Elaboration

Elaboration

• Connecting new information to pre-existing knowledge and describing things in many details.

• Asking and explaining why and how things work.

What is elaboration

• Understanding occurs when students elaborate a memory by adding details to it and integrating it with existing knowledge.

• Examples (already doing - will do this semester)

What is elaboration

• One of the best ways to increase learning and memory among many memory theorists.

• Encourages organization, or the connecting and integrating of ideas.

Benefits of elaboration

• Elaborative interrogation.

• Self-explanation.

Elaboration techniques

• A specific method of elaboration where you ask yourself questions about how and why things work, and then produce the answers to those questions (McDaniel & Donnelly, 1996; Pressley, McDaniel, Turnure, Wood, & Ahmad, 1987).

Elaborative interrogation

• You can yourself ask those questions while preparing for your lessons.

Elaborative interrogation

Open Ended

If you were to teach about the topic of neurons, what are examples of elaborative interrogation questions that you might ask?

• Evidence suggests that the benefits of elaboration may be enhanced when learners explain or teach what they know to others, particularly when the learned information is highly technical or conceptually difficult.

Self-explanation

• One interesting application of the self-explanation method is the prepare-to-teach method, where you end up learning the material really well because you have to get good enough to be able to teach it to someone else.

Self-explanation

Open Ended

Which of the discussed strategies you already use in your personal and professional practice? Give examples