psychology classes and it just, there always seemed to be this gap right between how we learn in the classroom and how we do research on learning, but not really. And then applied everyday life kind of way. So I had always wanted to bridge that gap. And as simple as it is, even a website where scientists can take that research and it's so valuable, but it sits under lock and key to translate it and make it usable for teachers. So on my website retrieval practice that org listeners can subscribe for weekly email updates. I'm really excited to write these super short 32nd emails. You can read with an actionable teaching tip or a resource. You can also download free guides that are written by scientists for educators. They're about 10 pages. Super easy to share. I've got a number of other resources and recommended books and websites on there as well.
Speaker 4:So I was playing around and digging and digging and digging in preparation for this, for this episode. Uh, and to me the understanding of asking students, uh, to retrieve information as connected to their learning seems pretty obvious. It's a conversation we've had in my district quite a bit. But I wonder if you could talk about why asking kids to retrieve information has been shown to be a helpful piece of in the learning process.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you mentioned that. Because retrieval and retrieval practice pulling information out is very obvious, very intuitive, right? We asked students questions, we ask ourselves questions, we do it every day. But in a classroom context, even if we ask questions, we may not necessarily do it in the most effective way based on what we know about how students learn. So one very simple example is sometimes we even defaults to reviewing information with students as opposed to encouraging them to retrieve it. So sometimes we might start class by saying, all right class, here's what we did yesterday. And a simple switch to enable to encourage students to retrieve that information is just to ask them, what do we do in class yesterday? So instead of reviewing and telling them what we did is to ask students and have them retrieve. And that simple switch to pulling information out as opposed to sort of cramming information into students' heads really improves longterm learning. And again, it is really intuitive. We just don't always think about it in certain ways or how to incorporate it in our classes more often.
Speaker 5:What might be some of those practices that you would see as kind of simple, simple things that, that folks who, who want to try to do this more mindfully, uh, might, might try in their classes.
Speaker 3:One of those strategies I really like is, um, what in the scientific literature we call free recall. A lot of teachers are calling this a brain dump where you simply ask students write down everything you can remember. So for example, if I teach student about sleep, uh, I did this last week, we had some fun conversations and my college classrooms about what sleep is and why we sleep and what it does and how to measure it. So I'm probably this upcoming week on Tuesday I might say, all right, take out a piece of paper, write down everything you can remember that you learned about sleep last week. And even to just give students two to three minutes to do that will help them solidify and remember that information. I don't grade it. I love it when students pick up their paper and hand it to me and I just kinda look at him funny because that's another aspect of retrieval in the classroom is we think of it as an assessment tool and not a learning tool. When students just retrieve for the sake of learning, they suddenly become very surprised that it's not graded. They don't have to turn it in at all. It can just be a brain dump and then you move on or to make that even more, um, you know, quick and snappy because of course we all have limits on our time in the classroom is to just ask students to write down two things you can remember about sleep. Two things you can remember about some of their concept. You're learning two things you're gonna remember about photosynthesis as opposed to again, reviewing that content or expecting students will remember information after they've only encountered at once.
Speaker 5:That makes complete sense to me. I guess my big, big question is I used to be a basketball coach and the old adage practice makes perfect and I know I saw a portion on your website as it relates to like learning an instrument. Um, and I feel the same about learning how to shoot a basketball or to dribble or any of those types of things. Um, and you mentioned on your website a process called interleaving, um, and how that works with retrieval. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker 3:Interleaving is a really beneficial strategy for everything from sports to math, two instruments, especially a lot of skills based learning and all interleaving is, is mixing concepts up. And a key to that is mixing up similar concepts. So for example, in um, baseball and, and Shana, you'll have to help me with a basketball equivalent. I know more about baseball in baseball. If you're at batting practice and a pitcher is going to throw you 10 fastballs and then 10 curveballs and 10 changeups are sort of slower pitches. If you know they're going to be 10 fastball, 10 curveball, 10 changeups, then you sort of know what to expect. But if the pitcher mixes those up and you never know what's literally coming at you, you have to decide what kind of pitch is this and how do I hit it. So Shana in basketball, I imagine you could play around with mixing up free throws versus you know, three point shots and some other dribble techniques,
Speaker 5:right? Or it would be for me as a coach switching up defenses and what offensive set can we run against this, uh, late game situations. Um, inbounds plays, those types of things. So that would be kind of like the equal in basketball. Um, from my understanding because I'm the opposite, I'm not a big baseball fan, but I do understand what you're saying as far as that concept. Um, but that's very interesting to me. Um, I also used to be a very competitive power lifter and that all adage that we were always told, and I was told by my power lifting coach that you have to have 10,000 hours of practice to become not an expert, but to become proficient at a task. Would you say that that is applicable for learning as well?
