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After watching this, your brain will not be the same | Lara Boyd | TEDxVancouver

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The neuroscience of learning. | Siddharth Warrier | TEDxSIESGST

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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I was wrapping up a presentation on memory and learning when a colleague asked, "How do we help students learn in courses where there's a lot of memorization?" He explained that he taught introductory-level human anatomy, and although the course wasn't all memorization, it did challenge students' capacity to retain dozens of new terms and concepts.

The question itself is tricky because most teaching professionals are heavily invested in the idea that learning isn't about being able to regurgitate facts on an exam. We also worry, and with good reason, that emphasizing rote learning steals time and effort away from the deeper thinking that we want students to do. But in my work I've come to realize that memorization deserves some airtime because it is one important route to building content knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, acquiring content knowledge doesn't have to detract from critical thinking, reasoning, or innovation-rather, it can complement all these. Cognitive scientists are making new discoveries all the time about the connections between memory and processes such as drawing inferences, making predictions, and other skills that make up the ability to think like an expert in a discipline.

So what techniques target this specific teaching and learning challenge? We're all familiar with mnemonics such as the first-letter technique-using a word such as RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) or a catchy phrase (Every Good Boy Does Fine) to remember a sequence of information. Mnemonics are one good tool, but what else can we offer?

Learning isn't about being able to regurgitate facts on an exam, but memorization deserves some airtime because it is one important route to building content knowledge and expertise

For starters, we should convey to students (and keep in mind ourselves) that memorization challenges nearly everyone because the mind simply isn't set up to take in reams of disjointed facts. Our memory systems evolved to be picky about what we remember, selecting the information that is most relevant to our goals and discarding the rest. Understanding this helps us and our students have realistic expectations about the level of effort needed to succeed.

It also helps to understand how we create memories for words, because many memorization tasks involve scientific terms, foreign language vocabulary, and the like. How we do this has been hotly debated among researchers, but one view is that we rely on a special piece of mental machinery called the phonological loop that holds speech sounds.

If you've ever muttered a phone number to yourself while you ran around looking for a pencil to write it down with, you've experienced the phonological loop in action. But recycling phone numbers isn't the phonological loop's main reason for existing. Rather, its real job kicks in when we run into a word we haven't heard before. When this happens, the phonological loop grabs onto the sequence of sounds and keeps it fresh while other memory systems set up representations of what the new word means. The catch is that phonological loop capacity varies fairly substantially from individual to individual. This means that words of three, four, or more syllables overwhelm some people's ability to learn new words on the fly.

With these two points in mind-that memory doesn't handle disjointed facts well and new vocabulary hinges on one sometimes-shaky mechanism within memory-here are some ways to help students manage memorization:

Emphasize context and purpose. Ask yourself why students are being asked to memorize these facts in the first place. If students can readily answer that question and if they can picture future situations in which they will use the information, they will be better primed to remember it.

Break down new vocabulary words, especially those that are more than two syllables long. Allow time to rehearse and remember the first couple of syllables before tacking on later ones. Also keep in mind that this process will be easier for some students than others due to wide variation in phonological loop capacity; you may want to design in a "mastery learning" or other individualized approach for vocabulary so that students can move through at their own pace.

Visualize information. For most people, imagery is highly memorable, perhaps because so much of the brain is devoted to visual processing. Memory champions, such as the ones populating the best seller Moonwalking with Einstein, use elaborate visualization strategies to achieve incredible feats of memorization. Similarly, strategies such as the keyword mnemonic work by linking word sounds to images (such as using an image of a cowboy on a horse to remember the Spanish word "caballo," which sounds a bit like "cowboy").

Take advantage of the "Big Three" applied memory principles-testing, spacing, and interleaving. Briefly, these refer to the facts that quizzes are a great way to study and that we do best when we spread out our study sessions and alternate between different topics. Tackling a big memory project such as human anatomy means we need every advantage we can get, and dozens of research studies have supported these three as producing the biggest memory payoff for the time invested.

Avoid the rereading trap. Students tend to fall into passively reviewing material, and in doing so they miss the key advantage of techniques such as testing: retrieval practice. Retrieval practice strengthens memory, but it works only when we actively challenge memory. Flash cards, a favorite student strategy, are fine as long as students use them to actively quiz themselves.

It's okay to expect students to learn the facts and terms needed to become experts in a discipline. With an understanding of memory and some strategies to share, we can make this side of learning productive and maybe even painless-but certainly at least less painful.
Michelle Miller is a professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Northern Arizona University.
Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 28.9 (2014): 3. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved.

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Helping Students Memorize: Tips from Cognitive Science

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Although there is more to learning than regurgitating facts on an exam, memorization is an important route to building content knowledge and expertise.

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How well do students learn when a lesson is mainly in PowerPoint? Henrik Berger Jørgensen, CC BY-NC-ND

For a brief period in the history of teaching, using PowerPoint automatically qualified you as a tech-savvy professor - an innovator who wouldn't settle for the usual combination of staticky black-and-white overhead films and hand-scrawled chalkboard notes.

Now, it's hard to believe that PowerPoint was once considered innovative by anyone. Popular criticism includes everything from tongue-in-cheek comments about death by PowerPoint to serious claims that it fundamentally degrades how we think and communicate.

But much of today's college instruction isn't in face-to-face classrooms, a setting in which PowerPoint was traditionally used. It's in the burgeoning field of online learning.

So if more learning is moving online, does that mean that teaching with PowerPoint is becoming a thing of the past?

Surprisingly, the answer is no.

Passive learning through PowerPoint?

Even though there's little research that directly addresses whether PowerPoint affects learning in college students, critics have questioned its value in educational settings.

Some ask whether PowerPoint might indirectly undermine the quality of teaching by reinforcing a passive learning approach.

We know that lecturing is less effective than alternative methods. It therefore makes sense for teachers in face-to-face classrooms to question how much of their class time ought to be spent on slideshows.

But the fact is "slideshows" remain a popular method for presenting content in today's online courses.

Technically, these are often not PowerPoints, but decks generated using other types of specialized programs.

And they may differ from standard in-class PowerPoint presentations in important ways.

For example, taking advantage of the increased flexibility of the online environment, they give students more control over how quickly to go through the material and when to backtrack. They can also have more interactive features, such as quizzes, that ask students to apply material while they are learning it.

Even so, the basic - and flawed - idea is the same: put the material in front of students, and learning will happen.

What's wrong with slideshows in online courses

As a psychologist specializing in teaching techniques and course design, when I talk to faculty about teaching effectively with technology, I sometimes tell them to follow the ABS principle: anything but slideshows.

I'm only half-kidding with that blanket statement.

After all, we learn with the same brains in online environments as we do face-to-face; the principles of learning don't change just because the medium changes. And today's learning theorists agree: active involvement trumps passive viewing.

Students need to grapple with challenging problems, practice skills, discuss and defend viewpoints. But for this kind of active learning to happen, instructors need to ensure they do not rely too heavily on slides.

There are alternatives: simulations, problem-based learning, even educational games are all proven methods for drawing students in. They also transplant well into online learning.

Using slideshows the right way

So do slideshows have any place in a well-designed online course? Possibly.

They can be used strategically for things they are best at: giving students an overview of new material, or providing a refresher on concepts students will need for an upcoming activity.

Slides are also great for for integrating visual illustrations. This is important because visuals - diagrams, figures, photos and the like - have a powerful impact on learning.

Visual information is almost always more memorable than sound, text or other modalities.

This isn't because of the now-debunked idea that some people are "visual learners," but more likely stems from how the brain codes images. There are separate systems for representing verbal and visual information in the brain. When we save information in both places, it is easier to recall.

Teachers don't have to stick with static images, either. Even basic animations can illuminate conceptual relationships - such as cause and effect, or the unfolding of a process over time - in ways that text can't.

