How Learning Works by Susan A. Ambrose & Michael W. Bridges & Michele DiPietro & Marsha C. Lovett & Marie K. Norman & Richard E. Mayer

Author:Susan A. Ambrose & Michael W. Bridges & Michele DiPietro & Marsha C. Lovett & Marie K. Norman & Richard E. Mayer [Ambrose, Susan A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

Accumulating Practice

In addition to identifying the two features that make practice most productive—goal-directed and appropriately challenging—research in this area also reiterates the importance of time on task. In other words, even if students have engaged in high-quality practice, they still need a sufficient quantity of practice for the benefits to accumulate (Healy, Clawson, & McNamara, 1993; Martin, Klein, & Sullivan, 2007). The idea that the benefits of practice accumulate only gradually may seem obvious, but the practical constraints of time and resources often lead faculty to move from concept to concept or skill to skill rather quickly, giving students no more than a single opportunity to practice each. For example, Professor Cox is giving his students exposure to multiple genres, but this comes at the expense of giving students only a single opportunity to develop their skills at writing in each of the genres he has assigned. If his goal is to simply expose students to the three different genres, without expecting them to gain proficiency in any of them, then the design of his activities is appropriate. But if his goal is for students—by the end of the course—to be able to write in each of the three genres at a professional level, then they would need more time on task.

Generally speaking, both professors and students underestimate the need for practice. Students often assume that when they can perform a task on one occasion in one context, their knowledge is secure when, in fact, it is much more difficult than that (see Chapter Four). It takes much more than one trial to learn something new, especially if the goal is for that new knowledge to be retained across time and transferred to new contexts.

Although it is true that the benefits of practice accrue gradually, it is important to note that the knowledge or skill gained by a given amount of additional practice often depends on where the student is in his or her learning process. As Figure 5.2 indicates, the early and late phases of learning tend to show relatively little effect of practice relative to the middle phase. These flatter portions at both ends of the curve tend to occur for two reasons.

The first reason is that the measures students often use to monitor their learning, such as accuracy, tend to be less sensitive at the extremes. So even though learning may be occurring, students do not see evidence of the change and hence feel like they are at a plateau. For example, consider a student who has just started learning to play the violin. Even though this student may be improving in several ways (better recall of the finger positions for different notes, increased accuracy in placement of the bow), the sound produced may be so poor that improvements are hard to detect. Or imagine a student learning to program in a new computer language. Early on, the student may be making so many errors in programming syntax that it is hard to discern that he or she is formulating increasingly better algorithms.

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