Speaker 3:I think that it's, it's applicable in that it takes practice, right? It takes practice to learn how to play basketball. It takes practice. You have to practice to get better at an instrument and we have to practice to learn. Sometimes we think that, um, you know, if, if I just teach my students about the concept of rem cycles and dream cycles, right? If I just teach them about that once that they're getting get it and we know from a hundred years of research that that's just not how learning works. We really have to practice and kind of, you know, um, use it or lose. It also applies in, in sports and in weightlifting, but also in, in learning as well.
Speaker 5:My other big question because I work with computer science, um, and teaching kind of computational thinking and how there is not a one size fits all approach. How does that work with retrieval? Uh, with students? For me, I guess my big thing that's I'm having issues to help kids understand that there's not just one right answer. So it's not a retrieval based way to write a program or to wait or wider code. Um, and I'm wondering like for kind of those outliers, if there are or if computer science is considered an outlier, how does retrieval work with helping kids in a class master a class that would be more free thinking based?
Speaker 3:I liked that the free thinking based, I'll give you an example. I think before jumping into that, especially in my own college classroom, I have a lot of similar content that maybe free thinking or more complex that simply doesn't have right or wrong answers. So one example I really like and I'd like your thoughts, Shannon, Anzac. Um, what your least favorite ice cream flavors are?
Speaker 5:Oh, least favorite ice cream. Like, I have a special love for all ice cream. Um, I'm going to go like a black cherry flavor. It would be my least favorite. I'm going to say rocky road, rocky road. Hey, hey, come on Zack. All right, well Pooja, I hope you can make mine may also be equally controversial. My least favorite is mint chocolate chip. Oh No. Oh No. Oh No. We'll let, we'll let you rob this time. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The reason I like asking that question is because there aren't right or wrong answers and it's still retrieval practice. We're all retraining experiences from our own life. So maybe Shana, you're thinking back to an ice cream parlor where you try to ice creams and you tried that one and it was just not sitting with you. Right. Um, or I can think back to seeing the bright green mint chocolate chip containers. And that just seems to gross me out. So we're to retrieving to questions that have no right or wrong answer. But that process of almost that little struggle to mentally travel and pull that information out helps us learn. So, of course in computer science students or retrieving all the time, they're writing code, they're checking code, they're getting feedback. The difference with that is to, of course do even more and more retrieval. You can imagine if, or I can imagine if I were a computer science student and actually if, if I could major in something and do it all over again and do computer science, but if I were a computer science student, I could just watch someone doing it and never practice coding myself. Right? So sometimes there's still even more opportunities to retrieve and I think it's great to retrieve when there aren't any correct answers at all. That takes that stress off of the idea that the only time I as a student retrieve is on an exam. But when we retrieve all the time in class with that sort of free thinking content, higher order, complex knowledge, there's research demonstrating that retrieval boosts that learning and that transfer as well.
Speaker 5:That makes complete sense because with computer science there is that syntax piece, um, where kids have to type in the correct syntax in order to get their program to run. Um, so that makes complete sense. As far as the retrieval playing a role there and also developing an algorithm by algorithm might be different than the student that's next to me, but the process of developing an algorithm as the same and I have to retrieve that information on a consistent basis. So that makes complete sense.