Furthermore, as University of California, Santa Barbara researcher Richard Mayer has discovered, visuals and the spoken word pair up in powerful ways, so that audio plus visuals produce better learning than either alone.

Research also tells teachers some things not to do with visuals. Instructors should avoid purely decorative graphics, as these can actually hamper learning.

They should also eschew reading text verbatim, instead using a conversational, natural speaking style for voiceovers and verbal explanations.

What this means in the larger context of online learning

In sum, slideshows can be a useful part of online instruction, when used for the right things and designed in the right way. But they shouldn't be the main, or the only, method of instruction - any more than lectures should dominate face-to-face classes.

But it's not just instructors who need to hear this message.

Publishing and educational technology companies, who provide many of the tools that educators rely on, can do more to develop products that push beyond familiar formulas and draw on the latest learning science.

We need tools that make it easy to create assignments that ask students to apply what they have learned, in scenarios that are as realistic and challenging as possible.

These learning tools also need to be adaptive, adjusting the material and pace to the individual learner. This kind of educational technology does exist, but far more can be done to expand the available options.

Teaching in the age of technology comes with its own set of opportunities as well as challenges. And online education presents educators and tech developers with a rare opportunity to fundamentally rethink what we do.

Will we use it to explore new avenues for learning, or will we fall back on the the same old techniques that don't work well in face-to-face classrooms?

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Learning from PowerPoint: is it time for teachers to move on?

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Slideshows, when designed right, can be a useful part of online instruction. But they shouldn't be the main, or the only, method of instruction.

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"Compared with students in traditional lectures, students in active classes perceived that they learned less, while in reality they learned more." - Louis Deslauriers, Logan S. McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, and Greg Kestina, Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom.

That's the conclusion of a brand new and already-attention-getting article just published in the Proceedings of the...

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Active learning, active pushback, and what we should take away from a new study of student...

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"Compared with students in traditional lectures, students in active classes perceived that they learned less, while in reality they learned more." - Louis Deslauriers, Logan S. McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, and Greg Kestina, Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom.

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Cite this

Brabeck, M., & Jeffrey, J. (2015, March 9). Practice for knowledge acquisition (not drill and kill). American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/education-career/k12/practice-acquisition

Designing activities with the goal of transferring knowledge

It doesn't matter what subject you teach, differences in students performance are affected by how much they engage in deliberate practice. Researchers who have investigated expert and novice performance have uncovered important distinctions between deliberate practice and other activities, such as play or repetition.

Deliberate practice is not the same as rote repetition. Rote repetition - simply repeating a task - will not by itself improve performance. Deliberate practice involves attention, rehearsal and repetition and leads to new knowledge or skills that can later be developed into more complex knowledge and skills. Although other factors such as intelligence and motivation affect performance, practice is necessary if not sufficient for acquiring expertise (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011).

Define practice:

"Deliberate practice (DP) occurs when an individual intentionally repeats an activity in order to improve performance. The claim of the DP framework is that such behavior is necessary to achieve high levels of expert performance." (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011, p. 280).

"Deliberate practice consists of activities purposely designed to improve performance." (Gobet & Campitelli, 2007, p. 160).

Benefits of deliberate practice

Practice is important for teaching and learning in at least five ways:

1. Practice greatly increases the likelihood that students will permanently remember new information (Anderson, 2008).

2. Practice increases student facility or automaticity (learning to apply elements of knowledge automatically, without reflection). Automaticity is usually only achieved through extensive rehearsal and repetition. Automaticity frees up students cognitive resources to handle more challenging tasks (Brown & Bennett, 2002; Moors & De Houwer, 2006).

3. When students practice solving problems, they increase their ability to transfer practiced skills to new and more complex problems. This is true in childhood (Glover, Ronning, & Bruning, 1990) and adult years (Li, Schmiedek, Huxhold, Röcke, Smith, & Lindenberger, 2008).

4. Practice helps students acquire expertise in subject matter and, therefore, it helps to distinguish novices from experts in given subjects (Ericsson, Krampe, & Clemens, 1993)

5. Cognitive gains from practice often bring about motivation for more learning (Kalchman, Moss, & Case, 2001).

Teachers should think of practice not as rote repetition, but as deliberate, goal-directed rehearsal paired with reflection on problem-solving processes. For example, when teachers have students practice identifying phonemes, the ultimate goal is for students to read with fluency and comprehension. Although fluent reading may be too complex a task for beginning readers to tackle, the more manageable task of identifying phonemes may scaffold students learning to achieve the ultimate goal of reading. That is, teachers should always design practice activities with the goal of transferring knowledge to new and more complex problems in mind.

General recommendations for practice and instruction

Research (Anderson, 2008; Campitelli & Gobet, 2011; Ericsson, Krampe, & Clemens, 1993) suggests several conditions that must be in place in order for practice activities to be most effective in moving students closer to skillful performance. Each of these conditions can be met with carefully designed instruction:

Because practice requires intense, focused effort, students may not find it inherently enjoyable. Therefore, teachers can encourage students to practice more by pointing out every time that practice has actually improved their performance. Motivate your students to practice by:

Expressing confidence in students' ability to succeed in solving practice problems.

Designing activities that maximize opportunities for students to succeed.

Teachers should design practice tasks with students existing knowledge in mind. When students succeed at practice problems, the benefits of practice are maximized. But when students become frustrated with unrealistic or poorly designed practice problems, they often lose motivation, will not receive the full benefits of the practice they have done, and will be less motivated to attempt future practice problems.

Students receive the greatest benefits from practice when teachers provide them with timely and descriptive feedback.

Students should have repeated opportunities to practice a task through practicing other tasks like it.

What type of feedback is most effective?

Feedback is most effective when it contains descriptions of how students work meets performance criteria and what students can do to improve. This kind of descriptive feedback is more effective than feedback consisting of vague, general comments (e.g., "nice work or "needs improvement).

Feedback should also be focused on the learning process. That is, teachers should focus their feedback on helping students reflect on their problem solving skills, as well as on progress they have made.

Do's:

1. Vary practice activities.

2. Distribute practice over extended periods of time.

3. Provide clear instructions on performance expectations and criteria.

4. Before asking students to practice independently, model the problem-solving process that you expect students to use.

5. Break complex problems into their constituent elements, and have students practice on these smaller elements before asking them to solve complex problems independently.

6. Guide students through sample practice problems by using prompts that help them reflect on problem-solving strategies.

7. Provide students with fully completed sample problems as well as partially completed sample problems before asking them to apply new problem-solving strategies on their own.

8. Wait until students actually need more information to solve a complex problem before you give them more information. This strategy - known as "just-in-time instruction" - helps keep the amount of information that students must hold in their short-term memories to a manageable level as they practice (Linneman & Plake, 2006; Simkins & Maier, 2008).

9. Provide plenty of opportunities for students to practice applying problem-solving skills before you test them on their ability to use those skills.

Don'ts:

1. Don't ask students to practice complex problem solving without providing them with plenty of guidance and feedback.

2. Don't overload students by presenting information in redundant formats.

3. Don't give your students complex practice problems before they have the skills they need to succeed.

Research suggests that when teachers construct problems for students to practice, they should keep in mind the limitations of human memory.

Moving information to permanent storage is often explained as a multistore model of memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; 1971; Baddeley, 1996; 2002). According to this model, our brains have three memory storage systems: sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory (Baddeley, 1996; 2002; Carlson, Sullivan, & Schneider, 1989). Learning occurs when we move information from working memory to long-term memory, and practice helps with this process.

Deliberate practice (sometimes called 'rehearsal') keeps the information in our short-term memory long enough for it to move to long-term memory. Once it is in long-term memory, it can be built upon to create more and more complex associations (Baddeley, 2002).

