1 An Overview of the SIR Techniques 7 The SIR Techniques

Quiz Yourself

Which of the following is the most effective learning technique? a. Summarizing b. Rereading c. Highlighting d. Practice testing

The SIR Techniques

Aiming to understand how students can use effective techniques to better regulate their learning, psychology scholars John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham (2013) conducted a meta-analysis on the following ten popular learning techniques. 1. Elaborative interrogation: Students explain in their own words why something is true. 2. Summarization: Students create a condensed version of the learning topic, including the main ideas. 3. Keyword mnemonic: Students associate new information with mental images of similar-sounding words. 4. Rereading: Students go back over material they have previously read. 5. Distributed practice: Students learn information over the span of several learning sessions rather than all at once in a single learning session, thus spreading learning out over time. 6. Self-explanation: Students explain what they are doing and thinking in the learning process. 7. Highlighting: Students underline, mark, or notate important information as they go through material. 8. Imagery for text: Students imagine a scene or create a mental image of information as they read text or listen to narrated text. 9. Practice testing: Students take practice tests or quizzes on the information they are trying to learn. 10. Interleaved practice: Students complete randomly ordered problems rather than problems grouped by similar content.

After reviewing almost four hundred studies, Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) categorize each technique based on the impact on student learning. The two techniques that stand out as being the most effective are distributed practice and practice testing. As Dunlosky (2013) writes in a separate article, the highest-rated strategies “help students regardless of age,” and “they can enhance learning and comprehension of a large range of materials” (p. 13). Most importantly, Dunlosky (2013) contends, “They can boost student achievement” (p. 13). Another technique that places closely behind distributed practice and practice testing is interleaved practice. In contrast, some of the techniques Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) find to have the lowest effect on student achievement are summarizing, highlighting, and rereading.

Despite Dunlosky and colleagues’ (2013) findings, many teachers have not been exposed to more effective practices (Boser, 2019), and students frequently report using ineffective methods such as highlighting and rereading (Morehead, Rhodes, & DeLozier, 2016). Teachers rely on tra- Many teachers ditional techniques and, believing them to be effective, endorse have not been them to students; students continue to use them because it’s what exposed to more they’ve learned to do. Without a reason to challenge the status quo, the cycle continues. effective practices,

While different researchers use a variety of names for distributed and students practice, interleaved practice, and practice testing, for the pur- frequently report poses of this book, I use the terms spaced repetition, interleaving, using highlighting and retrieval, respectively. Together, these form the acronym SIR. and rereading. • Spaced repetition: Spacing out the learning of a topic over time and revisiting or re-engaging in the material • Interleaving: Alternating topics on an item-by-item basis so that no topic is repeated in back-to-back questions • Retrieval: Recalling information

Research affirms the SIR techniques are three of the most effective learning techniques to increase long-term retention, application, and transfer (Dunlosky et al., 2013; Ebersbach & Nazari, 2020; Lyle, Bego, Hopkins, Hieb, & Ralston, 2020; Wang, Zhou, & Shah, 2014). Advocating for spaced repetition, cognitive scientists Shana K. Carpenter and Pooja K. Agarwal (2020) write, “Students who engage in spaced practice learn the concepts better and also show enhanced understanding—not just memorization—of how the concepts apply to new situations” (p. 6). Cross-cultural communication scholars Tatsuya Nakata and Yuichi Suzuki (2019b) conclude that interleaving increases retention as well as application and transfer. And, regarding retrieval, learning science researchers