Spring is the time of year when students find many things they lost during the long (or just strange, as this year proved) winter. They find sandals and shorts, sunglasses and baseball mitts, and notes that are so incomprehensible they wonder what they thought they were learning in class. It is hard to know…there are few ways we can actually get back to that experience and, more importantly, to the instantaneous learning experience that was occurring.
But students try, and I want to suggest a few ways that you can assist them in the process of remembering how they had engaged in the learning in the first place—encouraging them to time travel and revisit, not just recall.
Have students read old work in order to revisit what they were learning. They may realize they know more now, or they may be able to travel back through the connections they were making at the time. I encourage students to make margin notes on their own papers, asking their former selves questions for clarification or providing clarifications anew.
Have students write what they think they know and then share with a group to gain some objective input. This can be done in the form of a “practice test” in some disciplines, but this knowledge and understanding check should not be abandoned just because the answers are not in the back of the book.
Have students revisit classes that covered particularly difficult material technologically: by revisiting text presented or lectures captured. This is a helpful step for students to take once they have identified what they need to know (through a knowledge and understanding check).
Engaging in a process of revisiting learning will encourage many students—they have learned more than they think! For the students who get discouraged by this process, it may still prove useful as they realize that they have identified known unknowns before the test hits the desk (screen?).