Part 1
1. Self-explanation: First, I would ask students to explain diagrams and figures. Second, I could give them a statement with an error about a specific economic event and ask students to find an error and provide a correct explanation. Third, I can use technology-enhanced representations such as simulations mentioned in Chiu and Chi (2018).
o The expected learning outcomes: help students retrieve the existing mental models, identify gaps in their understanding and revise their prior knowledge or existing mental models. Noticing those gaps or missing information helps them revise their mental models.
2. Spaced Practice: To implement spaced practice during my course, I would give take-home assignments, review them after evaluating, and have review sessions before mid-terms and final exams. Moreover, midterms and final exams would be cumulative.
o Spaced practice creates desirable difficulties, but it improves long-term retention. Learners tend to forget some information from a previous session between study sessions. For example, when they return to the task in the next session, they may make errors, forget some definitions, etc. (from Module 3). Thus, they will identify their weaknesses and missing information. This strategy improves long-term retention, and students perform better on the final test.
3. Successive relearning: I might suggest using successive relearning with flashcards or Cornell note-taking system for students following Dunlosky et al. (2015).
o The evidence suggests that the successive relearning technique boosts student performance, produces long-term retention, and is relatively efficient because relearning requires less time (from Module 1).
4. Interleaving: In some topics, e.g., price indices, I would use a take-home assignment with mixed components of all price indices and without formulas. Thus, students need to find the correct components and equations for each price index to calculate them correctly.
o It creates desirable difficulties by making confusion between different tasks that are mixed. In addition, it includes difficulties due to spacing, such as forgetting. Those difficulties help learners find and understand differences between categories.
5. Testing/practice testing: For economics courses, test banks are large enough and available so that students can practice several times in each subject. Thus, I can effectively use testing in-class or out-of-class. Moreover, students can do self-testing for their independent learning.
o The test-enhanced learning encourages the retrieval of memories or concepts in the mind. In addition, learners make errors on a practice test, sometimes errors of commission or omission. Making errors and learning from those mistakes would strengthen memory as a desirable difficulty. Testing leads to better long-term retention or recall.
Part 2
To retain and use students' prior knowledge obtained in the first semester, I would use elaboration and interleaving strategies in the second semester of the course. The reasons are as follows.
First, I would give assignments and tests with why and how questions in the second semester that force students to use elaboration strategy. It encourages students to connect with the information they already know from the first semester while responding to how and why questions. Based on students' prior knowledge, instructors can boost the learning process in the second semester and enhance their long-term retention simultaneously.
Second, I could provide instructional materials and problem sets that include related problems from the first and second semesters. Working through those problems over two or three sessions, students understand key differences between what they’re learning now and previously. It also will foster long-term recall.
Part 3
1. Self-explanation is a strategy of learning in which learners try to describe an idea or a concept in their own words and make sense of new information by explaining it to themself.
o Chiu, J. L., & Chi, M. T. (2014). Supporting self-explanation in the classroom. Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum, 91-103.
2. Spaced practice is a strategy of learning that spreads out a study of the same content across time.
o Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2015). Practice tests, spaced practice, and successive relearning: Tips for classroom use and for guiding students’ learning. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1(1), 72.
3. Successive relearning: Successive relearning involves self-testing until you can correctly recall the target information from memory and, critically, doing so in more than one practice session.
o Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2015). Practice tests, spaced practice, and successive relearning: Tips for classroom use and for guiding students’ learning. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1(1), 72.
4. Interleaved is a type of spaced practice in which the learner moves between studying related subtopics in a single learning session and across multiple learning sessions
o Carpenter, S. K. (2014). Spacing and interleaving of study and practice. Applying the science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum, 131-141.
5. Practice testing is self-testing or taking practice tests over to-be-learned material
o Roediger III, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2018). Reflections on the resurgence of interest in the testing effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 236-241.