LEARNING STRATEGY:

Is an individual’s way of organizing and using a particular set of skills in order to learn content or accomplish other tasks more effectively and efficiently in school as well as in nonacademic settings.

Quality of teaching, particularly in Higher Education, is a subject of increasing importance and attention by public opinion in general. We can support this statement both by consulting the literature related with this subject and by looking at several governments’ measures, namely the Bologna Process. It is known that the lack of motivation and the number of failure, in particular in Physics, is a problem that teachers are facing nowadays. Current research in Science Education indicates that the levels of interaction between teachers and learners in formal instructional settings can be very low. In this study we analyze the effects that some strategies and instruments have had in changing the classroom environment. Through active learning techniques and modeling by the teacher, students shed the traditional role as passive re- captors and learn and practice how to apprehend knowledge and skills and use them meaningfully. We have used a variety of strategies, namely conceptual questions, group projects, reading tasks, assignments with tutorial review, problem solving and a platform of e-learning. These strategies have been used in the first year of an introductory physics course for civil engineers. Although the study is in its early stages the results are promising. It appears that students are more engaged in the classroom, more interested in the subjects that are taught. However some strategies had not been well understood by the students and so it will be necessary to reformulate them. But, in general, the results indicate that the reactions of the students about those innovative strategies are quite positive.

3 TYPES OF LEARNING STRATEGIES

1. MNEMONIC STRATEGIES

Mnemonic learning strategies help students memorize content, like facts or terms. For example, they’re useful for remembering capital cities, important dates, vocabulary, etc. When you have to memorize “meaningless” information, mnemonic strategies are a great way to give it some kind of meaning. The value of mnemonic devices is widely agreed upon, which is why they’ve been used for such a long time. The psychologist Allan Paivio explained that these devices work for three reasons:

1. Dual Coding:

Many involve using non-verbal codes (images) alongside verbal ones (words). What that means is that the same bit of content gets two different codes. According to the principles of connectionism, that makes it easier for students to access the information.

• Organization:

 Another way these strategies work is by creating a consistent box to put the information in. That helps students keep all the related information together, instead of it being split apart. For example, it’s easier for you to remember a list of words if you form a sentence with them.

• Association:

Creating strong connections between different elements is also a strategy for meaningful learning. Strong associations are helpful because when you see either one of the two things, you’ll remember the other one easily.

• Structural Strategies

Structural strategies stimulate active learning by encouraging students to mentally pick out important information and put it together into one structure. This is where you’ll see techniques like making conceptual maps, flow charts, or outlines. Obviously it’s not enough for the teacher to tell students they have to do outlines and summaries. Those things will only be helpful if the students know how to make them. The hardest part of teaching them how to do it is showing them how to pick out the most important or meaningful parts of a text or presentation. It won’t take long for you to see the effects these techniques have on learning. When you organize course material into small, related ideas, it’s easier to access it. And when you make strong associations between these ideas, it’s also easier to access the rest of the information in your memory. They also help students truly understand the content, unlike with rote, superficial learning. You can see the value now in bringing these learning strategies into the classroom!

• Generative Strategies

With the other two strategies, we looked at how they help students remember specific facts and organize them into structures. That is, they’re techniques to use with new information that needs to be learned. But another important part of learning is incorporating new content into existing knowledge. That’s where generative strategies come in. E.Z. Rothkpof called these activities where students gain knowledge “mathemagenic activities.” Some examples are taking notes, underlining, asking and answering questions, or saying things out loud. They help students reach a deeper understanding because they force them to incorporate the new information. A lot of psychologists see active learning as students making connections between ideas. That’s why generative strategies are such a great tool to get students to use that kind of learning. Showing students how to take notes or ask themselves questions will greatly help them understand and incorporate new information.

6 POWERFUL LEARNING STRATEGIES YOU MUST SHARE WITH STUDENTS

Here we will explore six research-based learning strategies that Weinstein and Smith teach on their site. If we can work these methods into our instruction, and teach students how to use them on their own, our students stand a much better chance of actually remembering our material. One final note before we dig in: Although performance assessments and project-based learning allow students to show what they know with more depth and authenticity, most content areas still need to measure some learning with tests. When you are teaching that kind of content, these six strategies will help your students perform better on the test and retain that information long after the test is  over.

1. SPACED PRACTICE:

Space out your studying over time.

