Participants will

• Explain the difference between recalling and restudying
• Write recall questions on content taught at least a week earlier
• Plan how students will get corrective feedback

Claims used, from the module

• Established finding

  Practising retrieval tends to produce better long-term retention than spending the same time restudying the material. (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006; Karpicke & Roediger, 2008; Rowland, 2014; Adesope et al., 2017)

• Established finding

  Benefits have been observed in real classrooms across ages and subjects, not only in laboratory studies. (Agarwal et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2021)

• Established finding

  Feedback after retrieval strengthens its benefit and helps correct errors — especially after multiple-choice questions, where learners may otherwise retain incorrect options. (Butler & Roediger, 2008; Rowland, 2014)

• Established finding

  Learners frequently prefer rereading over self-testing when studying on their own. (Karpicke et al., 2009; Dunlosky et al., 2013)

• Interpretation

  High-pressure conditions may reduce the benefit of retrieval practice, which argues for low-stakes formats in class. (Hinze & Rapp, 2014)

• Classroom application

  Open lessons with brief, ungraded recall of earlier material, followed promptly by corrective feedback. (Agarwal et al., 2021; Butler & Roediger, 2008; Hinze & Rapp, 2014)

Not established

• A best spacing interval for a particular class and subject. The research describes a general pattern, not a timetable.
• That retrieval practice repairs understanding that was never built. Students need something accurate to recall.
• That any quiz format works equally well. Research syntheses treat format and feedback as factors that change the size of the benefit.

Misconceptions to expect

“Retrieval practice means more tests and more marking.”

The active ingredient is the attempt to recall. Brief, ungraded recall with prompt feedback is the classroom form discussed in the module.

“If students find it hard, it is not working.”

Learners often prefer rereading because it feels fluent. Effort during recall is expected and is not a sign of failure.

Materials

Mini whiteboards or paper · Ten short terms or facts for the demonstration · A recent unit plan from each participant

Participants will

• Identify sources of unnecessary load in a real explanation
• Design a worked example and a faded version of it
• Decide when support should be withdrawn

Claims used, from the module

• Established finding

  Working memory can hold and actively process only a small amount of new information at any one time. (Cowan, 2001)

• Established finding

  For novices, studying worked examples tends to produce better learning than solving the equivalent problems unaided. (Sweller & Cooper, 1985; Paas, 1992; Atkinson et al., 2000; Sweller et al., 2019)

• Established finding

  Guidance that helps novices can become unnecessary, or even counter-productive, as learners gain expertise. (Kalyuga et al., 2003; Sweller et al., 2019)

• Established finding

  Moving gradually from worked examples to independent problem solving, by removing steps one at a time, tends to support novices’ learning. (Renkl & Atkinson, 2003; Atkinson et al., 2000)

• Interpretation

  Cognitive load is measured indirectly — usually through a self-rated mental effort scale, performance, a secondary task or physiological signals. The common single-item rating gives an overall figure (intrinsic plus extraneous) and cannot easily separate the two. (Paas, 1992; Jong, 2009/2010; Sweller et al., 2019)

• Interpretation

  Most cognitive load experiments use well-defined knowledge and skills; how far the theory guides complex, open-ended learning is an active debate. (Kalyuga & Singh, 2016; Sweller et al., 2019)

Not established

• A fixed number of items students can hold. Capacity estimates depend on the task and on what learners already know.
• That explicit guidance is always best. Support that helps novices can become unhelpful as expertise grows.
• That load can be measured precisely in class. Measures are indirect and cannot reliably separate types of load.

Misconceptions to expect

“Reducing load means making the work easier.”

The aim is to remove load that does not contribute to learning, so working memory is available for the content itself.

“Worked examples are spoon-feeding.”

For novices, studying worked examples tends to beat unaided problem solving. Support is then faded step by step.

Materials

One explanation slide or worksheet from each participant · A worked example from your subject · Coloured pens

Participants will

• Distinguish dual coding from the learning-styles myth
• Integrate labels and text with the diagram they describe
• Remove decorative or irrelevant content from a slide

Claims used, from the module

• Established finding

  People tend to learn more deeply from well-designed combinations of words and pictures than from words alone. (Mayer, 2020; Mayer, 2024)

• Established finding

  Placing words close to the parts of a picture they describe, and presenting narration at the same time as the matching animation, tends to improve learning. (Ginns, 2006; Mayer & Moreno, 2003)

• Established finding

  Highlighting the connections between text and pictures — for example with matching colours, arrows or labels — has a small-to-moderate positive effect on learning. (Richter et al., 2016)

• Established finding

  Matching instruction to a learner’s preferred “learning style”, such as visual or verbal, is not supported by evidence. (Pashler et al., 2008/2009)

• Interpretation

  Interesting but irrelevant details (“seductive details”) can draw attention away from the core explanation. (Mayer & Moreno, 2003; Mayer, 2020)

• Classroom application

  Remove decorative images and side facts from explanation slides, and use signals to link words to the relevant part of the picture. (Mayer & Moreno, 2003; Richter et al., 2016)

Not established

• That more visuals always help. Decorative and irrelevant images can draw attention away from the explanation.
• That some students are "visual learners" who need different teaching. Matching instruction to learning styles is not supported.
• That dual coding theory alone tells you how to design a slide. It is a theory of mental representation, and design principles come from separate research.

