In a series of recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor James Lang reflected on the fact that most university professors hope that their students will not only remember what they have  taught them, but that their students will be able to apply or "transfer" that knowledge across other disciplines and contexts. (Transfer is the application of skills - knowledge, strategies, approaches or habits - learned in one context and then applied to another, novel context. "Near transfer" is when the learning and transfer contexts are similar. "Far transfer" is when the learning and transfer contexts are not similar to one another.)

In How Learning Works, Susan Ambrose and her colleagues argue that "far transfer is arguably the central goal of education. Yet most research has found that (a) transfer occurs neither often nor automatically, and (b) the more dissimilar the learning and transfer contexts, the less likely transfer will occur. In other words, much as we would like them to, students often do not successfully apply relevant skills or knowledge in novel contexts." (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett and Norman, 2010, p.108)

Ambrose and her co-authors highlight two reasons for the failure-to-transfer on the part of students. First, they may tie whatever knowledge or skill we are teaching too closely to the context in which they learned it. So within a particular course a student can perform well, but in subsequent courses he or she may not know how to apply their learning, or may make the connections between the two. Second, the inability to transfer a skill or information to a novel context might indicate that students understand what to do, but not why. Lang elaborates, "If students are capable of performing well in your class according to some formula they have learned, they might not have grasped the underlying principles of our course content. Without that deeper knowledge of what lies beneath the formula, they can't pick up what they are learning and put it back down in an unrelated context." (Chronicle of Higher Education, March, 2013)

Based on their research, Ambrose suggests instructional strategies that "reinforce a robust understanding of deep structures and underlying principles, provide sufficiently diverse contexts in which to apply these principles, and help students make appropriate connections between the knowledge and skills they possess and new contexts in which those skills apply." (Ambrose, p112) What strategies do facilitate this knowledge transfer according to Ambrose?

• Discuss conditions of applicability. Learning a skill and applying it are two different learning processes. Exploring with the different contexts where a skill is or is not applicable can help students be more successful in transferring successfully.
• Give students diverse opportunities to apply skills or knowledge in diverse contexts. Using varied case studies, taking field trips are just two ways to do this.
• Ask students to generalize to larger principles. Stepping back from the details and looking at the big picture can help students to be more flexible with their knowledge application.
• Use comparisons to help students identify deep features. Structured comparisons can help students focus on the underlying similarities or differences.
• Provide prompts to relevant knowledge. Ask, for example, "Where have we seen this before?" Or "Remember last week when we discussed..."

If you would like to learn more about this topic, you can borrow How Learning Works from the CELT Lending Library, or read Professor Lang's articles, linked below.