I teach cardiovascular physiology to juniors and seniors at
the University of Arizona. We spend quite a bit of the semester discussing how
to maintain heart health. I tell the students “Use it or Lose it”!! Aerobic
exercise is cardio-protective and it can take as little as 10 minutes a day to
protect the heart (more for increases in cardio-performance).
The “Use it or Lose it” phrase can be used in many different
circumstances, including brain health. In fact, a recent article in the New
York Times discusses the idea that “Superagers” (a term coined by the
neurologist Marsel Mesulam that describes people over the age of 65 who remain
mentally nimble) are those who work their brains to the point of discomfort.
The idea is that you “do it until it hurts, then do a bit more”.
Being mentally or physically uncomfortable is something most
of us prefer to avoid if possible. Students are no exception. This might be one
reason that, although there is plenty of evidence demonstrating that Retrieval
Practice increase learning, students don’t tend to do it.
Retrieval Practice consist of using free-recall exercises to
trigger one’s knowledge or understanding of a
subject, not for assessment purposes but to promote learning itself.
The processing of information through free-recall solidifies
these routes through the impact of “desirable difficulties”; the idea that when
learning is harder, it is more effective.
And that’s one reason why student’s don’t like and don’t use
retrieval practice. When they get the answers wrong, they feel as if they are
not learning the material.
However, when they read and re-read the material, they
believe they are learning because the material looks familiar. This is an
“illusion of mastery” (Karpicke, Butler and Roediger 2009) where the students
feel as if they are learning the material because they recognize the material.
So, how do we change practices? Do we act as personal
trainers and push our students into the uncomfortable process of learning? Even
for the casual athlete, the mantra “no pain, no gain” is the accepted norm. For
college-age persons, some pain can produce the feedback of quickly visible
results. How do we design feedback that clearly highlights the value of retrieval
practice and other desirable difficulties?
Feldman Barrett, L. How to become a ‘superager.’ New York
Times, 31 December 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-become-a-superager.html?_r=0
Karpicke, J.D., & Roediger, H.L. (2008). The critical
importance of retrieval for learning. Science,
319, 966-968. Link
Bye, J.K. Desirable difficulties in the classroom. (2011) Psychology
in Action blog. Link
Bjork, R. A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in
the training of human beings. In J. Metcalfe & A. P. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing about knowing
(pp. 185–205). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L.
(2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practice
retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17,
471-479. Link
Great comments. As a person with cardio vascular disease (never ever smoked, stayed in shape, poor family history) I fully understand what being mentally and physically uncomfortable is all about. I try to do that in my exercise routines and of course in pushing myself to be a better educator through the help of all of you in the FLC. Because I am in the criminal justice studies area I promote both physical health and problem solving competency.
ReplyDeleteHi Rich, I'm guessing that problem solving is very important in criminal justice...there's never 1 answer that's always correct for a situation (because there are so many variables!)...How do you develop that sort of plasticity in thinking?
ReplyDeleteI started doing retrieval practice last semester, especially on days when the students had a hard time with multiple topics in a set of calculations. I would change a few numbers in our problem that we had been working on and ask them to put away their notes and work fresh on a whiteboard. They would struggle and try to remember the details and the teaching team would poke them verbally to remember the details that were so tricky the first time in the other lecture. After a while, we would encourage them to get their notes out and then explain to each other what they did last time. This supported retrieval practice allowed us to talk about how they could resolve problems from class on their own heading into an exam.
ReplyDeleteA long time ago during the cold war, I learned to go from an uncomfortable position to a comfortable one. This lesson goes beyond the battlefield. I tell students about to graduate and colleagues changing jobs, you don’t want to step into a new position and be too comfortable because you be bored, you can’t grow. In “Passages” Gail Sheehy says growth demands a temporary surrender of security. To grow we have to move from the secure comfortable position we are in to a new insecure uncomfortable position and grow into a new secure comfortable position. Then repeat the process to grow more.
ReplyDeleteRetrieval practice is one of those insecure uncomfortable positions for students. It’s not rereading the text, their notes, or the PowerPoint deck. To adapt another military idiom, students will test like they practice. Therefore, they should practice testing, retrieving the information without notes, Google, or a lifeline. My new course has a weekly cumulative quiz. I have to wait and see what the students think of it and how they do in the course.
Incorporating more retrieval practice for students sounds great. Is it better to have the students generate their own questions for retrieval practice (using Quizlet to make sets, for example), or should the instructor be the one providing those questions for retrieval practice?
ReplyDeleteGreat question John! I'd love to hear others thoughts on this...but for me, I think that perhaps the instructor "sets the tone" by perhaps using some Retrieval Practice in the classroom while encouraging the students to continue to do this on their own.
DeleteI think we should drive home the key points with provided questions and let the students earn the As and Bs by creating their own questions, as one of the “desirable difficulties.”
DeleteEric, I agree! I provide study questions on key concepts or skills (but not answers-- they have to seek out help).
DeleteWhen I talk to students about the value of struggling as part of the learning process, they seem to be surprised. With all of the praise our current students received while growing up (deserved or not), it may be difficult for them to embrace "desirable difficulties".Therefore, it's important for faculty to get the message out that grappling with new concepts is more beneficial than rereading and reviewing information that is familiar and comfortable.
ReplyDeleteTo derail a little bit-- Retrieval practice is so helpful in improving performance. Although I recognize that struggle is important in learning, I also recognize that many students are under an incredible amount of stress, especially during exams. Stress can induce a "fight or flight" mode that makes it difficult to process cognitively, which impacts student performance. To reduce stress during exams, I allow students to use a single sheet of notes that they have prepared. That way, if there is something they KNOW they have a tendency to forget, they have the assurance that they can find it. The added learning incentive is that making the study sheet requires them to decide what is important enough to fit onto the sheet, and making those types of decisions is an important learning exercise on its own; and it can be used as a type of retrieval practice as well. Many students have told me that it was the making of the sheet that was beneficial to them; in fact, many claim that after making the sheet, they did not use it at all.
ReplyDeleteLisa,
ReplyDeleteThat is a great tactic, and one that is really useful once these students are employed, since it emphasizes prioritization, retrieval, and referencing. I still have my "cram cards" from when I took an undergrad stats class.
Retrieval is often associated with more "memorization" based learning. I think it is interesting to also consider it for processes and critical thinking. In other words, creating opportunities for students during in-class activities to retrieve ideas that can be used to construct arguments or build potential explanations could also be viewed as retrieval...but more of retrieval of thinking behavior. So for me, this practice can be applied to memorizing facts and learning more of the nomenclature of a discipline as well as scaled up to retrieval of processes of thinking and even the retrieval of the sensation of intellectual struggle.
ReplyDelete