Most researchers agree that there are forms of Short-Term Memory (STM) for different modalities, such as visual STM, auditory STM and motor STM. For example, Baddeley (1992; 1996; 2002) suggests that short-term memory is a dynamic place where sounds and images are turned into verbal and pictorial models. STM is also thought to have a "central executive" that manages the information it is holding. This central executive also controls our awareness of that information (Baddeley, 2002).

The implication for teachers is that they should present material in multiple modalities. If a child who is learning to read hears a word, sees the word and a picture of the word, there will be more learning. The child can get the visual information from the visual STM and additional auditory information in the auditory STM. These two sensory sources of information supplement and complement one another (Liao, 2014). However, teachers must be careful not to have too much extraneous information in the classroom. Over stimulation can put too much demand on working memory (Pass & Kester, 2006).

Short-term or working memory

Working memory or short-term memory, is stored for very short periods of time - minutes at most. Information in our short-term memory is generally housed in the temporal lobe of the brain (the hippocampal region). It allows you to remember phone numbers and also information that comes from long-term memory right before you need to use it. Short-term memory is also the memory system that is used when we cram for a test at the last minute. Attention difficulties, distractions and overload of too much information all negatively impact our short-term memory and cause it to fail. We all have a limited ability to focus on too much stimuli at the same time, and if we don't process the information, we lose it. Practice helps us increase our ability to access information rapidly and automatically.

Practice also frees our brains to process more challenging information and problems. For example, if a child has memorized the multiplication table and can retrieve it automatically, working memory is freed to do more complicated computations.

Practice can improve children's working memory and enhance learning of academic skills, such as reading comprehension and mathematical reasoning (e.g., Dahlin, 2011; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Holmes, Gathercole, & Dunning, 2009), verbal learning (Liao, Kronemer, Yau, Desmond, & Marvel, 2014) and motor skills (Gomes, Ugrinowitsch, Marinho, Shea, Raisbeck, & Benda, R., 2014).

And practice using visual spatial tasks can improve visual-spatial working memory (Melby-Lervag & Hulme, 2012; Shipstead, Redick, & Engle, 2012). Likewise, children can be taught a rehearsal or practice strategy to help them improve their reading comprehension (e.g., Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Rose, Cundick, & Higbee, 1983). Moreover, rehearsal is easier to learn and less demanding than other strategies (Turley-Ames & Whitfield, 2003).

Long-term memory

When working-memory is stored, it becomes long-term memory. Long-term memory is the depository of memories throughout the brain that results from the ongoing chemical processes that changes neuronal connections. The formation of long-term memories takes place over the span of days, weeks and in some cases years. As the memories are consolidated, neuron connections become more and more efficient, and in the process, connections that are no longer useful are discarded from lack of use.

Although the capacity of our long-term memory is apparently limitless (as far as we know, no one has ever stored all that the brain is capable of storing), working memory can typically hold only seven items (plus or minus 2) at any given time, and these items "decay" rapidly (Miller, 1956; Baddeley, 2002).

Research on the brains of rats has shown that relatively short periods of practice can enhance the plasticity of the brain and actually change its structure (Rioult-Pedotti, Friedman, Hess, & Donoghue, 1998). Brain imaging has shown that even a brief lesson on new words changes brain circuits (Allami, Brovelli, Hamzaoui, Regragui, Paulignan, & Boussaoud, 2014; Abdullaev & Posner, 1998; Raichle et al., 1994) and retrieval (Habib, Nyberg, & Tulving, 2003).

Experts and novices differ in the amount and structure of information stored in their long-term memories. These cognitive differences occur in large part because of differences in the amount of deliberate practice in which each has engaged (Cantor & Engle, 1993).

Extensive and deliberate practice makes it possible for students to access and apply increasingly complex information without explicitly thinking about it. In other words, it increases automaticity (see earlier discussion of automaticity) (Anderson, 2008; Case, 1985, 1991). Automaticity leaves students' working memories free to process new information (Kotovsky, Hayes, & Simon, 1985). Since working memory can be overloaded at any time, 'savings' from automaticity become very important. When there is too much information in our working memory it will fail, and the chemical processes that transfer information to our long-term memories also fail. Long-term learning is enhanced by a distribution process in which information is repeated, allowing time with time in between practice sessions, rather than crammed practice.

Reviews and tests are forms of practice that can improve learning. Tests (or quizzes) that are given immediately after a learning exercise give children opportunities to practice. Because learning is recent, students tend to do well on these tests. However, their success does not ensure long-term retention. Teachers can provide time during class to give students additional practice in taking tests. Some tests, such as tests with open-ended answers have been shown to enhance learning because they involve students in the "retrieval" of information from long-term memory. Tests are more effective when they are given at spaced intervals and when they are given frequently (Cull, 2000; Dempster; 1991; Rodriguez, Michael, 2004;Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).

Chunking information, or combining small bits together in short-term memory, is another strategy that students can use to increase their STM holding capacity. Although chunking gives a student more capacity in their STM, its usefulness depends on how much knowledge a person already has. The more knowledge one has on a topic, the more likely that one can "chunk" incoming information into larger and more meaningful chunks. This is why knowledge itself adds to one's ability to solve complex problems. Children who use chunking are more likely to be strategic about their learning. Teachers can help children become more strategic by explicitly teaching them strategies like chunking.

Example of chunking information

The following digits can be seen as a random list of numbers: 14921776. Random or meaningless information taxes the limited capacity of short-term memory (STM). However, if a student "chunks" the information into two dates (1492: Columbus discovered America; and 1776: the year the Declaration of Independence was signed) it is learned as 1492 1776. This leaves room in the short-term memory for more information.

Chunking allows several units of information to be compressed into a single meaningful unit or chunk (e.g., whereas a random number string above represents 8 discrete units to be stored in short-term memory (near its maximum capacity), the two meaningful dates represent only two chunks of information to be stored. This leaves space in the STM for more information to be held. And when more information is held in STM, there is more information available for transfer to long-term memory where it can be permanently stored (Gobet et al., 2001).

Chunking can develop experts' schema. Information stored in the brain in larger chunks of integrated concepts are known as "schemas." For example, a novice chess player who does not yet have complex schemas for chess playing has to devote his or her limited working memory to processing large amounts of information while playing (Anderson, 1996).

An expert, on the other hand, can easily access schemas from long-term memory (deGroot, 1966; Cantor & Engle, 1993). With practice, a novice player can construct chess-playing schemas and therefore increase the amount of information stored in long-term memory. In this way, practice accessing and applying knowledge helps one to transfer that knowledge into a "permastore" of long-term memory so that he or she can more efficiently utilize space available in the working memory (Elo, 1978; Kotovsky & Fallside, 1989).

Theories explaining expert performance

1. Many researchers (e.g., Ericsson et al., 1993; Baddeley, 2002) argue that differences in the amount of practice account for the majority of performance differences between individuals, resulting from differences in the amount and structure of knowledge stored in long-term memory.

2. Other researchers emphasize innate, genetic differences or talent as the main factor accounting for differences between expert and novice performance (Mosing, et.al., 2014; Plomin, DeFries, McClearn, & Rutter, 1997).

3. More recently, researchers have emphasized an interaction between innate and behavioral factors in accounting for differences in performance levels (Gobet & Campitelli, 2007).

Overall, the research supports the view that deliberate practice plays a role in performance differences and can reduce performance differences between individuals who are thought to possess talent and those who do not (Chase & Ericsson, 1981). See Gobet and Campitelli (2007), Mosing, et.al., (2014) and Macnamara, et.al., (2014) for a comprehensive review of this debate.

What can a teacher do to maximize the positive effect of practice?

When teachers assign students to complete practice problems that are structurally similar but different in surface features, it helps them discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information in a given problem. This outcome makes it more likely that students will be able to transfer knowledge gained from practice to new and more complex problems (Paas, 1992). As with all scaffolds, they should be diminished gradually as learners become increasingly more independent.

