Optimize for cognitive learning

0. Stay with the essence

Do not overload the students with information.

1. Give clear, structured instruction

Indicate clearly in your online instruction what the learning objectives are. Explain in understandable language what students need to know or be able to do between this contact moment and the next contact moment. Don't give too much learning material at once, but divide it into clearly defined chunks.

2. Activate the prior knowledge of your students

With advance organizers you can structure the lesson material and link it to what the students already know. For example, in Powerpoint you can create a graphical representation of the new material and show how it fits into the bigger picture. Or make a short YouTube video about the new material or write a short text that is relevant to your students introducing the new material. You can also give your students an online quiz with which they can retrieve their existing knowledge about the new subject (with MentiMeter of Canvas Quizzes, for example).

3. Use examples

Especially when the material is new to your students it is good to use examples in your online instruction. One way to effectively use examples (for example in mathematics and mathematics) is to use worked examples. These are exercises of which the solution is fully written out. You can also indicate how to solve different intermediate steps. Another kind of example is a modeling example. In this example, you present the solution by means of a YouTube video and continuously indicate during the solution why you take certain steps. Also show concrete examples of what you explain, via an image or also via a linked YouTube video.

4. Support for difficult tasks

It is a misconception that students have to start immediately with difficult assignments in order to learn how to do it. An important idea to take into account is that the student's workload should match his/her current expertise on the subject matter. Hence the idea of scaffolding: support students more strongly in the first phase after the instructional moment and build this support down as your students get a better understanding of the material. Of course this requires that you have to be able to 'follow' students, to support them with hints, suggestions, questions, etc. where necessary. In online learning environments this can be organized by a chat function with the teacher, or clickable hints or question forums. If you do not have access to these, you can add a question time by phone or e-mail in the period shortly after the instruction.

5. Have subject matter actively processed

This tip is about how you can have the subject matter processed in an effective way immediately after the instruction. It is not enough simply to let them study a particular chapter/section from the book. Therefore, give the students activating assignments during the processing of the material. Have students elaborate: For example, include who-what-why questions in your instruction and have students submit the answers digitally. Let students explain themselves or teach themselves: let them explain explicitly how they solved a problem, let them write down (parts of) the material in their own words, or ask them to explain the material to a brother/sister/parent after they have studied it. You can also have students draw up a so-called Cornell-scheme, with a title at the top of the page, in a left-hand column below important terms from the material, and in a right-hand column the (short) explanation of these terms, possibly supplemented with drawings, diagrams and so on. The student can use this scheme to structure the material, but also to test himself or herself for comprehension (see also tip 6).

With the previous tips you create a basic knowledge of the new material, but that is obviously not enough to make the material stick in the long term. The following tips are therefore about how you can let the students practice with the material in order to learn it for the long term. In this specific case, let's assume a period of three weeks in which the material has to be mastered.

6. Let the student test him/herself

There are many possibilities to have your students make digital self-tests (e.g. Canvas Quizzes, MentiMeter). This is an easy way to let your students practice with the material that also delivers a lot of results. Research clearly shows that taking a practice test leads to better learning (than re-reading the material, for example), but also gives the student insight into whether he/she has understood the material. The latter is important, because as a teacher you are not present with the student to check understanding. A self-test helps the student to regulate his/her learning behaviour. It is important that the student gets feedback on his/her answers. Usually this can be automatically built into an online self-test, but you can also have students provide answers and give feedback on them. An interesting application of practice tests is also to make a test (via a link) about the already treated material at the moment you communicate with students about new material. Such a practice test on topic A can then be returned to the instruction on topics B, C and D. Taking a practice test once can be very fruitful, but ideally you should return to the same test twice in the three-week period. You can also have students set up their own practice tests, for example in the form of flashcards, with a question about the material on one side and the answer on the other side.

7. Spread exercise over time

Students tend to concentrate their exercise with the subject matter within a limited period of time, but research shows that it is much more effective to spread the exercise over time. Therefore, for each delineated online instruction you offer, schedule three practice moments in which students will later practice with the material offered during the instruction. Indicate clearly in your instruction when you expect the students to do these exercises. For example, for a period of three weeks, the practice moments could be: after 3 days, after 6 days, and after 9 days (calculated with the 20 percent rule). The exercises could be, for example, assignments from the method or (online) self-tests drawn up by the teacher (see tip 6).