5 Science-based Techniques to Make Your Students Smarter (and You, Too)

Ladies & gents, my name is Brandon Stover, and I’m the founder of Plato University. Welcome to Theory into Action.

Theory into Action is designed to help you turn your wisdom into actionable education. Learn how to create online courses, design learning experiences, and build educational programs so your knowledge can impact thousands of people.

Want these lessons delivered directly to your inbox each week? Subscribe below.

In a previous video, I went over the three phases of learning: explore, engage, execute.

Today, we're going to be talking about five active learning techniques that can be used anywhere inside of those three phases, but they're particularly well-suited for the very first phase, which is explore, where you're exploring foundational concepts.

Learning Technique 1: Active Recall

Active recall, which lies at the heart of active learning,  involves recreating something you've learned in the past from your memory and thinking about it right now.

The more brain power you put to recalling information, and the broader the set of contexts, you recall the materials in, the stronger and more broadly connected the neural links become.

For example, you are learning about NFT's (non-fungible tokens). After spending time learning, rather than google the definition and how they are used, you recall that info from your own memory.

Why it matters: Active recall helps you retain information in long term memory so it can be applied later. Additionally, it provides feedback about what you know and don't know.

What does the science say?

When you actively work with materials, such as an active recall, you're forcing new spines to emerge in your neurons and connect with the axons of other neurons, creating links.

Passively glancing over material does not encourage new neural connections.

When you first learned something, there are weak sets of neurons linked in your brain, but when you start retrieving those links, you begin strengthening them.

Active recall has been compared to many other learning techniques, including rereading material, and those who practiced retrieving the information scored significantly higher on later tests.

Why should you use Active Recall?

If you practice active recall, you're more likely to remember information so it can be used and applied in new situations.

Another benefit of active recall is that it combats illusions of knowing.  We are very bad at judging whether or not we've learned some. With active recall, we either know it or we don't.

After using active recall, you can check your notes to make sure you correctly and completely retrieved the information. This tells you whether or not you truly know something.

How do you use Active Recall?

The basic process is:

1. Engage with some learning material to learn new information
2. Put away the learning material and notes so you can't see it.
3. Try to recall from memory what you just learned.

Some examples of application:

• In a formal class, ask your teacher to provide practice tests or practice questions from your textbook and try and recall the information without notes as you answer those questions.
• If you don't have practice questions, make your own question. This process takes a lot of time, but if you create a study group, you can each create a few questions and trade.
• Work out example problems for yourself without looking at the solutions. Once you've solved the problem, check out your notes to make sure you went through the right process.
• When reading, try to recall the key points from a book, article or paper, look away and see if you can recall the key ideas of what you're reading.
• You can create practice tests for yourself or find some online about the material and take those without looking at any of your old notes or any of your old material.
• You can practice active recall by trying to re-explain any key ideas from your notes or what you're reading in simpler terms as if you were trying to explain them to a child.
• You can also create flashcards, bringing key concepts to mind without actually flipping them to the other side and just reading the answer. Apps like Anki, Quizlet, Kahoot!, GoConqur, Study Stack, and Brainscape can help.
• Explain your thinking out loud to another person or teach the key concepts to someone else
• Grab a piece of paper and try and write down everything that you know about the topic after you've learned it.
• Remember key points from what you're learning in mundane activities, like washing the dishes or going for a walk.

Learning Technique 2: Pomodoro

The Pomodoro technique is it really a sequence of steps to help you make an efficient time of your learning.

Why it matters: As much as we would like to, we can not sustain focus forever. We need to work intently and then reward ourselves with a short break so that our study is efficient.

What does the science say?

By setting aside specific amounts of time, like the 25 minutes in a Pomodoro, it allows you time of focused attention, giving your brain practice and focusing without disruption.

Short mental breaks, like the 5 minutes after Pomodoro, are ideal to allow you to transfer what you've learned into your long-term memory, clearing your mind for new learning.

This technique also helps with your motivation because you anticipate the reward of that five minute break and it keeps you motivated while you're going through that 25 minutes cycle.

If you struggle with motivation, it's much easier to commit and recommit yourself to short bursts of dedicated study rather than an endless study.

You learn a repeatable process that you can do over and over again, making you focus more on that process rather than the goal or outcome of what you're learning in the long run.

After about 20 minutes, activities you don't want to do causing brain pain in the insular cortex begins to subside.

Why should you use Pomodoro?

Having too prolonged of a focus doesn't give your brain enough time to offload the new material you're learning into the long-term memory.

In which case, any studying you're doing on top of them in material that you're learning becomes less effective.

In addition, specific areas of the brain can tire when you use them for too long, and this leads to something called cognitive exhaustion.

Short learning sessions and five to ten minute breaks makes learning less of a drag and easier to get through.

How do you use Pomodoro?

The basic process is:

1. Sit down where you'll be studying or working in removing any possible distractions. Remember, we talked about setting up the optimal learning environments.
2. Set a timer for 25 minutes. You can simply use the timer on your phone or some other timer app. They have lots of Pomodoro apps available, or even just a mechanical timer.
3. Dive in and study or work on something as Tenley as you can. For those 25 minutes.
4. Reward yourself for about five to 10 minutes at the end of the Pomodoro. You can just sit there and close your eyes and relax, take a short little walk, get a glass of water, pet your dog.
5. Repeat this process as appropriate.

For example, let's say you're studying something for two hours. You can break this up into four cycles of Pomodoro technique.

Note: the 25 minute limit and five minute break is somewhat arbitrary. Some people may like doing 52 minutes and taking a break for 17 minutes, which has been shown to be highly productive.

For more effectiveness, spend a few minutes of your break, looking away from what you're studying and trying to actively recall what you just learned.

We learned in the last technique, this is one of the most powerful ways to both remember and understand new information.

Learning Technique 3: Chunking

The principle of chunking states that learning is easier when material is organized into three or four organized units, each of which can contain three or four units.

If you can start consolidating learned material into chunks of information, you're gearing to more easily remember that information.

This works so effectively because we store information in our minds as organized units, not individual isolated bits of information.

Why it matters: Storing consolidated chunks of information into are memory allows us to retrieve larger amounts of information later, bring it into our working memory, and apply it.

What does the science say?

Your working memory can only hold up to about four pieces of information in the mind at once. If you're trying to hold too many things in your working memory it becomes overwhelmed.

During learning, we move information from our working memory to our long-term memory. The set of links, or chunks of information, that you can create in your long-term memory is virtually limitless.

Now compare that to our working memory, where we can only hold four concepts in our mind at once.

So by moving these things to our long-term. These sets of links serve as pre-worked extensions of your working memory. They boost the power of your working memory. These chunks of information can be easily accessed and used to solve problems and understand concepts in the future.

Why should you use Chunking?

Chunking allows you to store information that you're learning faster, put it into long-term memory, and retrieve more easily later.

When you start working on bigger and more complex problems, you don't have to hold all this information in your working memory. You only recall it when you need it.

How do you use Chunking?

The basic process is:

1. Examine the totality of a subject or skill that you need to learn. What are all the pieces of information that you need to be able to learn to actually use this skill or fully understand it?
2. Breakdown the skill or concept into manageable chunks or organizable units of 3 or 4 concepts.  A good place to start is with the fundamentals of the subject.
3. Spend time mastering each individual chunk to perfection
4. Spend time integrating multiple chunks together until you get the concept just right as a whole.

A good practice: Try and get one chunk down per day. As you start mastering all these chunks, put them together in larger chunks and more complex variations of the skill.

Learning Technique 4: Interleaving

Interleaving is the process of mixing different types of tasks, problems or topics together during practice and study. Also known as ‘mixed practice’.

Interleaving is the opposite of blocked practice, where you focus on plenty of practice with a single concept before dropping it to move on to the next concept.

Why it matters: Beyond improving your understanding of concepts and improving performance in skills, interleaving helps you to solve problems quickly and grasp complex subject material.

What does the science say?

Interleaving helps you to not only learn the concepts you're studying, but also to understand the differences between concepts, as shown by research.

It's easier to pay attention to something novel than trying to sustain paying attention to the same material for an extended period of time.

When faced with complex problems in subjects like, math, physics, programming or even cooking a recipe, research suggests interleaving can help you choose the correct strategy to solve the problem. You will also know the similarities and differences between those problem solving strategies.

When studying foundational material, interleaving different problem sets or different concepts together creates more anchor points for pre-existing knowledge that you can use to recall from later.

Why should you use Interleaving?

Interleaving avoids the fluency effect, as opposed to blocked practice which makes us feel like we're improving quickly, even though it's simply another manifestation of the fluency effect.

Long-term performance has been shown to be significantly higher in both motor and cognitive skills when interleaving is used.

Interleaving makes you a better problem solver, drawing distinctions between different topics and problem types, a skill that will be crucial for applying knowledge correctly.

How do you use Interleaving?

If you're studying concepts under the same subject:

• Switch between concepts within that subject during a study session, not studying one for to long
• In new study sessions, go back over the concepts again in different orders to strengthen your understanding.
• Make links between the different concepts as you switch between them

If you're studying multiple subjects:

• Use cross pollination or skill stacking, which is basically learning the related materials of different subjects at the same time.
• During study sessions, mix materials from the different subjects in that single session.
• This may feel really chaotic, but it's going to help you start connecting the different materials from each one of those subjects into a robust skillset.

If you're not understanding a subject:

• Try brute force learning, which interleaves different sources of learning material in order to attack a subject that you don't understand it from as many different angles as possible.
• By hearing the same subject from different people and mediums, you're allowing your brain to pick up on different concepts that are similar throughout each one of those pieces.

Learning Technique 5: Dual Coding

The principle of dual coding states that learning and memory are more effective when information is presented in multiple modalities,  such as visually and verbally.

Research shows we create separate memory traces for pictures and words. Our brains have multiple, different memory stores and we learn information better when it can be entered into more than one area of storage.  

However, this is not learning styles. Whilst “learning styles” have been propagated for decades, the idea that we learn better if we are taught according to our specific learning style (e.g. visual, auditory or kinesthetic) is not only unsubstantiated by research, but also disproven.

Why it matters: The more senses you can engage while learning, the easier it will be and the more you will remember.

What does the science say?

People learn better when they combine visual materials, like a picture or a diagram, with verbal materials, like words from an explanation.

In one study, students who saw images while learning concepts perform better on memory and problem solving tasks than those who did not see the.

The brain stores this in multiple representations in memory because verbal and visual is stored in different parts of the brain. This gives you multiple shots at later digging this information out of storage when you're trying to remember it, according to research.

Why should you use Dual Coding?

Using dual coding gives you more retrieval cues for you to remember something later. Million years of evolution have made us especially adapted for learning things that are vivid, visual and experiential. So learning this way is both effective and more fun.

How do you use Dual Coding?

Applying dual coding generally:

• Anytime you're learning a concept, try to learn from material that presents concepts both visually and auditorily.  
• Look over material your reading or taking notes on, and compare that to different visuals, diagrams, or charts and explain in your own words what they illustrate.
• When reading about something or listening to a podcast, try drawing a visual to go along with the material you just consumed. Practice active recall as you draw these diagrams.
• If visuals are unavailable for material you are studying, you can also visualize or create a mental image of the concepts in your mind's eye.

One exercise of this concept is creating a mind map, which is a visual way to lay out ideas in indicate how they are related to one another.

• A mind map has a specific type of visualization known as a chart. In general, charts try and organize qualitative information, making it clear what the relations are among the concepts.
• Charts are also particularly useful for illustrating how our sequence of events unfolds over time.

The principle of dual coding can also be drawn upon by creating diagrams, which are abstracted pictures of an object or an event

• Diagrams typically just show the most important aspects of the object, leaving out the sorts of details about the surface color. You would find in a photograph.

To understand quantitative relationships, you could create a graph to visualize the different numbers and concepts related to those numbers.

Try introducing some of the other senses as you're learning, for example, smell and taste.

• Smell and taste, which are connected senses in the brain were among the first to develop, which means they are extremely powerful for memory

Try evoking emotion while you're learning something. When emotions are tied to events and learning, your ability to recall that information later is greatly increased.

• Emotion focuses attention and causes the brain to devote extra resources to storing that information.
• To use emotion, create a visual story by drawing out pictures and then retelling it to yourself. So you learn it in an auditory way.
• Weave in different emotions in the story and really feel the story that you're creating.

Struggling to Decide Where To Use These?

Now these active learning techniques will supercharge your ability and your students' ability to become smarter, remember more, and master any skills.

But where do you use them? How do you integrate them into your courses?

Use the link below and let's schedule a free call together.

I'll help you work through your ideas and develop a strategy So you can use these techniques inside your course.

No hard sells, if you'd like my help implementing that strategy, I'd be happy to do so. Otherwise your free to take that plan and run with. What I care is that either way we are helping your students succeed.

So use the link below and let me help you to turn your wisdom into actionable education.

Let's build something great together.