Students' problem-solving skills also increase when teachers distribute practice over time rather than "cramming" practice into short periods (Bahrick & Hall, 2005). Assignments involving practice are more effective when they are shorter, more frequent and distributed over longer periods of time (Cooper, 2007; Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006; Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2010). This distributive effect is particularly important because it also makes it more likely that students will recall information over longer periods of time. Therefore, distributed practice helps students transfer information into their long-term memory.

Teachers should also have students begin homework during class. By doing so, teachers can monitor students to ensure they understand and can solve practice problems correctly before they practice independently. If teachers are unable to monitor this initial practice, they should explain to their students where they can obtain the information (textbooks, web sites, handouts, etc.) they need to complete the assigned practice problems correctly.

Reviews and tests are a form of practice that can improve learning. Tests provide opportunities for practice that enhance learning. Open-ended test questions also provide practice in retrieving information. Both reviews and tests are most effective when they are well spaced and frequent (Dempster, 1991).

Teachers can train students to reflect on their thinking when solving problems by providing them with lists of questions. This kind of "strategy instruction" helps students to construct schemas more efficiently by facilitating a metacognitive awareness of the problem-solving process. That is, students learn more about how they learn and this helps them with new learning.

Teachers can increase students' abilities to transfer existing problem-solving knowledge to new problems when they prompt students to deliberately reflect on problem-solving strategies they have used before. (Renkl, Stark, Gruber, & Mandl, 1998; Rosenshine & Meister, 1992; Stark, Mandl, Gruber, & Renkl., 2002).

Is homework always effective practice?

There is no question that homework can provide students with opportunities for practice but there are more and less effective homework assignments. Research on homework (Cooper, 2001, 2006; Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2010) suggests that the relationship between time spent on homework and students' academic achievement varies with grade level. When parental involvement is well structured it can also enhance the effectiveness of homework on learning (Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2010; Marzano & Pickering, 2007).

How much time should be spent on homework?

Although high school students appear to benefit from at least two hours of homework per night, there is little or no relationship between time spent on homework and academic achievement for young (grades 1-3) students (Marzano, & Pickering, 2007). Younger students may benefit more from supervised in-school practice than from homework. Middle school students may benefit from one to two hours of homework per night (Cooper, 2007).

Will practice activities negatively affect students' motivation? Aren't practice activities the same as "drill and kill" instruction?

Although deliberate practice is often confused with rote learning, researchers emphasize that there is a difference between mere repetition and deliberate practice. For practice to be effective, appropriate instruction, guided practice, as well as descriptive and timely feedback must all be present.

Does practice with "authentic" problems increase learning?

Due to their relevance, "authentic" problems or "real-life" problems may motivate students. However, the positive effect of practice is only realized when teachers provide instructional supports that address the limitations of students' working memories (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996, 2000; Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998; van Merrienboer, Kirschner, & Kester, 2003). If there is cognitive overload and the working memory is taxed beyond its capacity, students will lose motivation even if a problem is highly relevant to them.

Although "authentic" practice problems sound like they would motivate students with their real-world context; they may also include too many variables at the same time. Students' working memories are thus required to manage too many bits of information, and many of these bits may not be directly involved with the construction of the desired schema (Sweller & Chandler, 1994).

Is there such a thing as too much practice?

Merely repeating a task will not automatically improve performance. Deliberate practice is most effective when it involves intense concentration, rehearsal and reflection. For that reason, students are more likely to benefit from frequent, short practice sessions than from long "cramming" sessions. Teachers can foster this meta-cognitive learning process by providing students with frequent opportunities to discuss their problem-solving strategies (National Research Council, 2005).

Even in early grades when students are acquiring foundational knowledge, practice should not be confused with rote learning. For example, phonics instruction is most effective when it is practiced alongside more complex skills like identifying main ideas in stories (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000).

Does practice work for all academic subjects?

Practice is correlated with student achievement across all developmental levels and across all subjects. NICHD's (2000) analysis of strategies for reading instruction suggests that several kinds of practice activities are beneficial to students. Phonemic awareness practice, phonics practice and read-aloud practice all showed significant positive effects on student achievement in the early grades. Teachers should always keep long-term goals in mind when they are designing practice activities. The ultimate purpose of phonics instruction is not for students to identify phonemes, but rather, to improve their reading comprehension. The goal of practice is to transfer acquired skills to new and more complex problems. Therefore, practice activities should always be designed with that transfer process in mind.

Studies in mathematics education show that practice is effective when teachers design appropriate practice problems, distribute them over time, and provide students with sufficient feedback. Practice is ineffective when it is not appropriately designed, not well distributed, and when adequate feedback is not provided.

Deliberate practice is also effective in learning complex skills from musical fluency to athletic expertise.

When does the strategy work?

All students benefit from well-designed, developmentally-appropriate deliberate practice activities. A meta-analysis (Macnamara, Hambrick, & Oswald, 2014) showed that the effects of deliberate practice are robust for games, music and sports, and modestly effective in education.

Deliberate practice can also provide a bridge over the gaps that exist between different achievement levels. Achievement gaps often exist because of unequal opportunities for students to engage in appropriate deliberate practice rather than unequal learning abilities. As children grow older, they become better able to benefit from instruction on appropriate strategies like rehearsal, reflection and "chunking" information.

Special populations benefit from practice activities that are designed to meet their needs (Chapman, & Mudar, 2014; Nunes, Barros, Evans, & Burman, 2014; Rose, Cundick, & Higbee, 1983). For example, research on children with language processing problems suggests that their difficulties are due to sensory perception rather than an inability to learn. One reason that language-learning impaired students have difficulty learning to read is that their phonemic recognition and spatial discrimination perceptions are impaired. Appropriate practice activities have been shown to help these students compensate for their difficulties (Merzenich et al., 1996). Cooper's (2001) examination of homework practice suggests that students with learning disabilities benefit most from short, skill-reinforcing activities that are carefully monitored (see also Marzano & Pickering, 2007).

Description of research on the use of practice activities with children with learning disabilities

An extensive meta-analysis of interventions for students with learning disabilities found that practice-drill-review instructional strategies were generally effective across academic subjects (Swanson, Hoskyn, & Lee, 1999). Another meta-analysis of inclusion settings found that time-on-task correlated with student achievement across subject areas (Brophy & Good, 1986). Therefore, practice activities appear to be a key factor in student achievement across grade levels, skill levels and academic domains.

In summary, well-designed practice activities result from careful planning where teachers:

Model problem-solving processes.

Design partially-completed examples on which students can practice.

Sequence activities logically.

Space practice activities appropriately.

Monitor student practice providing guidance and feedback.

Is practice effective across the age span?

Children grow more strategic as they get older. Younger children are less strategic - are less likely to rehearse, practice, or chunk spontaneously or to know how to do these things well. They are also less likely to monitor their own knowledge or to use metacognitive strategies. Younger children are less likely than older children to know what they need to rehearse or practice more. Therefore, teachers of younger children should introduce them to strategies such as rehearsal and practice, and in this way can help students improve their learning.

Deliberate practice is effective across all school age levels. Fundamental practice skills are more appropriate for earlier grades than it is for later grades. Teachers can focus younger students on the skills they will need later when they tackle more complex tasks. For example, phonemic awareness instruction is more effective for preschool students than for older elementary school students (NICHD, 2000), but it remains a skill that is very useful in later grades.

Teachers should design developmentally appropriate practice problems for students. Students' memories and attention spans develop with age (Gomez-Perez & Ostrosky-Solis, 2006; Lechuga, Moreno, Pelegrina, Gomez-Ariza, & Bajo, 2006). In general, older students have greater attention spans and greater memory capacity than younger students. This may account for developmental differences seen in the benefits of homework (Cooper, 2001; Muhlenbrook, Cooper, Nye, & Lindsay, 1999) and age differences in the amount of practice that learners engage in outside the classroom (Ericsson et al., 1993). Teachers should plan the type and amount of practice students are expected to do with these developmental differences in mind.

