Jeffrey Karpicke, associate professor at Purdue University, will address how learning is often identified with the acquisition, encoding, or construction of new knowledge, while retrieval is often considered only a means of assessing knowledge, not a process that contributes to learning. He will provide an overview of his team's recent research showing that active retrieval enhances learning. Karpicke will discuss new findings on the possible mechanisms underlying these retrieval-based learning effects, and highlight ways the research team has sought to extend active retrieval to meaningful learning—the learning of complex educational materials as assessed on measures of inference making and knowledge application. Retrieval processes must be considered in any analysis of learning, and incorporating retrieval into educational activities represents a powerful way to enhance learning.