Misconceptions to expect

“Dual coding is for visual learners.”

Matching instruction to a preferred learning style is not supported by evidence. Well-designed words and pictures help learners in general.

“Any picture makes a slide better.”

Seductive details, interesting but irrelevant content, can pull attention away from the core idea.

Materials

One explanation slide from each participant · Printed blank diagrams from your subject · Sticky notes

Participants will

• Classify tasks as passive, active, constructive or interactive
• Redesign one task to require explanation, prediction or critique
• Plan an independent check rather than relying on how the lesson felt

Claims used, from the module

• Established finding

  In undergraduate STEM courses, classes that include active learning tend to produce higher exam performance and lower failure rates than continuous lecturing. (Freeman et al., 2014)

• Established finding

  Prompting learners to explain material to themselves tends to improve understanding compared with studying it without such prompts. (Bisra et al., 2018; Chi et al., 1994)

• Established finding

  Students’ feeling of having learned can diverge from what they have actually learned; effortful active work can feel less productive than a fluent lecture. (Deslauriers et al., 2019)

• Interpretation

  The ICAP framework hypothesises that learning tends to increase from passive to active to constructive to interactive engagement, because each mode involves more knowledge-changing processes. (Chi & Wylie, 2014; Chi, 2009)

• Interpretation

  Peer discussion of a well-designed conceptual question can help students reason toward understanding, even when no one in the group starts with the right answer. (Smith et al., 2009; Crouch & Mazur, 2001)

• Classroom application

  Judge a task by what students must produce that goes beyond the information given, not by how busy or physically active they look. (Chi & Wylie, 2014)

Not established

• That ICAP is a proven ranking for every task. It is a framework with a hypothesis about how learning tends to increase.
• That physical activity or movement produces learning by itself.
• That the undergraduate active-learning findings transfer unchanged to every school setting.

Misconceptions to expect

“If students are busy, they are learning.”

Judge a task by what students must generate beyond the information given, not by how active the room looks.

“Students who enjoyed it learned more.”

In one randomised study, students learned more from active classes but felt they had learned less. Use independent checks.

Materials

Two or three tasks from each participant’s recent lessons · ICAP sorting cards · Highlighters

Participants will

• Describe the forethought, performance and reflection cycle
• Plan a think-aloud that models one strategy in their subject
• Design a sequence that gradually hands regulation to students

Claims used, from the module

• Established finding

  Across intervention studies in primary and secondary schools, teaching self-regulated learning strategies has, on average, improved academic performance. (Dignath & Büttner, 2008; Donker et al., 2014)

• Established finding

  Strategy instruction that includes metacognitive knowledge — when and why to use a strategy, not only how — has been associated with larger effects. (Donker et al., 2014)

• Established finding

  Which strategies matter most differs by subject: the effective content of strategy teaching in writing is not the same as in mathematics or reading. (Donker et al., 2014; Dignath & Büttner, 2008)

• Established finding

  Training one executive function task reliably improves performance on that and closely similar tasks; evidence that it transfers broadly to school achievement is weak. (Diamond, 2013)

• Interpretation

  Zimmerman’s cyclical model describes self-regulated learning as three recurring phases: forethought (goals, plans, self-efficacy), performance (strategy use, self-monitoring) and self-reflection (self-evaluation, attribution, adaptation). (Zimmerman, 2002)

• Classroom application

  Explicitly teach strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating, model them aloud, and embed them in subject lessons rather than separate study-skills sessions. (Education Endowment Foundation, 2025; Donker et al., 2014)

Not established

• That generic study-skills lessons transfer to subjects. Guidance favours embedding strategies in subject teaching.
• That training executive functions with games or apps improves school achievement. Broad transfer evidence is weak.
• That effects found when researchers delivered training will be the same when teachers deliver it.

Misconceptions to expect

“Metacognition is a separate lesson on how to learn.”

Strategies are best taught within subjects, because the effective strategies differ by subject.

“Brain-training games build self-regulation.”

Training one executive-function task improves that task and close variants; broad transfer to achievement is weak.

Materials

A problem or text from each participant’s subject · Planning and monitoring prompt cards · Timer