Active Learning Strategies

This module replaces re-reading and highlighting with techniques that cognitive science has shown to produce durable learning. Students practise retrieval, spacing, interleaving and elaboration, and learn to recognise the illusion of fluency that passive review creates. By the end, learners can design their own study schedule combining desirable difficulties and self-explanation to beat the forgetting curve for high-stakes assessments.

Learning Outcomes

Explain why retrieval practice outperforms re-reading using empirical evidence.

Build a spaced-repetition schedule aligned to Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve.

Interleave related topics to improve discrimination and transfer.

Apply the Feynman technique to expose and repair knowledge gaps.

Use elaborative interrogation and dual coding to deepen encoding.

Distinguish the testing effect from mere practice familiarity.

Critically reject the learning-styles myth and other debunked claims.

Design desirable difficulties into revision without tipping into overload.

Topics Covered

Retrieval practice and the testing effect

Spaced repetition and expanding intervals

Interleaving versus blocked practice

The Feynman technique

Elaborative interrogation and self-explanation

Dual coding theory

Desirable difficulties framework

The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve

Concept maps and knowledge organisers

The learning-styles myth

Fluency illusions and metacognitive calibration

Flashcards and Leitner boxes

Generation effect

Transfer-appropriate processing

Deliberate practice

Skills Developed

Flashcard construction and curation Spacing-schedule design Self-explanation and interrogation Concept-map creation Metacognitive self-assessment Interleaved problem-set design Critical evaluation of study myths Study-session planning

Suggested Resources

{'title': 'Make It Stick', 'author': 'Brown, Roediger & McDaniel', 'source': 'Harvard University Press, 2014'}

{'title': 'Learning How to Learn', 'author': 'Barbara Oakley', 'source': 'TarcherPerigee, 2018'}

{'title': 'The ABCs of How We Learn', 'author': 'Daniel Schwartz et al.', 'source': 'W. W. Norton, 2016'}

{'title': 'Retrieval practice review', 'author': 'Roediger & Butler', 'source': 'Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2011, 15(1)'}

{'title': 'Learning styles concepts and evidence', 'author': 'Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer & Bjork', 'source': 'Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2008, 9(3)'}

{'title': "Why Don't Students Like School?", 'author': 'Daniel Willingham', 'source': 'Jossey-Bass, 2021'}

{'title': 'Understanding How We Learn', 'author': 'Weinstein, Sumeracki & Caviglioli', 'source': 'Routledge, 2018'}

Assessment

Learners submit evidence of active-learning techniques applied to one of their own modules, with reflective commentary.

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Practice bank: 199 MCQs · Timed mock & self-paced modes

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