How does effective revision work?

Before pupils or students tackle a new topic in class or as part of their degree course, it can be helpful to prepare them beforehand with suitable exercises. Such preparatory exercises are intended to facilitate understanding later on and help them apply what they have learnt to new situations. However, it is not yet clear exactly how such tasks should ideally be designed to ensure they are truly effective.

The research team therefore aims, amongst other things, to answer the following questions:

• Do people learn better when they have to work out solutions for themselves – or when they follow ready-made solutions?
• Should the tasks be linked to specific real-life situations, or should they be more abstract and simplified?
• What role do the difficulty of the material and the precise wording of the task objective play?

The researchers suspect that there is no single correct answer, but rather that various design elements influence one another. For example, it could be that the task of finding solutions oneself works better with abstract learning material – whilst vivid, real-life examples tend to be more helpful when one is following predefined solutions. This would partly contradict common assumptions.

Why is this important?

In learning research, there have so far been two camps: one believes that learners should discover as much as possible for themselves. The other emphasises the importance of clear guidance to avoid overloading the brain. The project aims to bring these two perspectives together and thus gain a better understanding of why certain preparation methods work – and how teaching materials can be optimised.

Other researchers from Germany, as well as from the UK and Switzerland, are involved in the project. In the long term, the findings of their research are expected to benefit both academic research and practical teaching practice.