I agree. In my mind, active recall is an excellent technique that's appropriate for the first lecture covering a topic. Which is why I like it as a prompt in

I agree. In my mind, active recall is an excellent technique that's appropriate for the first lecture covering a topic. Which is why I like it as a prompt in a lecture, not so much later on. Constructive learning in my mind comes later. Re: the balance between constructive learning and other types. I feel that we often accelerate the students too quickly to constructive learning, whilst they can still benefit from rote learning some worked examples. The balance between rote learning and "copying" worked examples, and constructive learning from first principles, is a very difficult one. I truly think that, certainly for programming education, all my professional life I've gotten huge mileage out of genuinely copying in example projects and tutorials into a text editor. I think we underestimate just how much students benefit from rote learning. I think programming education would benefit far more from 19 year old rote learning from retired 65 year olds. I find the college education system is fairly broken, in that it deploys researchers who are excellent lecturers, but far too few 65 year olds. And there's an ocean of extremely willing to teach 65 year olds out there.