Speaker 4:I want to take a turn though and suggest what happens if a question is asked or a task is presented and a student goes to retrieve information and there's nothing there is, you know what I'm saying? Like, so if I'm asking you to is to talk to me about something about which you know, nothing. Um, like if you had said, Hey Shana, Zach, what is your favorite kind of, you know, microparticle um, and we'd be like, oh, I know that's not our, you know, um, what do we, what happens there? Or what my teacher is is do we just fill in the blank with anything or is there a way for us to to set up a classroom practice where we ask for retrieval students realize they don't know anything and then they do what
Speaker 3:that, that made me think one of my students sometimes refers to that as a brain fart. Yes. Intellectual functioning that is correct to me and based on research, that's actually a perfect opportunity for retrieval is when you try to retrieve and you can't come up with the answer is a perfect time to get feedback. So in an example from my classroom, my students had just learned about classical conditioning. Pavlov's dog rings a bell, makes a dog drool, that kind of situation. And I had taught them about classical conditioning in week five and I dunno, by week eight I asked them, hey, what was classical conditioning? And of course I got blank looks right. This happens to 18 year olds is happens to 10 year olds is happens to 50 year olds, right? It happens to all of us. And they just looked at me so blank. And some of them were embarrassed because they knew we talked about it, but they couldn't remember anything about it. And so one thing I like to do is I often give students the opportunity to write their thoughts down first because then they're not put on the spot. They may feel like they have that brain fart. They may feel that they, they can't grasp at straws quite, but if they have a minute to write it down, some students may actually come up with information share. So then I might do a think pair share or asked for any volunteers to share in class. And if no one can come up with anything, we can give what we call a retrieval cue is what's called a in the scientific literature to literally Q someone's memory or give a hint. So I might say something like, Okay Pavlov. And then all of a sudden they might think dog and then they might get the gist of it. And then to extend that once, maybe we've had a quick discussion to get them back to understanding what classical conditioning is. Then I often asked for an example. So what's an example from your own life of classical conditioning? And then I love when I get the blank looks again. I think it's a lot of fun and by the end of this semester, my students become very comfortable with not being able to retrieve because then it's a great opportunity to fill in those gaps.
Speaker 5:My next question is something that all teachers have been introduced to and that's Bloom's taxonomy. And I'm curious how retrieval practice plays a role because if I'm not mistaken, even though I don't know Bloom's, I should know Bloom's off the top of my head. Um, the very bottom is you can't retrieve blooms right now. Yes, I cannot return fit. That is, I'm having that brain fart. Um, but I do know remembering is the very bottom, the big part of the pyramid, but the base, um, and at the very top is like the creation part in the higher order thinking. So my question is, does balloons, and I think you mentioned this a bit on your website, those blooms is their ability to flip that for kids, uh, as it relates to retrieval learning or not necessarily?
