How Students Learn: Lessons from Course Design

by Lisa Longo Johnston, Adjunct Faculty (History)

This past summer, I was honored to participate in the Course Design Institute at the NJ Center for Student Success, an initiative sponsored by the NJ Council of Community Colleges. Our objective was to explore the course creation process through principles of backward design. Our work was rooted in the ways in which students learn best. Here are some of my takeaways from that discussion:

1. Learning styles are out. Multi-sensory learning is in. Research indicates that while students have become accustomed to identifying preferred learning styles, these preferences may not effectively support the learning context of particular disciplines and may not be especially accurate (Kirschner, 2017.) Instead, experts argue that multi-modal content delivery (for example, words and images combined) has a more lasting effect than delivery in any singular modality.

2. Reviewing and re-reading are not enough. Haven’t we all encountered students who have done poorly on assessments and insisted they studied hard and knew the material? These students might not have been wrong about the time they put into their preparation, but their methods of studying were not necessarily effective. According to Karpicke and Blunt (2011), reviewing is the most commonly used study method, but it does not promote real learning. Instead, reviewing gives students only a general sense of familiarity and false confidence. Students might recognize content but lack in-depth understanding and the ability to recall specifics or identify broader meaning.

3. Testing is a form of learning, not just a measure of how much a student has learned. According to Roediger and Karpicke (2006), students retain more and understand better when they are given frequent opportunities for retrieval of information and critical thinking. This can take many forms – from weekly quizzes, class discussion, and Socratic seminar to games, self-testing, and peer-to-peer collaborative activities. Rethinking the purpose and method of testing allows for greater student engagement and more opportunities for meaningful student interaction with course content.

4. Cramming works…sort of. In a 2006 study, Roediger and Karpicke considered the correlation between the information students could recall (measured as idea units) over a span of time and the methods they used to retain the information. They found that students who crammed, or studied intensely to absorb large volumes of information in a short time, had higher initial recall than students who both studied and tested over a longer time. Not surprisingly, that retention was short-lived as cramming students forgot information more quickly than those who prepared effectively over a longer time span. The more students tested over time and the more opportunities they had for recall and engagement with the material, the longer they retained the information. The short-term effectiveness of cramming can give students the false sense that it is beneficial to their learning. The cramming students might score better on a quiz taken the next day but not on a cumulative exam or long-term project.

5. Learning is better when it’s done together. Peer support not only increases motivation and confidence, it also promotes retention and understanding. Students learn best when they teach others. Group settings create the conditions for such learning by allowing students to fill in knowledge gaps, build on each other’s strengths, and identify misconceptions (Johnson, et. al., 2015).

What does this mean for us as instructors? Consistently reminding ourselves of effective learning strategies certainly helps. It allows us to create the conditions for lasting content retention, critical engagement, and more in-depth understanding. Teaching students about how they learn is also important. It not only helps to dispel misconceptions they might have but also encourages them to be more receptive to techniques that actually work for them. In this way, we begin to encourage students to be more active, more mindful participants in their own learning.