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A new study reveals that students learn best through prediction activities, even though they don't realize it. This idea is at the center of new research in CBE鈥擫ife Sciences Education from Elise Walck-Shannon, Senior Lecturer and Education Specialist in the Department of Biology and study co-authors Heather Barton and Doug Chalker.

In a large, introductory genetics course, Walck-Shannon and her team first set out to flip the classroom, moving away from lecture-based instruction during class to active problem solving.

"When you're reformatting a class that's so large, you have to think very carefully about what you're doing," Walck-Shannon said. "There should be data to support the changes and buy-in from the instructor team. We were motivated by how much we know a flipped classroom helps students be engaged with a course and how well they learn."

The research that followed examined three different pedagogical methods鈥攊nquiry-based prediction, tell-then-practice activities, and worked examples鈥攖o determine which produced the best results in terms of student learning gains. All three teaching methods were pulled and developed from previous research and literature on the subject. "It was all about knowing what was available and then what fit our curriculum for the semester," Walck-Shannon said. "The course had to be well thought out."

In prediction activities, students were asked to make informed guesses before being taught a concept, helping them build deeper understanding of topics independently. Tell-then-practice activities centered around applying lecture content to different case studies. Worked examples provided step-by-step examples on how to solve a specific problem, followed by "faded" examples that required students to fill in the missing steps themselves.

Surprisingly, even though students believed that worked examples were the most helpful, the greatest learning gains actually came from prediction activities.

"I think we have some deep-seated biases when things feel familiar to us," Walck-Shannon said in response to students favoring the worked examples. "This is true not only for our course activities, but also for how students study independently. They gravitate toward things that are similar to what they've already seen."

Students then feel like they understand the material better than they actually do. "We call this 'illusions of competence,'" Walck-Shannon said.

But prediction activities force students to identify what they don't know. "That's what learning is," Walck-Shannon emphasized. "Once you figure out as much as you possibly can, you realize what gaps you have in your knowledge, and then the instructors are there to fill them in for you, and your groupmates are there to fill them in for you."

Though these activities are what Walck-Shannon considers the "gold standard," that doesn't mean they are intuitive, for either the instructor or the students. "It really requires the instructor to normalize mistakes and normalize not knowing, which is actually a really good life skill."

But despite the disconnect between what students thought was the most helpful and what actually was, students reported that all activities required similar levels of effort. This challenges the previously held assumption that prediction activities are too mentally demanding, especially for introductory courses. "This finding is important because it means that perhaps concerns about effort aren't as relevant when the activities are part of a course design," Walck-Shannon explained.

These findings aren't just for genetics courses. "These prediction activities are very impactful for learning across disciplines and across levels," Walck-Shannon said. "It's a general principle about the way we learn."

Walck-Shannon's goal for this research was clear: "We wanted to make this course better." That's something that everyone, both instructors and students, can get behind, no matter their field.