Far too many students wait until the night before a test to study for it. Similarly, teachers often wait until the day before a test to review. When enough students score well on the test, it appears they have learned the material. But a few weeks later, most of that information has vanished from students’ minds. For more durable learning, the studying has to take place in generous chunks over time. “Every time you leave a little space, you forget a bit of the information, and then you kind of relearn it,” Weinstein explains. “That forgetting actually helps you to strengthen the memory. It’s kind of counterintuitive, but you need to forget a little bit in order to then help yourself learn it by remembering again.” Teachers can help students apply this strategy by helping them create a studying calendar to plan out how they will review chunks of content, and by carving out small chunks of class time every day for review. In both cases, plan to include current concepts AND previously learned material: Many teachers know this as “spiraling.”

2. RETRIEVAL PRACTICE:

Practice bringing information to mind without the help of materials. Many people think of “studying” as simply re-reading notes, textbooks, or other materials. But having the information right in front of us doesn’t force us to retrieve it from memory; instead, it allows us to trick ourselves into thinking we know something. Recalling information without supporting materials helps us learn it much more effectively. “Put your class materials away, and then write out or maybe sketch or speak everything you know and try to be as thorough as possible, and then check your materials for accuracy,” Smith advises. “You’re bringing information to mind almost like you’re testing yourself; though it can be a practice test, it doesn’t have to be. You can just sort of go through and explain what you know, or teach a friend or a pet or even an inanimate object everything that you learned in school. By bringing that information to mind, you are changing the way that information is stored so that it’s easier for you to get to later on.” Teach students how to do retrieval practice in class: have them turn off their devices, put all their notes and books away, then ask them to write everything they know about a particular term or topic, or share their meditations in a think-pair-share. When the practice is done, have students check their understanding by revisiting their materials and discussing misconceptions as a class. Once they learn how to do this in school, they can then apply it at home.

3. ELABORATION:

Explain and describe ideas with many details.

This method asks students to go beyond simple recall of information and start making connections within the content. Students must ask themselves open-ended questions about the material, answer in as much detail as possible, and then check the materials to make sure their understanding is correct. Teachers can apply this strategy by having brief class discussions where these kinds of questions are explored and asking students to work elaboration into their own study plans.

4. INTERLEAVING:

Switch between ideas while you study.

Common knowledge tells us that to learn a skill, we must practice it over and over again. While repetition is vital, research says we will actually learn that skill more effectively if we mix our practice of it with other skills. This is known as interleaving. “Let’s say you’re doing a bunch of math problems,” Weinstein says. “What’s fairly typical is … five of the same problem, or 10 of the same problem. Instead of doing that, try different problems in different orders.” So if students are learning to calculate the area of a triangle, instead of having them do 20 problems with triangles, have them do one of a triangle, then one of a circle, then a triangle, then a square. The thing about that, Weinstein notes, is that it’s actually harder. So they’ll be getting more wrong, they’ll be making more errors, but they’ll also be learning something very important, which is how to choose a particular strategy for each problem, as opposed to just repeatedly doing the same thing. When planning exercises for students, resist the temptation to have them repeat the exact same process multiple times in a row. Instead, have them do a few of the new process, then weave in other skills, so that the repetitive behavior is interrupted and students are forced to think more critically. Explain this strategy to students so they can apply interleaving to their own studying.

5. CONCRETE EXAMPLES:

Use specific examples to understand abstract ideas.

Most teachers already use this strategy in their own teaching; it’s a natural part of explaining a new concept. But what we don’t necessarily do is help students extend their understanding by coming up with examples of their own. Here’s how Weinstein and Smith explain this broader use of concrete examples as a study practice.

Teachers can apply this strategy by using concrete examples when teaching abstract concepts, then asking students to come up with their own, correcting any examples (or parts of examples) that aren’t quite right, and looking for more. Encourage students to continue this practice when they study.

6. DUAL CODING:

Combine words and visuals.

