Effective Learning and Instruction

Effective knowledge transfer and skill creation in a fast changing social and technological environment represents a major challenge for both learners and educators in the 21st century. This book aims to provide relevant and practically useful insight into learning, cognition and instructional design strategies based on peer reviewed scientific research. The book begins with a compact review of the quest to increase the knowledge transfer efficiency for both in-class and blended teaching together with methods to influence science-teaching practice at universities through science education specialists. Several articles investigate ways to improve cognitive performance through drugs (nootropics), brain stimulation, mnemonics, and external aids. The next papers concentrate on the cognitive benefits of enactment/gestures, optimized sleep, and the effectiveness of pills and exercise. Subsequently discussed topics are successful memory-performance boosting via temporal structuring during encoding and retrieval, and the application of daily testing to reduce achievement gaps in large classes. The strategy part begins with three sets of 10 simple rules for online learning, lifelong learning, and teaching bioinformatics at high schools. Then follows an analysis of group work as an incentive for learning, the creation of learner centered assessment strategies to promote student retention and class participation, dynamic and interactive visualizations to teach statistical concepts, and the effects of prompt-based interactive interventions. The latter prepares for the subsequent eLearning section, which investigates risk-based learning games and offers empirical guidelines for developing an online simulation course. Two papers report successful outcomes teaching scientific thinking using controversial put engaging or unexpected topics like homeopathy, goblins, or heavy metal music. Another study shows how statistical concepts can be taught using dance videos. The end of the strategy part is marked by two studies describing effective use of educational games to engage younger learners and motivate them to eat healthier or learn to read. The third part is about educational tools. It contains further information on massive open online courses (MOOCs) as learning platforms, polling and audience feedback systems like clickers, and a software tool that considerably simplifies (while following cognitive principles) the creation of an easy to understand multimedia instruction manual.