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the most effective learning strategies are not intuitive.
If you’re good at learning, you have an advantage in life.
learning is an acquired skill, and the most effective strategies are often counterintuitive.
Rereading text and massed practice of a skill or new knowledge are by far the preferred study strategies of learners of all stripes, but they’re also among the least productive.
Retrieval strengthens the memory and interrupts forgetting.
A single, simple quiz after reading a text or hearing a lecture produces better learning and remembering than rereading the text or reviewing lecture notes.
Trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning, even when errors are made in the attempt.
The popular notion that you learn better when you receive instruction in a form consistent with your preferred learning style, for example as an auditory or visual learner, is not supported by the empirical research.
For instance, interleaving practice at computing the volumes of different kinds of geometric solids makes you more skilled at picking the right solution when a later test presents a random solid.
Testing helps calibrate our judgments of what we’ve learned.
all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool to identify and bring up your areas of weakness.
Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.
Mere repetition did not enhance learning.
repetition by itself does not lead to good long-term memory.
If rereading is largely ineffective, why do students favor it?
rising familiarity with a text and fluency in reading it can create an illusion of mastery.
Mastering the lecture or the text is not the same as mastering the ideas behind them.
Mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and the conceptual understanding of how to use it.
the use of testing as a tool for learning.
One of the most striking research findings is the power of active retrieval—testing—to strengthen memory, and that the more effortful the retrieval, the stronger the benefit.
The act of retrieving learning from memory has two profound benefits. One, it tells you what you know and don’t know, and therefore where to focus further study to improve the areas where you’re weak. Two, recalling what you have learned causes your brain to reconsolidate the memory, which strengthens its connections to what you already know and makes i...
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The students averaged A- on the material that was quizzed and C+ on the material that was not quizzed but reviewed.
One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.
Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these to new experiences, and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time.
In very short order we lose something like 70 percent of what we’ve just heard or read.
the act of retrieving knowledge from memory has the effect of making that knowledge easier to call up again in the future.
Today, we know from empirical research that practicing retrieval makes learning stick far better than reexposure to the original material does.
To be most effective, retrieval must be repeated again and again, in spaced out sessions so that the recall, rather than becoming a mindless recitation, requires some cognitive effort. Repeated recall appears to help memory consolidate into a cohesive representation in the brain and to strengthen and multiply the neural routes by which the knowledge can later be retrieved.
multiple sessions of retrieval practice are generally better than one, especially if the test sessions are spaced out.
One argument suggested that the greater effort required by the delayed recall solidified the memory better.
Retrieval practice has a significant impact on kids’ learning. This is telling us that it’s valuable, and that teachers are well advised to incorporate it into their instructional technique.”
How does giving feedback on wrong answers to test questions affect learning? Studies show that giving feedback strengthens retention more than testing alone does, and, interestingly, some evidence shows that delaying the feedback briefly produces better long-term learning than immediate feedback.
where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval, greater retention results.
but few students realize that retrieval itself creates greater retention.
Practice at retrieving new knowledge or skill from memory is a potent tool for learning and durable retention.
We’re easily seduced into believing that learning is better when it’s easier, but the research shows the opposite: when the mind has to work, learning sticks better.
Students who take practice tests have a better grasp of their progress than those who simply reread the material.
While practicing is vital to learning and memory, studies have shown that practice is far more effective when it’s broken into separate periods of training that are spaced out.
But the research shows unequivocally that mastery and long-term retention are much better if you interleave practice than if you mass it.
The evidence favoring variable training has been supported by recent neuroimaging studies that suggest that different kinds of practice engage different parts of the brain.
Interleaving enabled better discrimination and produced better scores on a later test that required matching the works with their painters.
The myths of massed practice are hard to exorcise, even when you’re experiencing the evidence yourself.
A little forgetting between practice sessions can be a good thing, if it leads to more effort in practice, but you do not want so much forgetting that retrieval essentially involves relearning the material.
Sleep seems to play a large role in memory consolidation, so practice with at least a day in between sessions is good.
The underlying idea is simply that the better your mastery, the less frequent the practice, but if it’s important to retain, it will never disappear completely from your set of practice boxes.
If you always practice the same skill in the same way, from the same place on the ice or field, in the same set of math problems, or during the same sequence in a flight simulator, you’re starving your learning on short rations of variety.
Testing is not only a powerful learning strategy, it is a potent reality check on the accuracy of your own judgment of what you know how to do.
The process of strengthening these mental representations for long-term memory is called consolidation.
sleep seems to help memory consolidation, but in any case, consolidation and transition of learning to long-term storage occurs over a period of time.
the act of retrieving a memory from long-term storage can both strengthen the memory traces and at the same time make them modifiable again, enabling them, for example, to connect to more recent learning.