Research on expert performance shows that experts increase the amount of deliberate practice they engage in over time. For example, research by Ericsson and colleagues (1993) on expert violinists revealed that in early childhood they practiced no more than five hours per week. However, by their early twenties, they practiced around thirty hours per week. Because deliberate practice is so taxing, it should be balanced with sufficient periods of rest. Younger learners tire more quickly and lose their motivation to persist if they are not allowed sufficient rest (Ericsson et al., 1993; NICHD, 2000).

Elementary

Early elementary students benefit little or not at all from homework (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011; Cooper, 2001; Halford, Maybery, & Bain, 1986).

Expert violinists practiced fewer than 5 hours per week at the early childhood stage (Ericsson et al., 1993; Macnamara et al., 2014).

Research supports the idea that practice can help elementary students overcome processing deficits (Merzenich et al., 1996).

Practice with phonemic awareness has been shown to have a positive effect on reading outcomes in elementary readers through 6th grade. Effects were not as strong for disabled readers as they were for at-risk and normally progressing readers. The effects of phonemic-awareness instruction were strongest when it was provided in earlier grades (especially pre-K and kindergarten), in small group settings, in shorter training programs and to English-speaking students (NICHD, 2000).

Research suggests that systematic phonics instruction helps students learning to read. The effects of systematic phonics instruction were greater when it was provided in earlier grades (especially kindergarten and 1st grade) (Dahlin, 2011; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; NICHD, 2000).

A meta-analysis of intervention strategies for students with learning disabilities found that phonics instruction positively affects development of vocabulary, although the results on comprehension were unclear (Swanson et al., 1999). (The mean age for the study participants was 11; 78% of the studies targeted 9-14 year age range.).

Research suggests that repeated and guided-repeated oral reading strategies have a positive effect on reading performance through grade four, especially for non-impaired readers (Dahlin, 2011; Gersten, et al., 2001; Rose et al., 1983).

Swanson et al.'s (1999) meta-analysis suggests that "the teaching of whole language without due attention to decoding places LD children at greater risk than the use of more traditional programs" (p. 254).

Vocabulary instruction (both explicit and implicit) has a positive effect on vocabulary acquisition. Research indicates that students should be exposed to vocabulary repeatedly and in multiple contexts (NICHD, 2000).

Research suggests that reading comprehension strategy instruction (e.g., cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies) has a positive effect on reading comprehension and memory in grades 3-6. The effects were greater when strategy instruction was more intensive and when students were instructed in multiple strategies (NICHD, 2000).

Research suggests that "drill-repetition-practice" instructional strategies are beneficial to students with learning disabilities across all age groups and across all subjects (Swanson et al., 1999).

Middle School

Middle school students may benefit from one to two hours of homework per night (Cooper, 2001; Campitelli & Gobet, 2011).

Research suggests that partial-task practice problems are more effective than whole-task practice problems for some 13 year-old math students. Partial-task practice lowered the processing demands on working memory for all students, but it only increased learning for students with low prior knowledge. Students with high prior knowledge benefited more from whole-task practice (Ayres, 2006).

Research suggests that when modeling problem-solving strategies, the use of worked examples is beneficial for middle school students' writing performance. As with Ayres' (2006) study, however, the positive effects were limited to low-performing students. The results suggested that "low-level" writers benefited from worked-example practice problems, while "high-level" writers benefited from "goal-free" practice problems.

Research suggests that the use of repeated and guided-repeated oral reading strategies positively affect students' reading performance. This is especially true for students with reading problems (NICHD, 2000).

Programs aimed at encouraging students to read more (e.g., self-selected, silent reading) yielded no significant positive effects on reading achievement (NICHD, 2000).

Swanson et al.'s (1999) meta-analysis suggests that "the teaching of whole language without due attention to decoding places LD children at greater risk than the use of more traditional programs" (p. 254).

Results that support the positive effects of vocabulary instruction (both explicit and implicit) on vocabulary acquisition indicate that students should be exposed to vocabulary repeatedly and in multiple contexts (NICHD, 2000).

Research suggests that reading-comprehension-strategy instruction (e.g., cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies) has a positive effect on reading comprehension and memory in grades 3-6. The effects were greater when strategy instruction was more intensive and when students were instructed on multiple strategies (NICHD, 2000).

Research suggests that "drill-repetition-practice" instructional strategies are beneficial to students with learning disabilities across all age groups and across all subjects (Swanson et al., 1999).

High School

High school students appear to benefit from at least two hours of homework per night, (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011; Cooper, 2001).

Students may benefit from more practice with the transfer of component skills than from practicing whole-task transfer (Pollock, Chandler, & Sweller, 2002). Examples worked out in advance for students were more effective for algebra problem solving transfer than were conventional problems for 9th and 11th grade students (Sweller & Cooper, 1985).

Repeated and guided-repeated oral reading strategies positively affect reading performance. This is especially true for high school students with reading problems (NICHD, 2000).

Programs aimed at encouraging students to read more (e.g., self-selected, silent reading) yielded no significant positive effects on reading achievement (NICHD, 2000).

Although research supports a positive effect of vocabulary instruction (both explicit and implicit) on vocabulary acquisition in grades 9-11, few studies have been conducted at that level. Results that do exist suggest that students should be exposed to vocabulary repeatedly and in multiple contexts (NICHD, 2000).

Research suggests that "drill-repetition-practice" instructional strategies are beneficial to students with learning disabilities across all age groups and across all subjects (Swanson et al., 1999).

Where can teachers get more information?

Anderson, J. R. (1996). ACT: A simple theory of complex cognition. American Psychologist, 51(4), 355-368. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.51.4.355

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. ISBN 0-309-07036-8

Carver, S. M. & Klahr, D. (Eds.). (2001). Cognition and instruction: Twenty-five years of progress. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Practice for knowledge acquisition (not drill and kill)

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Researchers who have investigated expert and novice performance have uncovered important distinctions between deliberate practice and other activities, such as work, play and rote repetition.

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We aim to help you consider how to adapt your course assessments, along with potential alternatives to standard in-class assessments.

When considering assessments under changing circumstances, here are a few criteria to support an effective approach:

1. Define the goal(s) of the assessment. What specific knowledge or skills are you evaluating? What do you want students to learn or be able to do?

2. Consider equivalent alternatives. What adaptations or alternatives will provide students with opportunities to demonstrate what they have learned?

3. Be as clear as possible. Grade-related anxiety may increase during times of uncertainty. Clarifying the goal of an alternative as well as how you will evaluate students' learning will help align expectations and alleviate stress.

Recommendations

To plan assessments during remote instruction, an Instructional Support Subcommittee on Assessment was formed from the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to provide guidance for Yale instructors in their uses of assessment. Below we highlight a sample of assessment approaches developed by the Poorvu Center and the subcommittee to inspire creative and reliable solutions to assessing students remotely. You may also view the full list of recommendations in their subcommittee report.

Considerations for Online Assessments

To best support academic integrity in light of the online learning context, consider the current format of your assessments (e.g., multiple choice, short answer, project-based), the level of thinking your assessments require, and the grading structure of your course. Specifically, we suggest the following considerations:

Select assessment formats that ask students to explain their thinking

Academic integrity can be increased by asking students to explain their approach, logic, or thinking. This can involve short answer items, written work, annotated portfolios or recorded/annotated presentations. Multiple choice exams can also be adapted to ask students to explain how they came to an answer. These explanations are harder to replicate than selecting a correct answer. This approach has the added benefit of improving students' reflection on course content, which supports deeper learning.

