Educational Development Digest: February 2025

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By Catherine Ford, Program Director for Educational Development, Minnesota State

Simply stated, retrieval practice is the act of recalling information from memory at spaced intervals.  In their book Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014) emphasize that when it comes to learning, “practice at retrieving new knowledge or skill from memory is a potent tool for learning and durable retention” (p. 43). Pulling from similar cognitive research James Lang, author of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (2016), writes, “the more times we draw [information] from memory, the more deeply we carve out the pathway, and the more we make that piece of information or experience available to us is the future” (p.28).

Integrating retrieval practice is important and can be relatively easy to incorporate into your classes. It is important to note that in this instance, retrieval practice is a learning strategy and not used as a formative assessment strategy.

It may at first seem strange to students because you don’t need to collect student answers or turn in responses, so you’ll want to explicitly call out the activity as retrieval practice and perhaps share an brief explanation of the benefits of retrieval practice.

Try Two Things

Here is one strategy to try this month in your class during the next unit; it is called Two Things. This particular strategy is highly valuable and does not take a lot of preparation or time during class. You may be familiar with exit tickets in which you ask students to write down a response or answer to a specific question or what they have learned during class, but it can be much more than this.

This approach can be used at the beginning, in the middle, or during the end of a class or lesson either in person or during a asynchronous class. Choosing this quick approach to supporting student retrieval practice does not need to additional preparation and can be flexible. Again, remember that asking students to use effort to retrieve knowledge even by asking for two things from class supports their long term learning and recall.

The book Powerful Teaching: Unleashing the Science of Learning (Agarwal and Bain, 2019) suggests these concrete approaches to implement the Two Things strategy:

1. Begin class or the unit with asking students to identify two things they remember from yesterday, last week, or last unit.
2. In the middle of a class or lesson, pause and ask students to write down two things what they have learned so far.
3. At the end of class, ask students to draw two connections between course content and their life.

You may want to enhance Two Things by adding a think-pair-share. Agarwal and Bains (2019) identify this as a way for “students to confirm their two things are on point and [students] learn more things they didn’t write down from one another” (p. 63). Additionally, if Two Things are integrated regularly and collected in a consistent location (i.e. notebook, online discussion), students can use these as notes for future reference.

Your challenge this month is to integrate this retrieval practice into your course…and more than just once in the semester. Once a week or a few times this week, next week, and over the next month, prompt students to retrieve information and engrain the learning into long term memory.

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By Elizabeth Harsma, Program Director for Technology Integrated Learning, Minnesota State

In the Pedagogy in Practice story above, we learned the Two Things strategy. In summary, you implement Two Things by asking students to use only their memories to recall two things from last month, last week, from the first half of class, etc.  

Overview 

Here I share one technology tool you can use today to implement this strategy, Microsoft Forms. The table shares an overview of the tool, course modalities, and features. 

Tech Tool	Course Modality	Features
Microsoft Forms	Works for in-person, flexible, synchronous, and asynchronous courses.	Highlighted features include  auto-created word cloud, link to or embed form in course page, and optionally require StarID sign on.

How to 

There are three steps to create a Microsoft Form to implement Two Things: 

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By Megan Babel, Communications Coordinator, Minnesota State

September 25-26, 2025

Minnesota State University Moorhead and Online

The Network for Educational Development (NED) Teaching and Learning Conference is an opportunity for educators to share their evidence-based experiences and learn from each other as we explore the theme Promoting Equity through Data Practices. The conference also provides opportunities for networking and collaboration among educators from different colleges and universities.

The NED Teaching and Learning Conference Committee seeks proposals for sessions that provide attendees with the tools and resources needed to reposition, rethink, and revitalize systems and selves, and that are grounded in research and supported by evidence.

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