Hello all! I'm sure that most of us are very busy with teaching at this point in the year, so I hope things are going well so far.Last week, I wrote about Dunlosky et al's research, and how the spacing and retrieval practice (or a combination of the two) are seen as highly effective study strategies. Today I want to delve into a couple of the other strategies discussed in the article.The following are listed by Dunlosky et al as having evidence of 'moderate' utility, meaning that while not as powerful as retrieval practice and spacing, they should still be part of the conversation on study habits:elaborative interrogationself-explanationinterleaving.I won't focus again on interleaving, as that was the subject of a recent issue (and I'll return to it soon to look at some interesting new evidence).Instead, let's focus on elaborative interrogation and self-explanation. Interestingly, both are techniques that lend themselves well to study situations where students are working through notes and textbooks.Now, you might wonder why you would do these things at all if they are less effective...?I can suggest a couple of reasons:Firstly, as briefly discussed last time, new evidence can emerge. As Dunlosky & Rawson suggest (and I talk about here) interleaving now has more evidence behind it. We shouldn't be too quick to rule out other approaches, as some could be more or less effective depending on how they are done.Secondly, we know that students like to use a mix of strategies. Many of them will engage in re-reading of their notes whether we tell them to or not, so we should figure out how this can be done effectively.With that out of the way, what exactly is the difference between the two techniques?Dunlosky et al describe elaborative interrogation as "Generating an explanation for why an explicitly-stated fact or concept is true".They say that self-explanation involves "explaining how new information is related to known information, or explaining steps taken during problem solving."However, they also point out that both techniques involve answering 'why' questions, and both depend on domain knowledge (p. 7). The two are therefore easily confused, and it might be hard for your students to appreciate the difference. Indeed, even my Masters students find it hard to distinguish the two.And in fact, I would suggest that doing so is perhaps not necessary. Instead, we can see both techniques as forming part of a broader category: "explanatory questioning". They can overlap, with some approaches to questioning ourselves and our own knowledge linking more to one or to the other, or perhaps drawing on both.That is the approach taken in this recommended study by Roediger & Pyc (2012), who say:"elaborative interrogation and self-explanation are related because both strategies encourage or even require students to be active learners, explaining the information to themselves..." (p. 242).They also point out that using these techniques slow readers down, forcing them to read their notes more carefully and more critically.Indeed, this is why they are effective.Following on from the idea of desirable difficulties (see this previous newsletter issue), it's all too easy for students to skim-read or highlight their notes. Doing so tends to be very shallow, and doesn't foster deep processing, or boost understanding.Some ways that students could be encouraged to read their notes more effectively include:Stopping to write a summary of each page.Underlining each piece of terminology, and explaining what it means to themselves (orally or in writing).Drawing flowcharts or other simple diagrams to show how processes work.Briefly reflecting on the strategy they used when solving a problem.Asking themselves what is missing from a set of information.These and many other strategies slow the process of (re-)reading notes, but will help to deepen understanding.For such strategies to be adopted, it it is also vital for educators to boost learners' metacognitive understanding of more effective ways to study with notes, and to do so early! I said as much at my recent talk at the Scottish Learning Festival, which was summarised in this TES article. In short, we can't assume that learners will figure out effective study strategies for themselves.That’s it for now! Any questions, feel free to reply to this email, and I’ll try to pick them up in a future issue.JonathanLast week: Dunlosky et al's strategiesTwitter: @JW_FirthWebsite: www.jonathanfirth.co.uk