Speaker 3:I would say that leading up to this point, most research from cognitive science and cognitive psychology on how students for member and learn has probably tackled the bottom part of Bloom's taxonomy. Sort of the bottom part of that triangle in terms of the type of content. So when we do scientific research on learning, we want it to be really well controlled. So we might use some simple foreign language pairs like Gato cat or Mashua boat in Swahili. And a lot of that is sort of basic memorization, right? The bottom of that pyramid. And more and more recently my colleagues and I have been doing a lot of research kind of going on up through the pyramid. So getting into more complicated types of content and questions and higher order thinking. And what we've shown that is across the sort of triangle across Bloom's taxonomy, retrieval helps solidify information for all of those levels. Another aspect that scientists have been delving into his transfer. So how can we support students, facilitate students transfer of knowledge from one concept to another? So if students are learning about photosynthesis in the classroom, can they then transfer that knowledge and really explain why a certain plant is green versus Brown that they see on the sidewalk on the way home from school. And there's also been fun research demonstrating that retrieval helps with transfer. So a colleague of mine, Andrew Butler, had this laboratory research with college students where he first taught them about the structure of that way. So how the wings of bats are structured, how they can fly. And then students were asked to describe airplane wings. So the structure of wings on airplanes and how that creates lift and how those fly. And we show that retrieval helps. But that transfer is hard and it's harder than we think. And I worry that sometimes as educators we beat ourselves up for this and we shouldn't. This is just how learning works is that we need more of that practice. Going back to what we had talked about earlier, and especially for transfer, we need a lot of feedback. We also need going back to those retrieval cues, we need hints, otherwise students struggle to transfer that information. So there's research, kind of looking at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy. There's research looking at the top. And then what I've written about most recently, uh, my newest publication is looking at sort of that flip that you mentioned Shane us. So is it the case that students have to know knowledge before they can do all of the higher order thinking stuff at the top of the pyramid? Or can they start at the top? Do they really have to start with the basics? And this is a question I've always been interested in. There's lots of claims about where you have to start on the taxonomy or where you should and should not. And I couldn't find a whole lot of research on it. So I was just curious, especially in the context of retrieval practice, can we use retrieval practice to support those higher levels? And do we have to start at the bottom to get to the top? And so the research I recently published showed that, well, if students get retrieval, that's mostly fact based. They were taking quizzes in the college laboratory and in a sixth grade classroom, if the quizzes had mostly facts than they did really well on effect exam. And if the quizzes had more complex questions, they did really well on a complex exam, uh, with higher order questions. But that transfer was really hard for students. So it's my long way of saying it's, it's, I'm not sure it's a triangle or an upside triangle or just a big messy blob, but we know that retrieval improves all of that learning. It's important to practice what you want students to be able to do. This leads to a practical application. So indulge me if you both today
Speaker 4:I was meeting with some fourth grade teachers in my district and they were talking about how in a small group practice, say five or six kids, uh, they were able to work with those kids around root words and prefixes and suffixes and thinking all those kinds of pieces through. And what does it mean when you see this prefix or what might this suffix tell you about a word? And that kids were able to show a level of mastery in, in fourth grade with those pieces. And then when they see, when they gave the students a chance to do, um, individual practice, uh, performance of that task and said, all right, go and do this thing. And then an amount of time, probably a couple of days, maybe even just one day had passed, the kids showed no ability, whereas they had been able to in this small group, uh, do some, uh, some individual public performance of the task. And now with some time having passed, they weren't able to do that. So, and they were, and the teachers were saying, how come this isn't sticking? Uh, and why aren't they able to pull this forward? So in that instance, what might the, the science say, uh, would be some helpful practices for teachers either early on in that small group setting or as they're building those tasks for kids to do individually? After some time has passed?
Speaker 3:I would have maybe three suggestions off the top of my head. One is I have a uh, an update that I referred to as think, pair, share, think again. And part of the reason I'm really fascinated and I love think pair, share, but I worry that students aren't always thinking and they're not always retrieving when they're in small groups. We've all had the experience where you're in a group and you've got students in a group and you walk around the classroom and you realize they're talking about what they're going to do that weekend or you know, they're not quite on task or one student is carrying the weight for everyone else. And there's research on this called collaborative retrieval. We're in groups, people don't always retrieve and they actually do better when they're retrieving individually. So one step would be before the small groups again is to take a minute and have students retrieve individually on paper or maybe they can just whisper to themselves or they close their eyes and think about it before getting into groups. That would be a first suggestion. My second would be to use inner leaving as we talked about earlier with Shana and basketball where if students are mixing up the concepts of prefixes and suffixes and other types of similar concepts that will help them discriminate, they can then choose, if you were to give them an example and say, is this a prefix or suffix? Then students can choose and have to discriminate the difference as opposed to understanding, well this whole page of practice problems or all it is. So what's the point? And then the third one I wanted to mention is another strategy we call spacing. So spacing is the simple idea of not a, of teaching content or studying contents spaced out over time. So we all know that students cram for exams and um, Zach and Shana, you've probably crammed for an exam.