For decreasing time to score open-ended items and increasing consistency in grading among TFs, using a rubric is best. Gradescope is a great tool for automating the grading of open-ended items. This Canvas plug-in tool can be particularly useful in large courses where scoring open-ended items can be time challenging.

Select assessments that require deeper levels of processing

Deepening the level of engagement required to correctly answer items can reduce the likelihood of an answer being easily found online or in textbooks. For example, multiple choice items that ask students to compare among options or to apply a specific concept, as opposed to asking for definitions, reduces opportunities for cheating. These higher-level items require a working knowledge of a concept, demonstrating a desired level of competence.

Use a grading structure that supports the building of knowledge over time

Altering the grading system to provide credit for students' learning as they go through the semester (i.e., formative assessment) as opposed to high stakes assessments at the middle and end of courses (i.e., summative assessment) can be especially beneficial. Smaller assignments or quizzes allow students to study less material more deeply, provides feedback on their learning with enough time for them to adjust their studying, and can reduce student anxiety compared to having a low number of high stakes exams.

We encourage you to consider what may be the most appropriate assessment to use for your course content and the online context that respects students' learning and the academic integrity of the work.

Increase academic integrity in multiple choice and short answer exams

The Poorvu Center encourages alternative ways of assessing students before considering remote proctoring, which creates technical and personal burdens for students and instructors. Faculty have found the following approaches helpful to acquire an accurate assessment of students' learning.

Consider small edits to a question that change the correct answer between students while testing the same concepts. In this approach, the basic concepts are retained across questions but with subtle factors that change the outcome. When possible, ask TFs to review and try out your questions to assure the revisions are clear and auto-grading within Canvas is correct.

Consider options and implications for when to make the test available to students and how long to give students to complete it, particularly if students vary across time zones. For example, some instructors prefer to leave the exam open for 12-48 hours to allow for time zone and technical challenges. Another option may be to "chunk" exams into smaller sections spread out over time, allowing students to focus on particular content while decreasing the stress on any single section of the exam.

Practice the process. Giving students a chance to try out the assessment approach you select using a low-stakes exam or assignment can help instructors and students work out any technical challenges (e.g., uploading files, accessing links) that may arise during a higher-stakes exam. This will also allow students to experience what an online examination may be like, which can help alleviate student anxiety.

Have students upload their individual work. Creating questions that ask students to demonstrate their knowledge through models or figures can help students practice applying their learning. This approach also allows for consideration of partial credit options.

These approaches, particularly when combined, essentially give each student a distinct test form. This can decrease the likelihood of dishonesty by increasing the effort associated with sharing or searching for answers. By taking these measures, students and faculty can focus on the course content rather than spending energy concerning academic integrity.

We also suggest being transparent about the purpose of these approaches to reinforce support for students. For example, be explicit that these measures are in place to 1) collect an accurate assessment of students' current learning and to 2) ensure equity and fairness in grading, particularly where a curved grading approach may be used.

Several Common Approaches to Online Assessment

Exams and Quizzes

Online exams through Canvas offer opportunities for students to complete timed and untimed exams. Instructors may also set other criteria for online exams, such as restricting when exams are available.

Consider assigning a take-home exam where students return their completed exam through email or as a Canvas assignment.

A portfolio approach may be adapted for small classes. This approach involves students compiling their assignments into a single document and providing annotations that highlight their learning process and revisions to their understanding. Students can also provide a written introduction to the portfolio.

For quantitative or equation focused exams, consider using the Canvas assignments tool for students to upload their written work. Alternatively, instructors can provide students with a visual model or equation with an intentionally missing portion or error and ask students to explain the error, its implications, and correct it. Another approach is to have students generate a test-item for a selected topic, explain the importance of the topic, identify and explain the correct answer to their question, and potentially provide rationale for their incorrect answers.

Keep in mind: You can foster academic integrity by using approaches that ask students to explain their thinking, apply their understanding to a new task, or organize their knowledge in a new way. Present clear guidelines about whether or not students can use resources for the exam or collaborate with each other.

In-class Presentations

Students may record a presentation via Zoom and share the recording link on Canvas or email it to the instructor. Instructors have the option to share presentations with others in the class if peer feedback is part of the assignment.

Instructors may create a video assignment folder allowing students to upload videos created in Zoom, Panopto or most any other video file.

Presenting live via Zoom is also an option. Students may present to the whole class or a subset of peers.

For a non-video option, consider asking students to upload a PowerPoint and/or script of their presentation.

Papers and Other Writing Assignments

Students may submit their written assignments and receive instructor feedback through email or Canvas.

To facilitate peer feedback, students may exchange documents and feedback via email, over Zoom or via Canvas peer review to discuss feedback.

For group assignments, consider using Box (all Yale users) or Google docs (Yale users with EliApps) to facilitate group work simultaneously on a single document. Canvas Groups also offers opportunities to set up collaborative spaces.

Revise the written work to incorporate the impact of the remote context or the COVID-19 pandemic directly. For example, if in line with learning goals, consider having students discuss issues of equity in access to direct materials or the difference between live and recorded performances.

Reconsider the format of the written work. An interview, news article, or cultivated documentation of existing digital resources could be more appropriate in this working context. The latter suggestion may also serve to collate existing resources for potential future remote learning.

Consider having students conduct a metanalysis of their own work, or existing digital resources and course resources, that discusses what they have learned in the course, how their thoughts have developed, and where the current interest lies.

One assessment approach may not work for everyone during times of changing circumstances, so be flexible when possible. Students who are ill or who face technical challenges with remote alternatives should be accommodated. Remember that our priorities are the health and success of our students.

Final Assessments

The same principles above also apply to developing final assessments. We encourage you to reinforce that a final is not the end of students' learning but is an opportunity for feedback on their growth in understanding. A few considerations which may help guide your assessment decision include: focusing on learning objectives, emphasizing the skills you desire your students to gain through the course, and exploring alternative ways for students to demonstrate their learning.

Resources

7 Ways to Assess Online Learning and Minimize Cheating by Flower Darby, The Chronicle of Higher Education (accessible off-campus by logging into Yale's VPN)

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Do you have other questions? Please contact us with questions.

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We aim to help you consider how to adapt your course assessments, along with potential alternatives to standard in-class assessments. When considering assessments under changing circumstances, here are a few criteria to support an effective approach: Define the goal(s) of the assessment. What specific knowledge or skills are you evaluating?

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An interesting Chronicle article regarding the state of student engagement post COVID

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In 20 years of teaching at Doane University, Kate Marley has never seen anything like it. Twenty to 30 percent of her students do not show up for class or complete any of the assignments. The moment she begins to speak, she says, their brains seem to shut off. If she asks questions on what she's been talking about, they don't have any idea. On tests they struggle to recall basic information.

"Stunning" is the word she uses to describe the level of disengagement she and her colleagues have witnessed across the Nebraska campus. "I don't seem to be capable of motivating them to read textbooks or complete assignments," she says of that portion of her students. "They are kind kids. They are really nice to know and talk with. I enjoy them as people." But, she says, "I can't figure out how to help them learn."

Marley, a biology professor, hesitates to talk to her students about the issue, for fear of making them self-conscious, but she has a pretty good idea of what is happening. In addition to two years of shifting among online, hybrid, and in-person classes, many students have suffered deaths in their families, financial insecurity, or other pandemic-related trauma. That adds up to a lot of stress and exhaustion. In a first-year seminar last fall, Marley says, she provided mental-health counseling referrals to seven out of her 17 students.

Marley knew the pandemic was wreaking havoc on people's lives. But she didn't expect that its impact on learning would be so profound, even when students returned, with excitement, to campus.

She is far from alone. The Chronicle recently asked faculty members to share their experiences with student disengagement this academic year. More than 100 people wrote in to describe a disconcerting level of disconnection among students, using words like "defeated," "exhausted," and "overwhelmed."

