Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

by Peter C. Brown

The answer is yes. When retrieval practice is spaced, allowing some forgetting to occur between tests, it leads to stronger long-term retention than when it is massed.

The kids scored a full grade level higher on the material that had been quizzed than on the material that had not been quizzed.

Retrieval and elaboration; again, no technology required.

some evidence shows that delaying the feedback briefly produces better long-term learning than immediate feedback.

Tests that require the learner to supply the answer, like an essay or short-answer test, or simply practice with flashcards, appear to be more effective than simple recognition tests like multiple choice or true/false tests.

Those who were frequently tested reached the end of the semester on top of the material and did not need to cram for exams.

The Takeaway Practice at retrieving new knowledge or skill from memory is a potent tool for learning and durable retention.

Effortful retrieval makes for stronger learning and retention.

when the mind has to work, learning sticks better. The greater the effort to retrieve learning, provided that you succeed, the more that learning is strengthened by retrieval.

Self-testing may be unappealing because it takes more effort than rereading, but as noted already, the greater the effort at retrieval, the more will be retained.

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.

The rapid gains produced by massed practice are often evident, but the rapid forgetting that follows is not.

Learning feels slower from this kind of practice, and you don’t get the rapid improvements and affirmations you’re accustomed to seeing from massed practice.

Spacing out your practice feels less productive for the very reason that some forgetting has set in and you’ve got to work harder to recall the concepts.

The residents who had taken all four sessions in a single day not only scored lower on all measures, but 16 percent of them damaged the rats’ vessels beyond repair and were unable to complete their surgeries.

Durable learning, however, requires time for mental rehearsal and the other processes of consolidation.

Interleaved Practice

The learning from interleaved practice feels slower than learning from massed practice.

As a result, interleaving is unpopular and seldom used.

But the research shows unequivocally that mastery and long-term retention are much better if you interleave practice than if you mass it.

The basic idea is that varied practice—like tossing your beanbags into baskets at mixed distances—improves your ability to transfer learning from one situation and apply it successfully to another.

Compared to massed practice, a significant advantage of interleaving and variation is that they help us learn better how to assess context and discriminate between problems, selecting and applying the correct solution from a range of possibilities.

The myths of massed practice are hard to exorcise, even when you’re experiencing the evidence yourself.

It’s not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.

“practice like you play and you will play like you practice.”

“Make quizzing a standard part of the culture and the curriculum.

How big an interval, you ask? The simple answer: enough so that practice doesn’t become a mindless repetition. At a minimum, enough time so that a little forgetting has set in.

The time periods between sessions of practice let memories consolidate.

Sleep seems to play a large role in memory consolidation,

Something as simple as a deck of flashcards can provide an example of spacing.

Like interleaving, varied practice helps learners build a broad schema, an ability to assess changing conditions and adjust responses to fit.

Spacing, interleaving, and variability are natural features of how we conduct our lives.

Reflection is a form of retrieval practice (What happened? What did I do? How did it work out?), enhanced with elaboration (What would I do differently next time?).

Short-term impediments that make for stronger learning have come to be called desirable difficulties,

consolidation and transition of learning to long-term storage occurs over a period of time.

Your performance in the moment is not an indication of durable learning.

Learning, remembering, and forgetting work together in interesting ways.

First, as we recode and consolidate new material from short-term memory into long-term memory, we must anchor it there securely.

Second, we must associate the material with a diverse set of cues that will make us adept at re...

The task is more than committing knowledge to memory. Being able to retrieve it when we ne...

In fact, because new learning depends on prior learning, the more we learn, the more possible connections we create for further learning.

The paradox is that some forgetting is often essential for new learning.

the easier knowledge or a skill is for you to retrieve, the less your retrieval practice will benefit your retention of it.

The interleaving and spacing of different pitches made learning more arduous and feel slower.

This paradox is at the heart of the concept of desirable difficulties in learning: the more effort required to retrieve (or, in effect, relearn) something, the better you learn it.

Spaced practice, which allows some forgetting to occur between sessions, strengthens both the learning and the cues and routes for fast retrieval when that learning is needed again,

When you’re asked to struggle with solving a problem before being shown how to solve it, the subsequent solution is better learned and more durably remembered.

The act of trying to answer a question or attempting to solve a problem rather than being presented with the information or the solution is known as generation.

Having to write a short essay makes them stronger still.

It’s better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution.