Moving beyond the general question of effectiveness of small group learning, this conceptual review proposes conditions under which the use of small groups in classrooms can be productive. Included in the review is recent research that manipulates various features of cooperative learning as well as studies of the relationship of interaction in small groups to outcomes. The analysis develops propositions concerning the kinds of discourse that are productive of different types of learning as well as propositions concerning how desirable kinds of interaction may be fostered. Whereas limited exchange of information and explanation are adequate for routine learning in collaborative seatwork, more open exchange and elaborated discussion are necessary for conceptual learning with group tasks and ill-structured problems. Moreover, task instructions, student preparation, and the nature of the teacher role that are eminently suitable for supporting interaction in more routine learning tasks may result in unduly con...

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Restructuring the Classroom: Conditions for Productive Small Groups

Many students are being left behind by an educational system that some people believe is in crisis. Improving educational outcomes will require efforts on many fronts, but a central premise of this monograph is that one part of a solution involves helping students to better regulate their learning through the use of effective learning techniques. Fortunately, cognitive and educational psychologists have been developing and evaluating easy-to-use learning techniques that could help students achieve their learning goals. In this monograph, we discuss 10 learning techniques in detail and offer recommendations about their relative utility. We selected techniques that were expected to be relatively easy to use and hence could be adopted by many students. Also, some techniques (e.g., highlighting and rereading) were selected because students report relying heavily on them, which makes it especially important to examine how well they work. The techniques include elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarization, highlighting (or underlining), the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. To offer recommendations about the relative utility of these techniques, we evaluated whether their benefits generalize across four categories of variables: learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks. Learning conditions include aspects of the learning environment in which the technique is implemented, such as whether a student studies alone or with a group. Student characteristics include variables such as age, ability, and level of prior knowledge. Materials vary from simple concepts to mathematical problems to complicated science texts. Criterion tasks include different outcome measures that are relevant to student achievement, such as those tapping memory, problem solving, and comprehension. We attempted to provide thorough reviews for each technique, so this monograph is rather lengthy. However, we also wrote the monograph in a modular fashion, so it is easy to use. In particular, each review is divided into the following sections: General description of the technique and why it should work How general are the effects of this technique? 2a. Learning conditions 2b. Student characteristics 2c. Materials 2d. Criterion tasks Effects in representative educational contexts Issues for implementation Overall assessment The review for each technique can be read independently of the others, and particular variables of interest can be easily compared across techniques. To foreshadow our final recommendations, the techniques vary widely with respect to their generalizability and promise for improving student learning. Practice testing and distributed practice received high utility assessments because they benefit learners of different ages and abilities and have been shown to boost students' performance across many criterion tasks and even in educational contexts. Elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, and interleaved practice received moderate utility assessments. The benefits of these techniques do generalize across some variables, yet despite their promise, they fell short of a high utility assessment because the evidence for their efficacy is limited. For instance, elaborative interrogation and self-explanation have not been adequately evaluated in educational contexts, and the benefits of interleaving have just begun to be systematically explored, so the ultimate effectiveness of these techniques is currently unknown. Nevertheless, the techniques that received moderate-utility ratings show enough promise for us to recommend their use in appropriate situations, which we describe in detail within the review of each technique. Five techniques received a low utility assessment: summarization, highlighting, the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, and rereading. These techniques were rated as low utility for numerous reasons. Summarization and imagery use for text learning have been shown to help some students on some criterion tasks, yet the conditions under which these techniques produce benefits are limited, and much research is still needed to fully explore their overall effectiveness. The keyword mnemonic is difficult to implement in some contexts, and it appears to benefit students for a limited number of materials and for short retention intervals. Most students report rereading and highlighting, yet these techniques do not consistently boost students' performance, so other techniques should be used in their place (e.g., practice testing instead of rereading). Our hope is that this monograph will foster improvements in student learning, not only by showcasing which learning techniques are likely to have the most generalizable effects but also by encouraging researchers to continue investigating the most promising techniques. Accordingly, in our closing remarks, we discuss some issues for how these techniques could be implemented by teachers and students, and we highlight directions for future research.

https://www.wku.edu/senate/documents/improving_student_learning_dunlosky_2013.pdf

Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology

Students have different levels of motivation, different attitudes about teaching and learning, and different responses to specific classroom environments and instructional practices. The more thoroughly instructors understand the differences, the better chance they have of meeting the diverse learning needs of all of their students. Three categories of diversity that have been shown to have important implications for teaching and learning are differences in students' learning styles (characteristic ways of taking in and processing information), approaches to learning (surface, deep, and strategic), and intellectual development levels (attitudes about the nature of knowledge and how it should be acquired and evaluated). This article reviews models that have been developed for each of these categories, outlines their pedagogical implications, and suggests areas for further study.

