Ever wondered why students don’t take advice on effective ways to study/revise? Need some ideas on how to overcome this challenge. The “fluency illusion” is the primary culprit in below-average test performance, not anxiety, not stupidity, not unfairness or bad luck, fluency. This presentation shares some research about effective learning strategies and some of the evidence for why students believe “ineffective” strategies are best.

Students overestimate how much they have learnt and how prepared they are for exams.

From R. Bjork presentation.

We taught students how to self-test at home by modelling in class. Students increasingly using self-testing as part of private study and revision. Done this year

Class pre-tests (reviews) next year. Prompt feedback as students may badly “fail” the test. In following lessons, students then “learn to understand the pre-test”. Plan for next year

The pre-test is an introduction to what students are going to learn. This initial exposure seems to help students answer related questions on a later exam.

Students have to think about the facts/concepts we teach them and form a narrative on a topic. This is hard to achieve. (1)

A pre-test help students to engage with this process and learn to judge what is importance and what less so. Testing becomes a study strategy.

Pre-testing also acts as a “fluency vaccine”. You appreciate the need to study more than just the correct answer. Get used to “being unsure”. (2)

Self-testing is part of a package.

Why don’t students take advice on effective ways to study?

Students adopt strategies that make them feel more secure in the short term. Students find it hard to accept more effective strategies because they may impair performance for a while.

Various biases partly explain why students overestimate whether they will be able to reproduce info at a later time. Social attitudes and assumptions can be counterproductive to learning. (2) (1)

The foresight bias relates to an illusion of competence during learning that results in inflated predictions of later recall. Students use current performance as evidence of “test readiness”, and don’t realise the study conditions won’t be present in the test. Biases.

Attitudes and assumptions. Interleaved practice results in more errors. Students must not give up during the “struggle”. Eliminate errors and you eliminate learning. Overcome the fear of avoiding errors and the concern that errors/mistakes will be learnt.

Some further insights and practical suggestions?

Make it clear to students that the standard of “knowing” is the “ability to explain to others”, not “understanding when explained by others”.

Require students to articulate what they know in writing or orally, thus making what they know and don’t know explicit, and therefore easier to evaluate, and easier to build on or revise.

Use written self-tests on a regular basis in class. An accurate assessment of memory requires students to write answers down rather than raise their hand in class.

Ask students to do self-tests at home or in preparing for exams. This forces students to actually recall information, rather than just recognise what is in a book.

Want to find out more? The folder has all the original documents.