This document outlines six teaching strategies for effective distance learning: spacing, interleaving, retrieval practice, concrete examples, elaboration, and dual coding. It discusses each strategy in 2-3 paragraphs, explaining what the strategy is and providing an example of how it could be implemented in a distance learning setting. The strategies are meant to promote long-term durable learning according to cognitive psychology research. The document encourages teachers to use these flexible strategies and combinations of strategies to foster student learning in their distance learning courses.

1. PRAYER

2. FIFTH LEARNING ACTION
CELL
Project MDL Response
Enhancing Teaching
Strategies Responsive to
Modular Distance
Learning
June 7-14, 2021

3. Strategies for
Effective
Distance Learning

4. Come to think of it
What are the challenges that
test teaching quality as posed
by the pandemic?
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5. 5
At the end of the session, participants are
expected to:
> 1. Gain understanding on the teaching
strategies for effective distance learning
> 2. Analyze how these teaching strategies
improve the quality of teaching learning process
> 3. Apply the strategies in the teaching learning
process as suitable to educational changes

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7. Are you willing to empty
your cup today and learn
anew?
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8. SIX TEACHING
STRATEGIES FOR
EFFECTIVE DISTANCE
LEARNING
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9. 9
INTRODUCTION
Cognitive psychologists have identified six
key strategies that promote learning in many
situations, and this research can be implemented to
promote long-term durable learning. These six
strategies have been heavily investigated for
decades, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest
their effectiveness in a variety of situations. These
situations can include distance learning!

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 they are very flexible
 understanding the strategies and how they work
can help teachers implement them in their
distance learning environments in ways that will
foster student learning that works best for
them
 there are also countless ways that the
strategies can be combined to be used together.

11. Six Strategies for
Effective Distance
Learning: A Summary for
Teachers
By Megan Sumeracki
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12. SPACING
#1

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Spacing or spreading out learning opportunities
over time improves learning. For example,
students will learn and retain more if they study 30
minutes M-F, rather than for 2.5 hours all on one
day. Students should create a schedule with brief
study sessions each day and stick to it. Blocking
off time works best because it is easy to
procrastinate when an assignment is not
immediately due.

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Creating a schedule and sticking to it is especially
important in distance courses, where students are
often required to move through more of the work at
their own pace. In these cases, the students need
to schedule time to complete their assignments
(e.g., watching videos, readings, taking quizzes)
and study and review the content later. The
flexibility of allowing students to create their own
schedule and work through material at their own
pace can be very convenient for students with busy
schedules (e.g., those who are working a lot, have
children at home, etc.).

15. INTERLEAVING
#2

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Interleaving basically means jumbling up ideas.
Students learn more when they can switch
between different topics. Doing this helps students
learn the similarities and differences between
different ideas. In math, for example, students
learn more when they solve many different types of
problems during practice rather than solving the
same type over and over. This typically leads to
more mistakes during practice, but in the long-run,
the students retain their knowledge much longer.

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When giving students homework assignments to
do, require them to work on material that is both
new and old (creating both spacing and
interleaving). Pose prompting questions that
require the students to integrate knowledge across
topics.

18. RETRIEVAL
PRACTICE
#3

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Retrieval practice involves bringing information to
mind from memory. This happens when students
take practice tests or quizzes, but it can be done in
other ways too. For example, students can just
write out what they can remember on a blank sheet
of paper, or even draw ideas. The key is that they
should bring the information to mind from memory.
So, copying one’s notes would not be very helpful,
but trying to summarize their notes from their
memory would be very beneficial. The students do
not need to remember everything and can check
their notes after retrieval to fill in gaps.

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It is a good idea to write questions for which
the students will not be able to find the answer
word-for-word. Some research does show that
open-book retrieval opportunities can be
effective and that multiple-choice questions
can be written to be just as effective at
producing learning as short-answer. Write
questions that require students to apply
concepts to specific examples, or identify
components within an example.

21. CONCRETE
EXAMPLES
#4

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Concrete information is easier to remember
than abstract information, and so concrete
examples foster learning. Importantly,
research shows that multiple examples of the
same idea, especially with different surface
details, helps students understand the true
idea the example is intending to illustrate. This
is because novices tend to remember surface
details.

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Imagine teaching about scarcity and using
airline tickets as an example. Students later
may remember scarcity was about flying, but
not the rest. Using other examples that have
nothing to do with tickets (e.g., water during a
drought) and making the link between the
examples explicit for the students helps them
understand the underlying abstract idea.

24. ELABORATION
#5

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Elaboration involves asking “how” and “why”
questions about a specific topic, and then
trying to find the answers to those questions.
The act of trying to describe and explain how
and why things work helps students
understand and learn.

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Students can also explain how the topics
relate to their own lives, or take two topics and
explain how they are similar and how they are
different. Provide the students with prompting
questions (especially those that require the
students to integrate information across
different content, introducing more spacing
and interleaving) and ask the students to work
through the answers to those questions
together.

27. DUAL CODING
#6

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Dual coding is all about combining verbal
representations of information (words) with
visual representations of information
(pictures/diagrams). When we combine these,
it is easier for us to understand the information
being presented.

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Importantly, this is not the same thing as
learning styles. While students do have
preferences, matching these preferences
does not help them learn. Instead, we all learn
best when we have multiple representations of
the same idea. Importantly, make sure the
students have enough time to digest both
representations. When students are studying,
they should use multiple representations and
try to explain to themselves how the different
representations show the same idea.

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They are all difficult.
The research
consistently shows that
this difficulty is a good
thing; the strategies
that feel easy are the
ones that do not
promote learning in the
long-run.

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They all promote long-term learning.
This is important to remember. Often
when using the strategies, it feels to
students as though they are not
promoting learning. This is probably
due to the difficulty. However, the
research shows us that, in the long-
term these strategies work very well.
Conversely, the strategies that feel
easy and feel as though we “really
know it” promote “learning” that is
almost immediately forgotten (even
by the next day).

32. APPLICATION
Employ the
teaching strategy
assigned to you in
modifying the COT
exemplar you have
prepared.
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34. THANK YOU!
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35. POST
CONFERENCE
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36. AWARDING
OF
CERTIFICATES
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