While a self-selected group, the respondents, several of whom agreed to be interviewed, represent a range of institutions: community colleges, large public universities, small private colleges, and some highly selective institutions. They described common challenges: Far fewer students show up to class. Those who do avoid speaking when possible. Many skip the readings or the homework. They have trouble remembering what they learned and struggle on tests.

The professors also described how they have tried to reach and teach students, what they think is at the root of the problem, and what's needed to fix it. Some believe it may be necessary to change the structure of college itself.

Not that anyone has easy answers, starting with the question of what's at the root of the problem. Do students actually want to be in college? Had they gotten so used to online teaching that simply leaving their dorm rooms seems too hard right now? Did the accommodations that grew out of the pandemic - including flexible attendance policies and fluid deadlines - foster a belief that they could catch up later, but they don't? Or is it that the world itself feels so out of control that students find it hard to care about their classes?

"My students are struggling to focus within and outside of class," wrote one history professor at a public university in Georgia, who, like many respondents, asked to remain anonymous in order to speak frankly. "They feel overwhelmed and pressed for time. They cannot separate the existential dread of Covid and now Ukraine from their daily ability to live."

Though professors reported seeing burnout at all levels, from recent high-school graduates to adult learners, newer students seem to have struggled the most.

Freshmen and sophomores, wrote Ashley Shannon, chair of the English department at Grand Valley State University, in Michigan, are "by and large tragically underprepared to meet the challenges of university life - both academically and in terms of 'adulting,'" such as understanding the consequences of missing a lot of class. "It's not all their fault, by a long shot! I feel for them. But it's a problem, and it's going to have a significant ripple effect."

"Students seem to have lost their sense of connection with the university and university community, and their sense of purpose in attending," said Stephanie Masson, who teaches English at Northwestern State University, in Louisiana. After two or more years of masking, they feel as if it's not OK to get close and talk to someone. "It's almost like they just prefer to sit in their little cone of silence."

Many faculty members thought this academic year, with more people vaccinated, classes meeting in person, and campus clubs and events back in full swing, would be better than last. Yes, Covid remained a significant risk, but those changes were all for the better.

But recent survey data from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, a network of nearly 700 college and university counseling centers, jibes with what faculty members told The Chronicle. The data show that, among students who sought help, self-reported feelings of social anxiety rose significantly in the fall of 2021, with the return to campus, even as feelings of academic distress dropped. Even then, academic worries remained higher than they were before the pandemic, as did feelings of generalized anxiety, family distress, and trauma.

An increase in social anxiety could explain some of the behaviors that professors are seeing among their students, such as skipping class, said Brett E. Scofield, executive director of the center. For some students, avoidance mechanisms are their ways of coping with stress. "All those behaviors," he said, "are very consistent with what students are reporting when they come into counseling services" - the low motivation, lack of focus, and enduring feelings of isolation.

Psychologists describe the wear and tear on the body from cumulative stress as its "allostatic load." That may be what's happening now, Scofield said, and it's something that many people are going through.

Maci Lyman, a junior at Doane, is one of Marley's students. She'd had one semester of a normal college experience before Covid changed everything. A first-generation student from Omaha, Lyman described the nearly five semesters since then as isolating, depressing, and unreal. When the pandemic hit, she moved in with a cousin and tried to do schoolwork from there. In the fall of 2021 she was back on campus, but all of her classes were on Zoom. Her lasting memory of that time is flipping open her laptop in the dark for morning classes, so as not to wake her roommate, then drifting in and out of sleep with it on her chest.Interactions with other people were so limited, she said, that she essentially changed from an extrovert to an introvert.

" I didn't even realize how depressed I was," she said of that period. "It felt normal because everyone was feeling the same way. If you walked up to someone and they were happy, it felt strange."

This past fall, she said, she was determined to reclaim some sense of normalcy, and began getting involved in clubs and activities again. That has proved helpful. But college itself, she said, "almost felt harder."

"There was this expectation to finally be back to normal. And you were like, Well, I don't really know what that is," she continued. "What is the normal college experience?"

As she returned to the classroom, Lyman found that many professors had come to rely more heavily on technology, such as asking everyone to get online to do an activity. Nor do many of her courses have group activities or discussions, which has the effect of making them still seem virtual. "I want so badly to be active in my classroom, but everything just still feels, like, fake almost."

Lyman said Marley is one of the few professors she has who takes time to check in with students in class, and ask how they're doing, as well as encourage them to talk even if they feel as if they don't have much to say.

The junior often wonders how much she has changed simply because she is growing into adulthood, and how much change stems from the pandemic. "Honestly, I feel stuck," she said. After hoping for so long that things would get back to normal, "it was so anticlimactic when you got there."

"Really, this is it? This is what I've been waiting for?"

At the State University of New York at Oswego, Kristin Croyle has been studying the intertwined problem of student exhaustion, disengagement, and anxiety through surveys and conversations with faculty members, the staff, and students.

Croyle, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, believes that the continual pivots in instruction have led students to develop habits that may no longer work now that they are back in classrooms. That feeling of ineffectualness has led to a more existential anxiety - specifically, a loss of confidence in themselves and their futures. A psychologist by training, Croyle is quick to say that those are her working theories, not hard facts. But she thinks that being a young adult today is challenging in ways that people of other ages may not understand.

"Going to college and making that investment in your future, it's an act of hope that you can do something that is exciting and interesting to you, that you can find a career you want to engage with that will make a difference, that you can change the direction of your life with this act," she said. But students' hope in the future right now is low, and that kernel of enthusiasm is hard to sustain. "Our faculty are right there to hold their hand, to see what potential they have to make a difference in the world. It's a long game; it's not a short one. In the short run, it's a really devastating and difficult time."

Camryn Lloyd is a first-year student at Northwestern State and one of Ms. Masson's students. She said she had been spared some of the worst of Covid's college disruptions because she took a year off after high school to join the National Guard, which kept her connected with others. But she, too, finds herself thinking of the pandemic's impact on her life - she lost an uncle - and the lives of her classmates, many of whom seem quiet and withdrawn in class. "I feel like with this generation you can't get too happy," she said. "There's just a lot going on. We don't know what to do. We're in a state of shock."

Many professors note that students' feelings of exhaustion and anxiety mirror their own, and that perhaps they feed off one another. "We're as tired and burnt out as our students are," wrote Shannon, of Grand Valley State, "but are expected (and do genuinely try) to be accommodating and empathetic with their struggles. It's hard to find the line between being supportive of struggling students and just giving up entirely on academic rigor."

Those who teach at colleges with a high percentage of students who are lower-income, come from communities hit hard by Covid, or have work and family responsibilities say the cumulative toll of the pandemic has led to emotional overload and physical exhaustion.

"There is rarely a single issue," wrote one faculty member. "In most cases, it is something closer to a catastrophic cascade failure. The most common components that play into this are: lack of basic needs, an economic or job-related problem, lack of child care, mental-health issues, cost of health care, and caring for a sick family member."

Keri Brandt Off is chair of the sociology department at Fort Lewis College, in Colorado, which enrolls many Native American and Alaska Native students. This past year she has noticed an increased sense of "weightedness" among her students. They show up looking exhausted and often escape into their cellphones. "They're here, but they're not here," she said. That's not surprising, given how hard the pandemic hit Native communities. "I have students who lost many, many family members."

Some faculty members who responded to The Chronicle believe that students' study skills atrophied in the shift to remote learning, especially in high school. Workloads were often lighter. Deadlines became fluid. Discussion happened asynchronously or not at all. Students entered college, they believe, expecting more of the same.

"There has been a lot of concern that the use of Zoom, particularly recording and posting things later, has led students to develop the mistaken idea that they don't need to pay attention or be engaged at the time of class because they can just go back and review the recording later," wrote one faculty member who teaches a large introductory-biology course. "The problem is, they don't do that." In a class of 120, only one or two watch the recorded videos, the instructor said, and only 20 to 30 attend class.