Speaker 1:Really attentive and taking the long view. Yes, I do that all the time. Yes, I was going to say, I think I crammed for every single exam, which I might still cram for things in adult life that have nothing to do with school. I think adulting is its own big exam. Don't you think it's true for life? That's a great title.
Speaker 3:We all cram. We still do it as adults. The reason we cram is because it works. Students Cram before an exam
Speaker 1:kind of. I don't have to study ever again.
Speaker 3:It works on the exams act, but then when it happens right after you take the exam, what happens?
Speaker 1:I forget, I forget what I was supposed to know. Yes. This turning into much more of a therapy session than I was prepared. It is. We'll see. Memory.
Speaker 3:It's that way. Right. It's funny because we use it in everything we do. Remembering how to get home, remembering when, you know, take your medicine. But we don't, we take it for granted. Um, but yeah, when students cram for an exam, they get A's and then they forget it all. You know, students just have this big sigh of relief. Great. I put it out there, I spit it out onto a page, I can move on. But when students cram, it improves their short term learning and not their longterm learning. And the same works in, in the classroom is educators. If we cover one concept all at once, students are going to nod their heads. They feel like, Yep, I know that concept, I'm good to go. But if you ask them about it like me and my college students, even a week later they're just going to give you blank looks because only their short term learning had been improved and not their longterm. So in some ways, uh, and again I, I'm very practical when it comes to logistics and time limits. You don't have to, I should mention you don't have to do any grading with any of these strategies. It's helpful to actually keep them all no steaks and with spacing instead of feeling like, oh now who just saying I got to come back to the concept over and over is maybe just to cover it a little for a little less time the first time and then to come back to it a little bit at a time as opposed to doing an all at once and never talking about it again.
Speaker 1:From a biological perspective that has, it feels to me like an evolutionary kind of trait where something happens, then there's some space baton behind and then it happens and then something happens is after a little more time. And so that it becomes your brain learns, Oh, I should start watching out for this. Is that kind of the, where we think the, the physiology and the biology have kind of adapted to for that to work as far as a learning piece?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so. It's um, it reminds me of, of a concept we refer to as savings. So almost, um, China like basketball or computer science or riding a bike, you know, if you don't do something for a while, the next time you pick it up it's a little bit easier and you don't do it for a while and the next time you pick it up it's a little easier. Zach, I think that similar to what you're saying and that's what we call savings is even when time passes, that forgetting is a good thing before you retrieve it and pick it back up again. And so yeah, we kind of know what to expect and it's a little more fluid, a little more easier each time we return.
Speaker 1:All right. My question, um, relates to technology because a lot of the techniques that I saw on your website don't really require the usage of technology. How can technology be successfully integrated with retrieval techniques an implemented by teachers on a regular basis in their classrooms?
Speaker 3:I would say that a lot of technology teachers already use, probably incorporate a lot of retrieval already. So popular tools like Kahoot and quizlet and quizzes, those all use the basics of retrieval. We're getting students interested and engaged and retrieving information. A lot of those tech tools include features that are also supported by research from cognitive science. So if for instance, in Kahoot or quizlet, you might be able to use a shuffle feature. For the most part, that would be in leaving. It's almost like taking a flash card deck and shuffling it up. You still have very similar concepts, but you're mixing it in together. Another great thing with, with tech tools is feedback, right? So what tech tools students can get immediate feedback on the concepts, whether it's in class or they're using tech apps outside of class. That can be a really powerful tool because of course providing feedback sometimes feels like, well I don't have time for a class discussion or I'm not going to a digital papers. So I'd really encourage using tech tools for feedback and particular another way. I love tech tools and this is just a personal preference, is I love this, this thing called flip grid. I don't know, sac or Shana you use flipgrid or you've heard of it? I'm in love with it.
