<em>Purpose</em> – <it>The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of a long-term (13-week, spaced learning) with a short-term (two-day, block intensive) coaching skills training programme on participants' coaching skills and emotional intelligence.</it>

<em>Findings</em> – <it>Participation in the 13-week training course was associated with increases in both goal-focused coaching skills and emotional intelligence, whereas the two-day block intensive training was associated with increased goal-focused coaching skills, but not emotional intelligence. Further, the magnitude of the increase in goal-focused coaching skills was less for the two-day programme than for the 13-week programme.</it>

Spaced learning usually leads to better recognition memory as compared with massed learning, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive.

Recognition memory tests afterward revealed a significant spacing effect: Participants recognized more items learnt under the spaced learning condition than under the massed learning condition.

The Modified Low-First Method is an optimal spaced learning method which was derived from a reactivation theory of spacing effects and was designed to be effective by setting as advantageous spaces as possible for all items and for any learners with various working memory capacities. It consists of three principles; the first is to sort all items by their probabilities of recall in ascending order at the end of each learning session for the subsequent session, and the second is to omit items whose probabilities of recall have reached a certain level, and the third is to transit to a new learning session when the number of unrecalled items in a session have reached a certain number.

<b>Conclusion </b> Spaced education consisting of clinical scenarios and questions distributed weekly via e-mail can significantly improve students' retention of medical knowledge.

<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">1. Class Size</span></strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My initial thought:</span> Decreasing Class Size from 25 to 15 could significantly improve student achievement.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The bold, loud claim I hear:</span>&nbsp; “Decreasing class sizes is a key to student success!”</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">What the research says:</span>&nbsp; Of the 138 factors of the meta-analyses done, this was ranked as number 106, and had a impact factor of 0.21, well below the hinge point of showing notable change.&nbsp; This is based on studies of more than 40000 classes, and nearly 950000 students worldwide. Perhaps not surprisingly, “quality teaching” has nearly double the impact on student achievement than this factor.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My new thought:</span><strong>&nbsp; </strong>Not the high-yield strategy that I believed.</p>

<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">6.&nbsp; Formative Evaluation of programs</span></strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My initial thought</span>:&nbsp; Extremely important for teachers to adapt and change their methodologies in response to student learning. Using student data to guide instruction and reflection through collaboration with their peers is something that we have been<a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.com/2010/11/restructuring-not-remortgaging-to-make.html"> focussing on in our school through our change in structures</a>.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Loud, bold claim I hear:</span>&nbsp; “I know what works in my class!”</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">What the research says</span>:&nbsp; This ranks as #3 of 138, with an effect of 0.9 over nearly 4000 students and 38 studies.&nbsp; Teachers being purposeful to innovations in that they are looking to see “what works” and “why it works” as well as looking for reasons why students do not do well lead to improvement in instruction and student achievement.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">My new thought</span>:&nbsp; This is the high-yield strategy that can really make a difference at our school, and through the Professional Learning Community Model of providing time for teachers to collaborate and reflect on teaching practices, we have seen a marked increase in the success of our students.</p>

<div class="para"><p>The claim that there is a distinctive new generation of students in possession of sophisticated technology skills and with learning preferences for which education is not equipped to support has excited much recent attention. Proponents arguing that education must change dramatically to cater for the needs of these digital natives have sparked an academic form of a ‘moral panic’ using extreme arguments that have lacked empirical evidence.</p></div><div class="para"><p>The picture beginning to emerge from research on young people's relationships with technology is much more complex than the digital native characterisation suggests. While technology is embedded in their lives, young people's use and skills are not uniform. There is no evidence of widespread and universal disaffection, or of a distinctly different learning style the like of which has never been seen before. </p></div>

Thus Kirschner, Sweller and Clark's paper is an important reminder for us to not carry Problem Based Learning (PBL) to its extreme. That is, while it has its strengths, learners often need a more direct approach in order to build a solid foundations before being presented with PBL.

With the title blaring, “<em>Why Minimal Guidance during Instruction Does Not Work”</em> rather than, <em>“Why Minimal Guidance during Instruction Does Not Work for Novice Learners,” </em>the authors almost seem to ignore that PBL is a necessity in order to promote deeper levels of understanding.

The paper relies heavily on Cognitive Load Theory, yet we have to realize that it is still a theory rather than a law.

Thus, both the authors and the constructivism movement are guilty of jumping on theories before they are fully understood.