Yet faculty members also pointed out that some of the trends they are seeing this year, including shorter attention spans and growing mental-health problems, predate the pandemic. The strains of the past two years simply accelerated those longer-term trends.

Mary Beth Leibham teaches child development and educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. She began noticing decreased engagement in her classes five or six years ago. Students say they feel overwhelmed, tired, and lost, she wrote. Leibham worries about the pressure students put on themselves "to have it all figured out."

For many students, she said, success means getting straight A's, always going above and beyond, and "good enough" is not really good enough. "This breaks my heart," she wrote. "My students are so much more than their GPAs and sports accomplishments. I tell them this every chance I get, but I fear they don't believe me."

Faculty members said they were responding to these challenges in a variety of ways. In addition to reaching out more frequently to struggling students, many are changing what or how they teach. They are spending more time in class on community-building exercises and group discussions. They are replacing high-stakes tests and papers with smaller, more frequent assignments to reduce anxiety. Many are maintaining flexible deadlines and asking students for input on creating assignments of interest to them.

"Quite frankly, I'm annoyed when I see or hear faculty whining about students not showing up or not putting what the instructor thinks is 100-percent effort in," wrote Sharon Lauricella, a professor of communication and digital-media studies at Ontario Tech University, in Canada. Her approach, she said, is to make sure that her classes are engaging, enjoyable, and essential.

Like many professors, Marley, at Doane University, decided to make building relationships in her classes a priority, as an antidote to the sense of isolation she could feel among her students. She found herself having to work harder, too, to stay positive and assume students are doing the best they can. "In the fall, when I lost that, it became a self-repeating cycle," she said. "I was frustrated with them, and they pulled back."

This semester, she created an anatomy-based scavenger hunt in one course, pairing students with others they had not worked with before. She also rewards students for contributing to class discussions, passing around a bowl of candy. "I talk all the time about how it's important to try," she said. Allison Skala, another of her students, said that approach makes a difference: "Her setting that as the tone in her class has been so motivating. I look forward to going to class because I know my words are going to be taken into consideration."

Incorporating field trips, podcasts, "real world" assignments ― and shorter lectures ― are increasingly popular. The more that an assignment, or a course, connects to students' lives, professors said, the more likely they are to be engaged.

Marley found that to be true in a class about opioids and addiction that she team-teaches with an English professor. Even though a significant percentage of students still don't complete the assignments, they are much more engaged over all. "For a large number of students, they have a family member with an addiction," she said. And compared with, say, an introductory-biology class, this one "speaks much more directly with what's happening in their lives."

Even before Covid hit, Brandt Off, the Fort Lewis sociology professor, had been wrestling with how to address the increase in anxiety and depression she noticed among her students, which sometimes manifested itself in addiction or suicide attempts. She is reminded regularly that even if students aren't showing up, they still have something to say.

"The work they are doing is amazing," she said. "They might not come to class, but they are submitting assignments that are so thoughtful and well done." In a social-theory class that discusses dualism ― the way people present one version of themselves to the world and another in private ― she asked students to apply that concept to their own lives. They came through with powerful essays, she said.

But such strategies are far from a sure bet. And many faculty members said that nothing they do makes much of a difference with their truly disengaged students.

"I can't seem to reach this group," wrote a music-history professor, after describing how she uses low-stakes assignments that include detailed instructions and group work in class, intended to prepare students for an open-book take-home exam. That worked in earlier years, but not now. "I'm trying to be accommodating with extending deadlines, giving personal invitations to office hours and appointments, and more," she said, "but, honestly, it's feeling like they are just not interested in doing the work. I get it. I'm also exhausted."

Professors are talking with colleagues in their departments and across campus ― including psychological counselors and academic advisers ― about those challenges, with mixed results. "We just get lots of contradictory top-down messaging about supporting our students," wrote one, "but little actual guidance about how we can do so while maintaining policies."

Others say it is helpful to discuss challenges and share insights, even if solutions aren't immediately apparent. "Once we see the patterns, we can begin to understand better what is happening," said Brandt Off, "but I mostly feel like I am swimming through the dark as a teacher these days."

For many professors, the struggles they are witnessing in their classrooms raise larger questions. For one, is this simply a transitional period, and students will bounce back in the next semester or two?

"The short answer is, we don't know," said Scofield, of the Center for Collegiate Mental Health. "We're still in a pandemic." What is clear, he said, is that "meeting students can't just be dealt with by one part of college. It's a collective effort."

Some are asking whether college itself needs to change. This is not a new conversation, of course, as it feeds into broader concerns about the value and relevance of a degree. But for some the growing feelings of anxiety and distraction among students have escalated the urgency of the question.

"People come to college because they want to be challenged," said Andy Driska, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at Michigan State University,
who teaches an online graduate course in exercise and sports science. Yet colleges seem hesitant to challenge students right now out of a fear that they might break. "It's almost like we need to come together, as faculty and students. How do we hit the reset button? What does education need to look like?"

Two ideas come up most frequently in the discussions professors say they are having with one another, and in their observations of their own teaching: increasing experiential learning and redesigning courses to connect more closely to students' lived experiences and prospective careers.

Experiential learning, in which students learn by doing, addresses many of the shortcomings of traditional higher education, its proponents say. It connects learning to the world off campus, and it provides a sense of immediacy that lectures, problem sets, and textbooks often cannot. Would it be better, Driska asked, if 18- to 20-year-olds were encouraged to do two years of national service? "I feel like we're at that point," he said. "All reform effects are still just kind of pecking around the edges. We're not talking about big, systematic things to change and rethink education."

Laura Niesen de Abruna is provost of York College of Pennsylvania. She has been closely tracking how remote learning has shaped students. Students wanted to return, she said, but they wanted to come back to residence halls, sports, clubs, and conversations with professors. "What they don't want is to sit passively. It reminds them of what they went through with the great pandemic."

A former president of the Association of Chief Academic Officers, Niesen de Abruna said the time had come to reinvent the academic experience. Can professors build more hands-on learning into their courses? Are their classes and course sequences designed to help students build careers or just turn out future Ph.D.s like themselves?

"How can we change the model that we have in higher education," she said, "from coverage of disciplines to experiential learning, which is really connected to the careers that most of our students are going to have?" The answer, she believes, can help York and other colleges engage students more effectively.

Mallory Bower, SUNY-Oswego's coordinator of first-year experiential courses and engaged learning, has also been thinking about the future of learning. While today's students are prone to anxiety, she noted, they are also adept at exploring and learning through the internet. "Students can feel like, If I can find this on YouTube, then why am I here?" she said. "They are looking for a return on investment, and I don't blame them at all."

Bower incorporates experiential learning in all of her courses, which cover a range of topics, including strategic communications and career preparation. She also leads a first-year seminar that requires students to explore the campus.

Last year she created a course called "Who Do You Think You Are?" It was a success, she said, because students were encouraged to have serious conversations on complicated topics, like abortion laws, race, or sexuality. It also gave them a sense of agency by, for example, devoting class time to discussing how to write to their legislator or register to vote.

Bower acknowledged that professors like her have more leeway than, say, those who teach content-heavy science courses. But she hopes that her classes will provide students with a sense of purpose that will carry over into other parts of their lives. "We can't do everything," she said. "We can't fix everything. But we can do little things."

Creating that sense of connection, to help students see the larger purpose and value of higher education, may be what helps them regain their footing.

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A 'Stunning' Level of Student Disconnection

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In 20 years of teaching at Doane University, Kate Marley has never seen anything like it. Twenty to 30 percent of her students do not show up for class or complete any of the assignments. The moment she begins to speak, she says, their brains seem to shut off.