When information is presented to us, it is often accompanied by some kind of visual: An image, a chart or graph, or a graphic organizer. When students are studying, they must make it a habit to pay attention to those visuals and link them to the text by explaining what they mean in their own words. Then, students can create their own visuals of the concepts they are learning. This process reinforces the concepts in the brain through two different paths, making it easier to retrieve later. And when we say visuals,” Smith explains, we don’t necessarily mean anything specific, so it depends on the types of materials. You could have an in zoographic, a cartoon strip, a diagram, a graphic organizer, timeline, anything that makes sense to you so long as you’re sort of depicting the information both in a way with words and a way with pictures. This isn’t just for students who are good at drawing,” Weinstein adds. “It’s not about the quality of the drawing. It really just needs to be a visual representation as you can depict it. In class, regularly turn students’ attention to the visuals used in textbooks, on websites, and even in your own slideshow presentations. Have students describe the visuals to each other and make connections with what you’re learning. Then have students create their own visuals of the content to further reinforce it. Remind students to include diagramming, sketching, and creating graphic organizers when they study at home.

8 ACTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES AND EXAMPLES

As a teacher, one of your biggest challenges is to plan lessons that inspire your students to stay actively involved in the learning process, but you’ve probably noticed that traditional, teacher-centered learning plans aren’t always conducive to achieving that inspiration.

The ways that will help you as the teacher are as follow;

1. RECIPROCAL QUESTIONING

Use reciprocal questioning to encourage an open dialogue in which students take on the role of the teacher and create their own questions about a topic, reading section, or lesson. After covering a topic of your choice in class — or after assigning a reading selection — divides the class into pairs or small groups and have students come up with a few questions for discussion with the rest of the class. To facilitate the process, you can provide students with “question stems,” which provide a foundation for a question but still require students to think critically about a lesson, text, or other section of material by completing the query.

• THREE STEP INTERVIEWS

A cooperative learning strategy, the three step interview encourages students to develop active listening skills by quizzing one another, sharing their meditations, and taking notes. To use the three step interview process, divide students into groups of three, and assign three roles: interviewer, interviewee, and note taker. After also assigning a theme or topic of discussion, have students participate in a five to 10 minute interview to discuss what they found to be the key information relating to the topic. After each interview, have students rotate roles. Depending on factors including the grade level of your students and their experience with the strategy, you may adjust the length of the time for each interview.

• THE PAUSE PROCEDURE

Use the pause procedure to intersperse strategic pauses into your class lectures and enhance student understanding of teaching materials. To use the pause procedure, arrange for pauses of two to three minutes between every 10 to 15 minutes of lecture time. During these brief breaks, encourage students to discuss or rework their notes in pairs to clarify key points covered, raise questions, and solve problems posed by the instructor. Alternatively, students can work together to write a paragraph that connects or highlights key ideas set out in their partner’s notes.

• THE MUDDIEST POINT TECHNIQUE

The muddiest point technique involves asking students to write notes on the most unclear or most confusing element of a given homework assignment, lecture, or class discussion. Asking students to write down what they find to be the least clear is a powerful exercise because it compels them to grade or rate their own knowledge of a topic.

• THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE APPROACH

The devil’s advocate approach asks one or more students to take the opposing side of a predominant argument or point of view being discussed during a lesson. Once you have completed an assignment or lesson plan, select a topic that is suitable for discussion and debate. The topic must serve as an appropriate subject for providing arguments from both sides.

The activity is flexible and must be tailored to suit your students’ grade level. In its simplest form, divide the class into two sections and coordinate a class-wide debate based on a selected topic.

• PEER TEACHING ACTIVITIES

A flexible and multi-faceted approach to active learning, peer instruction encompasses a range of scenarios where students instruct skills or explain concepts to classmates.

Some popular options include:

• Reading buddies —A cooperative learning strategy that pairs two students who work together to read an assigned text.
• Cross-age peer tutoring — A peer learning strategy involving students in different grades, wherein which one student instructs another on material in which the first student is advanced and the second student is a novice.
• Role play — a group of students is split into generous groups and given a specific task to complete, like in small group work. However, in addition to working on a specific task, the members of each group are asked to play a certain “role”. Unlike in traditional role-play, all members of one group play the same role, not individually assigned roles.

Peer teaching activities help boost vital skills and behaviors including student interaction, accountability, group processing.

• GAME-BASED LEARNING PLATFORMS

Game-based learning platforms add depth and differentiation to the educational process and allow students to work with their instructors to achieve their learning objectives.

• ROTATING CHAIR GROUP DISCUSSIONS

Rotating chair group discussions encourage students to actively listen to selected speakers who follow a pattern of guiding class discussion and summarizing previous points. Students lead and stimulate class discussion as they “rotate” roles, repeatedly selecting the following speaker.