Elaboration

There’s always more to the story.

What is it?

Elaboration is all about you asking questions of and adding details to the concepts you’re learning to make them your own and make it easier to recall them later. You can practice elaboration throughout the learning process.

Why is it Effective?

As you add details and connect learning to other ideas you strengthen pathways to the knowledge and also locate the new knowledge within your existing knowledge. Both of these make it easier to recall later.
Asking and answering questions about the material helps you to make sure that you understand it on your own terms and do so in connection to concepts you know already

How to Use Elaboration

Ask Questions: If you’re learning in a classroom ask questions of the professor and in your notes. It’s also important to follow-up and find answers to the questions.
Create Connections: You can also elaborate on your learning by describing how it connects to your own experience and things you’ve learned before. You can do this by writing notes, creating flash cards or drawing pictures or diagrams.
Create a Mnemonic: It’s a funny word but a mnemonic device is just when you create something like a rhyme or acronym or other association with what you’re trying to remember. For example, people use the acronym ROY G BIV to remember the colors of the rainbow: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.
Write it Yourself: use your own words to summarize the main ideas of a topic. If you can put them together into a short story it will help even more. The story doesn’t have to be great or even make sense to someone else, it just needs to help you remember a set of ideas.

When to Use Elaboration

It’s great to ask questions when you have an expert on hand who can help answer them (like a professor or tutor).
Adding details and making connections works best when you’ve become somewhat familiar with a topic.
Mnemonics are great for related sets of words, ideas or processes.
Writing it in your own words works well when you have a book, good notes, study guide or other material to look at to make sure your words are correct.

Tips & Tricks

Ask questions in class: Why is something the way it is, what happens if you change part of it, when is something not true.
Ask your professor to elaborate.
Participate in class discussions.
Ask questions as you study. Continue to ask questions of the material as you study. In addition to basic what, when, why, how questions you can ask yourself, what was most interesting?, what was most confusing?, how does this connect to other parts of the class? Remember to ask for help with the answers if you’re having trouble finding them.
Change the conditions of the examples given in class and figure out what the consequences are (check the answer with the materials, the professor or a tutor).

Video Overview

[video 1:31] Study Strategies: Elaborationhttps://youtu.be/Pjrqc6UMDKM

[length: 1:31] This video is a visual overview of elaboration. It was created by the Learning Scientists. View this video on YouTube.

Resources

Downloads

[pdf 1 page quick guide] Learn to Study Using Elaboration

Podcasts and web sites

[website] The Learning Scientists: Elaboration
[blog post] Learn to Study Using Elaboration
[website] How to Learn Better: Part 3 Elaboration
[blog post] Study Techniques: Elaborate
[podcast 13:35] Elaborative Interrogation
[podcast 7:20] Bite-Size Research on Elaborative Interrogation
[podcast 20:52] How Students Can Use Interleaving, Elaboration, Dual Coding, and Concrete Examples