<p>The MCPL literature suggests that for an FI to directly improve learning, rather than motivate learning, it has to help the recipient to <em>reject erroneous hypotheses.</em> Whereas correcting errors is a feature of some types of FI messages, most types of FI messages do not contain such information and therefore should not improve learning—a claim consistent with CAI research.</p> <p>Moreover, even in learning situations where performance seems to benefit from FIs, learning through <em>FIs may be inferior to learning through discovery</em> (learning based on feedback from the task, rather than on feedback from an external agent). Task feedback may force the participant to learn task rules and recognize errors (e.g., Frese &amp; Zapf, 1994), whereas FI may lead the participant to learn how to use the FI as a crutch, while shortcutting the need for task learning (cf. J. R. Anderson, 1987). </p>

In the MCPL literature, several reviewers doubt whether FIs have any learning value (Balzer et al., 1989; Brehmer, 1980) and suggest alternatives to FI for increasing learning, such as providing the learner with more task information (Balzer et al., 1989). Another alternative to an FI is designing work or learning<br> environments that encourage trial and error, thus maximizing learning from task feedback without a direct intervention (Frese &amp; Zapf, 1994).

We work in organizations that believe harmful myths. We’re pressured to work as if the myths are true, and we can’t or don’t take the time we need to keep our knowledge up to date and combat the myths.

A rare point of agreement between hard biodeterminists and hard socialists is that telling kids that they’re failing because they just don’t have the right work ethic is a <i>crappy thing to do</i>. It’s usually false and it will make them feel terrible. Behavioral genetics studies show pretty clearly that at least 50% of success at academics and <a href="slatestarcodex.com/2015/02/01/talents-part-2-attitude-vs-altitude/">sports</a> is genetic; various sociologists have put a lot of work into proving that your position in a biased society covers a pretty big portion of the remainder. If somebody who was born with the dice stacked against them works very hard, then they might find themselves at A2 above. To deny this in favor of a “everything is about how hard you work” is to offend the sensibilities of sensible people on the left and right alike.

So basically, you take the most vulnerable people, set them tasks you know they’ll fail at, then lecture them about how they only failed because of insufficient effort.

Stories are effective tools for learning due to their ability to facilitate the following cognitive processes: i) concretizing, ii) assimilation, and iii) structurizing (Evans and Evans 1989).

What is Scenario-Based e-Learning?

<em>A. The learner assumes the role of an actor responding to a job realistic situation.</em>&nbsp;

<em>B. The learning environment is preplanned</em>.&nbsp;

<em>C. Learning is inductive rather than instructive.</em>&nbsp;

<em>D. The instruction is guided</em>.&nbsp;

<em>E. Scenario lessons incorporate instructional resources.</em>&nbsp;

<em>F. The goal is to accelerate workplace expertise.</em>&nbsp;

As you consider incorporating scenario-based e-Learning into your instructional mix, consider whether the acceleration of expertise will give you a return on investment.&nbsp; For example, interviews with subject matter experts indicated that automotive technicians must complete about 100 work orders to reach a reasonable competency level in any given troubleshooting domain.&nbsp; Comparing delivery alternatives, OJT would require around 200+ hours, instructor-led training would require around 100 hours, and scenario-based e-Learning simulations require approximately 33–66 hours.

Finally, many learners find scenario-based e-Learning more motivating than traditional instructional formats.&nbsp; Solving a work-related problem makes the instruction immediately relevant.

1. Keep game complexity simple, particularly when you are using a game to support relatively short lessons.

<strong>2. Reward players for performance, not completion</strong>.

<strong>3. Be cautious with leaderboards</strong>.

4. As much as possible, align the game element choices you use to the learner’s actual job context.

<strong>5. Make the in-game goal align with the learning goal in a reasonable way that “makes sense” for the learners who will play your game or complete your gamified lesson</strong>.

6. Stop thinking you have to make the game super “fun.”

Although fact quizzes were beneficial for fact learning, they did not facilitate higher order learning, contrary to popular intuition based on Bloom’s taxonomy.

Contrary to popular intuition, building a foundation of factual knowledge via retrieval practice did not enhance students’ higher order learning. Instead, students’ final fact test and higher order test performance was greatest following retrieval practice that matched in cognitive complexity based on Bloom’s taxonomy: fact quizzes enhanced final fact test performance and higher order quizzes enhanced final higher order test performance. Retrieval practice increased learning by 20–30% under laboratory conditions with college students and also in an authentic K-12 classroom.

Why didn’t fact quizzes improve higher order learning in the present study, as many cognitive scientists and educators contend? First, students may have been unaware that information on fact quizzes was related to final higher order tests, thus they did not transfer their knowledge without explicit instructions to do so.

Mixed quizzes, comprising both fact and higher order questions, increased higher order test performance more than fact quizzes (in Experiment 2) and slightly more than higher order quizzes (in Experiment

If we want to reach the top of Bloom’s taxonomy, building a foundation of knowledge via fact-based retrieval practice may be less potent than engaging in higher order retrieval practice at the outset, a key finding for future research and classroom application.

That is: when students <span style="color: #000000;"><b>didn’t&nbsp;</b></span>review a particular set of facts, they could still reason with them — as long as they <strong>had practiced</strong> doing that kind of reasoning.