Helping Students Retain Course Content | Origin: ED108
This is a general discussion forum for the following learning topic:
Learning Theory and Practice --> Helping Students Retain Course Content
Post what you've learned about this topic and how you intend to apply it. Feel free to post questions and comments too.
Try and highlight in your lectures what you want your students to remember
This section was especially insightful with the discussion of Mnemonics - it is a tool that I use myself and will use to help students.
Scaffolding the daily class using guided nots during Powerpoints becomes active learning grafic organizers and Acronyms can assist with attaching visuals to key elements of course content which will assist students in reating material. All of this breaks down material in a way that also helps the student recode information on a personal level.
This module revealed the importance of strategic study skills to each students prgress and success.
Scaffolding; an amazing tactic I now know has a name for it! Students aren't receiving an education on their own. They need some assistance and guidance to stay on the right path to success (graduating). Intances where scaffolding and mnemonics are used can be highly beneficial to the students passing a course AND retaining the information for future use.
Incorporating guided notes, Mnemonics and gamification into lectures has greatly improved student retention of the material as well as providing positive feedback and improved development of course content and lab tasking. Thank you for this amazingly effective learning tool for my student s and fellow instructors!
Mnemonics have been effective not only for myself but for the students as well. The students seem to enjoy making up their own to remember what was taught in class.
The recoding strategies were the most enlightening and engaging section for me, specifically guided notes. I had tried a variation of guided notes in the past, but I don't think they were particularly useful (to be fair, it was my first semester teaching and I was building curriculum on the fly). With more experience and the guided notes strategies, I could implement them in a much more meaningful way. I feel it'd be particularly helpful since my courses are so content heavy!
I believe it would be important to present all these methods to students so that they can compare them to their own learning styles and choose the most effective ones that fit those styles. Mnemonics, loci, acronyms may all work but which is the most effective for the individual learner, that is the important thing to discover.
There are a number of different mnemonic devices that you can share with your students as they learn your course content.
The idea is make sure the strategy is identified and then used by the students. You are not only building the knowledge base of your students but will be giving them strategies that will help them learn the content. You will be adding learning "tools" to their mental "toolboxes." Your students will start to look for these strategies in your future lessons as well as develop strategies of their own.
The decoding and recoding was a significant lesson for me and gives me a better understanding of how material ought to be presented.
This section was a good reminder of various learning strategies that can be used to both decode and recode information. I find graphic organizers, guided notes, and mnemonics to be helpful when I am learning new material. I think my role as instructor is to be aware of and observe students to determine if they need assistance with "learning how to learn", at which point, I can demonstrate and/or use some of these strategies in the classroom so students can incorporate the ones that might work well for their learning style.
Provide clear direction for a path of learning.
This module was a good review of various learning tools to helpo my students better decode and recode new infromation. I will definitely incorporare more visual diagrams and guided notes into my future lesson plans.
I really like the idea of guided notes and grahic organizers to help the student learn important note taking skills and to help them outline the key concepts they will need to know.
Great fun creating mnemonics.
I learned from this module the importance of understanding how learners decode and recode course content. Selecting instructional supports such as scaffolding, guided notes, graphic organizers, and mnemonics enhances student learning. There are different ways to help students retain course content, but in the end, reviewing needs to be done to evaluate if the teaching methods used were effective or if any changes need to be made. As an educator, I am constantly assessing and evaluating my teaching styles and methods. By knowing what works and what does not, I can make the adjustments to achieve my goal of being an effective instructor and helping my students retain the course content to help them complete their course.
Guided notes are useful and helpful, especially for the student who has been out of the classroom setting for a few years, letting them know what will be covered