Understanding Student Differences

This study identified student behaviors that best predicted mathematics learning in peerdirected small groups among students who needed help. Two behaviors were hypothesized to predict achievement: receiving explanations instead of only the right answer and subsequently carrying out constructive activity (solving or explaining how to solve problems using concepts stated or implied in the explanations received). Six classes of 7th graders participated in 2 sequential instructional units. Students in 4 classes worked in heterogeneous small groups throughout a 3-week unit on operations with decimal numbers (Unit 1); students in all 6 classes worked in groups throughout a 4-week unit on operations with fractions (Unit 2). Analyses of the transcripts of tape recordings of students' verbal interaction confirmed the hypotheses. Level of constructive activity was the strongest predictor of achievement. The level of help that students received predicted level of constructive activity but did not predict achievement directly. One of the most pervasive changes in education in the past 20 years has been the increasing use of peer-directed small groups. School districts, state departments of education, national research organizations, and curriculum specialists have started to recommend or even mandate the use of collaborative and cooperative learning methods of instruction on a large scale (e.g., California State Department of Education, 1985, 1992; Mathematical Sciences Education Board, National Research Council, 1989; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1980, 1989). A primary motivation for putting students into groups is the opportunity for students to help each other learn. Students can learn from other students by giving and receiving help; by recognizing contradictions between their own and other students' perspectives, seeking new knowledge to resolve those contradictions, and constructing new understandings from them; and by internalizing problem-solving processes and strategies that other students use or that are created jointly with others (Bearison, Magzamen, & Filardo, 1986;

Constructive Activity and Learning in Collaborative Small Groups.

Shows faculty how to make critical thinking an integral part of learning. Includes theory, research, and practice from key programs. Also probes informal logic, cognitive processes, and developmental foundations.

Critical thinking : theory, research, practice, and possibilities

RICHARD M. FELDER and JONI SPURLIN North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695±7905, USA. E-mail: rmfelder@mindspring.com The Index of Learning Styles (ILS) is an instrument designed to assess preferences on the four dimensions of the Felder-Silverman learning style model. The Web-based version of the ILS is taken hundreds of thousands of times per year and has been used in a number of published studies, some of which include data reflecting on the reliability and validity of the instrument. This paper seeks to provide the first comprehensive examination of the ILS, including answers to several questions: (1) What are the dimensions and underlying assumptions of the model upon which the ILS is based? (2) How should the ILS be used and what misuses should be avoided? (3) What research studies have been conducted using the ILS and what conclusions regarding its reliability and validity may be inferred from the data?

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Applications, Reliability and Validity of the Index of Learning Styles*

In spite of considerable research about the poor retention rate ofundergraduate engineering students, we still have an inadequateunderstanding of the factors that affect students’ decisions toremain in engineering programs and their ability to perform wellenough to be retained. Although continued study is needed ofexternal factors such as curricular requirements, admissions crite-ria, and test scores, we also need to know much more about therelationships between curricular experiences and students’ learningstyles, habits, and attitudes. The work presented in this paper wasdesigned to enhance educators’ understanding of the factors thatunderlie the concern about student retention in engineering. Byobserving 1,000 engineering students during their first three yearsin college, the research team generated a large database on the stu-dents’ academic and non-academic characteristics as well as theirsuccesses and failures. The traits discovered not only support manyfindings from previous studies but also reveal some new relation-ships that could prove essential to designing an educational envi-ronment that will prepare engineers for success in the future.Keywords: retention, gender, underrepresented minorities

Understanding Our Students: A Longitudinal- Study of Success and Failure in Engineering With Implications for Increased Retention

* DIRECTIONS Enter your answers to every question on the ILS scoring sheet. Please choose only one answer for each question. If both " a " and " b " seem to apply to you, choose the one that applies more frequently. 1. I understand something better after I a) try it out. b) think it through. 2. I would rather be considered a) realistic. b) innovative. 3. When I think about what I did yesterday, I am most likely to get a) a picture. b) words. 4. I tend to a) understand details of a subject but may be fuzzy about its overall structure. b) understand the overall structure but may be fuzzy about details. 5. When I am learning something new, it helps me to a) talk about it. b) think about it. 6. If I were a teacher, I would rather teach a course a) that deals with facts and real life situations. b) that deals with ideas and theories. 7. I prefer to get new information in a) pictures, diagrams, graphs, or maps. b) written directions or verbal information. 8. Once I understand a) all the parts, I understand the whole thing. b) the whole thing, I see how the parts fit. 9. In a study group working on difficult material, I am more likely to a) jump in and contribute ideas. b) sit back and listen. Barbara A. Soloman). For information about appropriate and inappropriate uses of the Index of Learning Styles and a study of its reliability and validity, see

Index of Learning Styles

Effects of headings on text processing.

The dyadic cooperative learning situation was examined by analyzing the impact of specific roles and activities on each member of the dyad. In learning scientific text passages, one member of the cooperating pair served as a recaller/oral summarizer and the other pair member served as either an active or passive listener/facilitator. Members of some treatment conditions alternated recaller and listener roles, while those in other conditions had fixed roles. Serving as a no-treatment control, students in one group used their own study techniques. The results indicated that both roles (fixed vs. alternating) and listener activities (active vs. passive) are important variables in cooperative learning. On free recall of text main ideas, fixed recallers outperformed fixed listeners, and pairs incorporating an active listener outperformed those that did not. Certain combinations of role and listener activity resulted in better performance than that achieved by individuals using their own study methods. Addition...

Joni E. Spurlin

Papers

Applications, Reliability and Validity of the Index of Learning Styles*

Understanding Our Students: A Longitudinal- Study of Success and Failure in Engineering With Implications for Increased Retention

Index of Learning Styles

Effects of headings on text processing.

Cooperative Learning Strategies in Processing Descriptive Text: Effects of Role and Activity Level of the Learner