Learning how to Learn (Effectively)
Dr. Daniel Andrews, School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne.
Do your students rely on memorising facts and figures to pass the exam? Perhaps they need to learn how to learn more effectively. And you can help!
Many first-year students begin their university journey with a reality check. They quickly realise that they need to take greater responsibility for their learning.
Perhaps even more daunting, many of the strategies that they used to learn in high school may be inadequate at university, where there is an emphasis is on developing a deeper level of understanding that can be applied to different contexts.
Surface or Deep Learning?
But just how likely are students to achieve a deep level of understanding in their university studies?
Students that believe learning is simply a matter of remembering facts and figures learn at the surface level. While this type of learning is needed as the base to build a deeper level of understanding, on its own it is quite superficial. A student with a surface level of understanding of a topic area will struggle to apply their knowledge to new contexts and will likely forget the information after completing the unit.
Why do students use these rote learning strategies at University?
A number of reasons really but chief among them are:
1. They believe they’re doing the right thing.
2. Rote learning fits with their understanding of what they believe learning is.
3. They are comfortable using these strategies as they’ve used them in the past.
So how can we break the mould and show students that there is more to learning than memorisation?
Many students will work this out for themselves, even if it takes quite some time, while others will cling to their study habits like their favourite childhood toy.
If the learning goals of a course rely on the students going beyond surface level learning, it is our responsibility to provide students with the tools and understanding they need to build on their surface level knowledge to achieve a deep understanding of the content.
Encouraging a Deep Learning Approach
As educators we understand what effective learning looks like, so let’s encourage our students to take a deep approach to their learning, where they learn for understanding not just to pass a test. Students won’t become effective deep learners overnight, but there are a number of steps we can take to enable our students to learn how to learn effectively.
To begin, it would be useful to understand what your students see as learning, so you will be better placed to guide the evolution of their learning strategies. Something as simple as sharing some study strategies that promote deep learning is a good place to start. These include linking the newly learnt information to pre-existing knowledge, creating mind maps or flow diagrams, self-testing with justification of answers and applying the learnt information to new contexts.
Assessment is the Key
However, if you really want to drive students towards gaining a deeper understanding of the content in your course, the most effective way to do this is through the assessment regime. We all know that student learning is driven by assessment, so why not use this to our advantage.
An assessment task can be designed in a way that simply by completing the exercise to a satisfactory standard the student will have developed a deep understanding of the topics involved. At its best assessment drives learning, rather than testing to see whether they’ve reached a pre-set level of understanding.
By creating an assessment regime where students are required to attain a deep level of understanding to be successful, they’re far more likely to adopt a deep learning approach in the course. Of course, it will be useful to remind them of this fact many times throughout the course.
Authentic Assessment
To take it to the next level, the ultimate signal to students that memorisation is not what you’re aiming for in the course is to remove, or at least drastically reduce the weighing of, the final exam. This will open up many opportunities to introduce authentic assessment tasks that promote the development of the knowledge and skills that you wish your students to have once they’ve completed the course.
Once a student has learnt how to learn effectively, they’ll be able to apply these strategies to other courses. Better yet, they’ll have the skills they need to become lifelong learners.
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Want more on this topic?
Resources:
- Deeper Learning: What Is It and Why Is It So Effective? – Educational Blog by Saga Briggs
- The “Here’s How You Can Make It Work For You” sections is great
- What encourages students to take a deep approach to their leaning? What about a surface approach? – Table from Houghton (2004)
- Designing a curriculum for deep learning – Michael Fullan, Maria Langworthy – Pearson
- Page 33 on talks about redesigning learning tasks to make the curriculum more challenging & engaging, giving student experiences in creating & using knowledge and building key skills that will be useful now and into the future