Learning as a Generative Activity

During the past twenty-five years researchers have made impressive advances in pinpointing effective learning strategies (namely activities the learner engages in during learning that are intended to improve learning). In Learning as a Generative Activity: Eight Learning Strategies that Promote Understanding Logan Fiorella and Richard E. Mayer share eight evidence-based learning strategies that promote understanding: summarizing mapping drawing imagining self-testing self-explaining teaching and enacting. Each chapter describes and exemplifies a learning strategy examines the underlying cognitive theory evaluates strategy effectiveness by analyzing the latest research pinpoints boundary conditions and explores practical implications and future directions. Each learning strategy targets generative learning in which learners actively make sense out of the material so they can apply their learning to new situations. This concise accessible introduction to learning strategies will benefit students researchers and practitioners in educational psychology as well as general readers interested in the important twenty-first-century skill of regulating one''s own learning.