{"id":6058,"date":"2020-12-22T16:29:19","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T16:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/blurts\/?p=6058"},"modified":"2020-12-22T16:29:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T16:29:22","slug":"questions-and-studying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/blurts\/2020\/12\/22\/questions-and-studying\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions and studying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The \u201ctesting effect\u201d is one of the most reliable tactics for improving the benefits of study behavior. This tactic involves the use of some study time to attempt to recall information to respond to questions. This is sometimes called \u201cretrieval practice\u201d. An important part of this explanation is understanding the part that recommends \u201cthe use of some study time\u201d. This means that in research allowing equal amounts of time substituted retrieval practice for the time that could have been devoted to traditional study actually is superior to the same amount of time spent in traditional study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Agarwal et al. (2008) research I cite here goes a step further and compares self and other generated questions with traditional study. Both self and other generated questions and the use of these questions during study were found superior to study without retrieval practice. To be fair the participants in this research were college students and the self-generation of questions was scaffolded, but the benefits for independent study seems promising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been writing for the past few years about the potential of \u201clayering services<\/a>\u201d in improving the benefits of studying online text and video. While I have focused on the potential of these services for allowing educators to function as instructional designers most obviously for this proposal by adding questions to web content and online video when this content does not contain questions, these services could also be used by students to generate questions for their own use and for the use of peers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An issue with studying in general is that the tactics of studying are seldom directly taught. Students kind of learn to take notes, highlight, review, self-question, etc. by trial and error. An important benefit of the layering services I encourage educators to consider is the opportunity to model and evaluate student efforts at applying these skills as part of their actual study efforts. What do they highlight? What notes do they take? What kinds of questions do they create for review?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One useful scaffold is the use of question stems. Here are some examples of more advanced questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n