learning science

A student's laptop on a wooden library desk with a chemistry textbook open beside it and a handwritten notebook in the foreground.

Prompting Patterns That Help Students Learn vs. Ones That Substitute

Socratic chains, explain-first-ask-second, worked-example critique: prompt patterns that force retrieval instead of outsourcing a student's thinking.

• 5 min read
An open biochemistry notebook on a wooden desk with a pen resting across handwritten pathway diagrams, warm afternoon light coming through a nearby window.

Judgments of Learning: Why You Are a Poor Judge of What You Know

Rereading feels like mastery because fluency fools the brain, and students who trust that feeling consistently underestimate what they have not learned

• 5 min read
A student at a desk with several open textbooks, a page of handwritten notes, and crossed-out scribbles under focused desk light.

Desirable Difficulties: Why Struggle Is the Study

Conditions that make practice feel harder often produce better long-term learning. Bjork, Shea & Morgan, and why ease is usually the enemy…

• 7 min read
An open sketchbook on a wooden desk beside a pencil and an open textbook, showing a rough process diagram drawn in pencil.

Drawing vs. Rereading: Why Generating Beats Reviewing

Why drawing from memory beats rereading, even when rereading feels like it's working. The cognitive science of generation, and how to use…

• 6 min read
A student's hand sketching a messy pencil diagram in a spiral notebook under warm desk lamp light.

Why drawing what you’re learning works better than rereading it

The research behind drawing-to-learn, from Fiorella and Mayer to the NSF Picturing to Learn project, and why sketching beats rereading for durable…

• 5 min read