If you teach college students, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you barely have time to brush your teeth, let alone ponder how well-established learning theories and principles could improve your teaching. So, for the sake of your well-being and your oral hygiene, I’ve rounded up a few oldies but goodies and some practical tips that are relatively easy to implement. With any luck, you’ll be ready to roll out a new evidence-based teaching strategy in less time than it takes to microwave a Lean Cuisine in the faculty lounge and inhale it at your desk.

1. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Scaffolding

Established by: Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934)

ZPD refers to tasks and activities that learners cannot complete alone, but that they can accomplish with the help of what Vygotsky referred to as a “more knowledgeable other.” The more knowledgeable other can be a peer, teacher, or anyone with the knowledge and skills necessary to help the learner achieve a goal that would be unattainable otherwise. Vygotsky’s work is partially responsible for the modern concept of “scaffolding,” which is often used to describe the level and type of support an instructor should provide when students are not yet capable of completing a task on their own.  

How Instructors Can Use It

• Use informal knowledge/comprehension checks to ensure students master prerequisite knowledge before moving on to more advanced concepts. Consider low-tech strategies in which students respond to questions by holding up colored note cards, or use a mobile friendly technology tool like Poll Everywhere or Kahoot.
• Format assignment instructions like a recipe. Start with an estimate of how long the assignment should take to complete and a list of required “ingredients.” The ingredients list should include readings and resources for students to review, and any special software or tools useful for students to complete the assignment.
• Paraphrase new vocabulary terms and jargon whenever they’re mentioned to ensure students understand their meaning.
• Assign students to work together in such a way that each member of the group brings unique strengths and can serve as a “more knowledgeable other” in different ways.

Further Reading/Viewing

• Article: What is the Zone of Proximal Development?
• Khan Academy Video: Vygotsky Sociocultural Development

2. Spacing Effect and Serial Position Effect

Established by: German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 – 1909)

Ebbinghaus conducted meticulous experiments in which he would test his ability to recall long lists of nonsensical information (short letter combinations with no meaning) and more meaningful information such as lines of poems. His work led to several discoveries about human memory that many researchers have duplicated over time, including: 

• The Spacing Effect: Information recall is higher when studying takes place intermittently over an extended period of time than when studying is more concentrated in a shorter period of time.
• The Serial Position Effect: The first and last items in a list are more easily committed to memory than items in the middle of a list.

How Instructors Can Use It 

• Encourage students to use what’s known as spaced or distributed practice (smaller study periods over time with breaks in between) instead of massed practice or “cramming,” in which students try to memorize information through intense study in a short period of time.
• Have students create and share flash cards and similar study aids using pen and paper or a mobile-friendly tool like Quizlet.
• Avoid asking leading questions such as, “Everyone with me?” or, “Does that make sense?” Students often overestimate their own level of understanding in the moment and are reluctant to acknowledge when they’re lost—particularly in a room full of their peers. Instead, use quizzes and anonymous surveys, which are a more effective way of gauging comprehension.
• Break up lectures with frequent, low-stakes knowledge checks to foster repeated retrieval of information over time.
• Design final exams and projects so that they require students to recall and apply ideas introduced at various points in the term instead of focusing exclusively on the concepts covered most recently.

Further Reading/Viewing

• Article: What is the Serial Position Effect?
• Article: The Spacing Effect: How to Improve Learning and Maximize Retention
• Article: Forgetting (This is a summary of theories explaining why we forget things.)

3. Chunking and Seven Plus or Minus Two

Established by: American psychologist George A. Miller (1920 – 2012)

If you’ve ever heard that human beings can only retain roughly seven items in short-term memory, then you’ve heard of George Miller’s work. However, the key element of Miller’s 1956 study that is especially relevant for teaching and learning was his distinction between “bits” and “chunks” of information.

To better understand this distinction, imagine you’ve asked someone to remember the following list of words: cat, mirror, gun, ghost. For an English speaker, you’ve just asked them to remember four chunks of information, but for someone with no knowledge of English, you’ve asked them to remember 17 bits of information. This is because the non-English speaker is unable to group this series of letters into four familiar and easily retained items, which Miller referred to as chunks.

How Instructors Can Use It

• Ask students to rephrase new information in their own words. In his article, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Miller noted, “…the most customary kind of recoding that we do all the time is to translate into a verbal code. When there is a story or an argument or an idea that we want to remember, we usually try to rephrase it ‘in our own words.’” Rephrasing can be both a useful form of repetition and chunking—two key strategies that can help students commit information to long-term memory.
• Break up assignment instructions into a series of short, numbered steps.
• Break up long readings and emails with headings and subheadings.
• Break up long presentation slideshows with dedicated slides that serve as visual “chapter markers” to indicate the start of a new section/topic.
• Break up long videos into separate videos with their own unique titles to clearly indicate what each video covers.
• If possible, add markers within a single video that allow students to jump from one key section to the next. A low-tech alternative is to simply provide a short list of timecodes below the video indicating the exact time in the video when a new topic begins.
• Use affinity diagramming or similar mind-mapping activities to help students chunk information and identify themes and connections they might not recognize otherwise.

Further Reading/Viewing

• Video: Chunking: Working Memory Technique
• Article: The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information.

Studying Tips for Students

If you’d like to go a step further and help students use evidence-based learning principles to improve their study methods and habits overall, consider directing them to the Supplemental Instruction services provided by DePaul’s Center for Teaching and Learning or a similar unit that supports student success at your own institution. You may also find it helpful to direct students to short videos like the ones below, which provide quick summaries of practical studying tips and techniques.

• Video: How To Master Spaced Repetition and Improve Your Memory
• Video: Study Less Study Smart: A 6-Minute Summary of Marty Lobdell’s Lecture