Speaker 1:I have not used it, but I have heard of it and heard a lot of people using it. I have used it and I would like to know what you think of it because I have feelings and I'm worried you're about to say, oh, it is horrible. No, I love it. Okay. I feel better now. All right. Uh, talk, talk more and in Sciencey way. It's about this thing
Speaker 3:inside seaways I love it. Uh, and so I, I use flipgrid with my college students and I heard about it through Twitter, especially from Matt Miller and with Flipgrid students post these very brief selfie like videos to a prompt that you can give them. So you know, how does this concept about classical conditioning, how does this relate to your own life? And then students post a video giving an example from their own life. And what students don't realize is that's retrieval practice. They just have to talk about what they know and that's it. And there are a few different reasons why I think the technology really helps enable that. Retrieval students aren't in my classroom, they're not filling out extra quiz questions outside of class. It's more personal, it's informal and it removes, again, that high stakes feeling of retrieval the first time a student retrieves shouldn't be on an exam. And with tech tools like flipgrid students get used to get familiar with, really enjoy that process of retrieving. I tell my students on the first day of class that they're going to end up spending more time using those stickers on their selfies and they will actually recording the video themselves. So it's almost an incentive that they enjoy participating in retrieving as part of that community.
Speaker 1:Could you thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us and talk with us today about retrieval. Uh, this has been, uh, quite, uh, a class, uh, for me on, oh my gosh, this is, this is the thing I need to remember for when I am working with students and teachers in my own district. Uh, so it's, it's been a true pleasure. So thank you so much. And your book is called what again?
Speaker 3:It's called powerful teaching on leash, the science of learning.
Speaker 1:And I'm, I'm hoping folks can preorder it now from their favorite bookseller.
Speaker 3:Yes they can. If they go to a powerful teaching.org, there's all the information about the book. You can read more about me and my coauthor Patrice, our story, the research, some resources, all that stuff. That's a powerful teaching.org. Right.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much. Thank you. Before we wrap, it seems only fitting to ask you, dear listener to put some of this science to practice. Grab a piece of paper and a writing utensil. Hit pause and try to bring down, give yourself a minute or two to jot down everything you can retrieve from our conversation with Lucia. Go ahead. We'll be here when you're done. Okay. What did you remember or what did you retreat? Did you hit on the big ideas of spacing, interleaving brain dumps and savings? Maybe you jotted down the blanking. When you are trying to retrieve is a perfect time to get feedback or you
Speaker 5:connected with the idea. Retrieving is more than remembering. It's also about solidifying, transferring, and building answers to questions to which there are no right answers for us. Three key takeaways included this idea that we can be better as educators in asking questions in the ways that help students learn
Speaker 3:in a classroom context. Even if we ask questions, we may not necessarily do it in the most effective way based on what we know about how students learn,
Speaker 5:which connects to this reminder that
Speaker 3:that simple switch to pulling information out as opposed to sort of cramming information into students' heads really improves longterm learning
Speaker 5:and our thinking was really pushed when Pooja helped us to see the use of retrieval practice in open ended questions.
Speaker 3:I think it's great to retrieve when there aren't any correct answers at all, but takes that stress off of the idea that the only time I as a student retreat is on an exam.
Speaker 5:It also left us wanting some ice cream.
Speaker 2:What about you? I'm sure you're thinking and learning with us on Twitter at the course of mind plus c conversations, resources and links to pass episodes. We'll talk to you there. Come learn what we're learning. Join us for our next episode when we talk with Doctor Chris Castro about what learning sciences can teach us about the use of multimedia and the ins and outs and misunderstandings of metacognition. I'm Shaina light and I'm Zach Chase. And you are listening to course of mine, of course of mind is an SD podcast made possible in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative d a f and advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Our producer is Krupa, Sundar, our editor and music maestro is Trevor Stout. You can find Shana on Twitter at Shana v White and you can find me at Inmar chase.[inaudible] is at grip as Sundar and as always, for more on how the learning sciences can inform your practice. Check out the course of mine Twitter feed at course of mind, where you can learn about how other educators have applied learning sciences in the classroom and learn what we're learning.
Speaker 6:MMM.