Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Some random general highlights

• The most important is to fight forgetfulness.
• Learning styles is a myth, there are preferences but there is not true that some people learn better with a given kind of material (listening, reading, etc)
• Recalling and reflection is better than massive practice, the later gives the illusion of knowing by familiarizing the student with the material but the forgetfulness is quicker

Learning is misunderstood

when we ask people about the best(preferred) learning method, most people will answer that it would be re-reading and highlight the material, but this approach is not backed up by data.

The most effective strategies are often counter intuitive:

• Retrieval practice
• Space out practice
• Trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution

All new learning requires a foundation of prior learning. If you practice Elaboration, there’s no known limit to how much you can learn. Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expression it in your own words and connecting with what you already know.

To learn, retrieve

A central Challenge to improving the way we learn is finding a way to interrupt the process of forgetting. The testing effect is a term used by psychologist to refer the power observed of retrieval as a learning tool.

Exams & Testing works, special when we provide feedback on wrong answers

Mix Up your practice

Most people think that people learn better through single-minded focus and dogged repetition, because these beliefs are validated time and again by visible improvements, but scientists have found that this is momentary. The very techniques that build habit strength, like spacing, interleaving and variation, slow visible acquisition and fail to deliver improvement during practice that helps to motivate and reinforce our efforts how ever these techniques are what we need to really learn something

Embrace Difficulties

It’s one thing to feel confident of your knowledge; it’s something else to demonstrate mastery. Testing is not only a powerful learning strategy, it is a potent reality check on accuracy of you own judgment of what you know how to do.

How learning occurs

• Encoding: the brain converts your perceptions into meaningful representations in the brain.
• Consolidation: The process of learning often starts out feeling disorganized and unwieldy; the brain makes connections with prior knowledge by retrieving a memory from long-term storage. This act both strengthen the memory traces and at the same time make them modifiable again, enabling them, for example, to connect to more recent learning.
• Retrieval: the brain access memories by the “cues” or connections between memories. There is virtually no limit to how much learning we can remember as long as we relate it to what we already know.

When we make a concentrated effort to recall, the learning is made “editable” again, and the consequent re-consolidation helps to reinforce meaning, strengthen connections to prior knowledge, bolster the cues and retrieval routes for recalling it later, and weaken competing routes

In every learning strategy we need to incorporate desirable difficulties, like trying to solve a problem before being show how to solve it.

Avoid Illusions of knowing

On thinking fast and slow Daniel Kahneman indicates that our mind has two modes of thinking : sytem 1 (Automatic and fast) & system 2 (rational and slow). Our system 1 can be easily hickyacked , and giving us a false sense of knowing something, that’s why we need to put conscious effort (system 2) in validating our knowledge. It is common that people with less knowledge overestimates it is own abilities. This problem was document in several studies, specially the Dunning-Kruger effect where people belive that they are smarte and more capable than they really are.

Regarding tools or habits for calibrating our judgment it mentions:

• Make frequent use of testing and retrieval practice
• Retrieval practice
• Cumulative quizzing
• Peer Instruction.

Get beyond learning styles

The idea that individuals have distinct learning styles has been around long enough to become part of the folklore, the “theory” holds that people who receive instruction in a manner that is not matched to their learning style are at disadvantage for learning

The book makes it clear that everyone has learning preferences, but there is not evidence that somebody learns better when the manner of instruction fits those preferences. However there are some differences that seems to matter in how people learn:

• How you see yourself and your abilities( see Carol Dweck’s book growth mindset)
• Level of language fluency and reading ability
• Structure building: the act, as we encounter new material, of extracting the salient ideas and constructing a coherent mental framework out of them. This framework are something [called mental models or mental maps. High structure builders learn new material better than low structure-builders.
• Rule learner vs example learner

Increase your Abilities

• Effortful learning changes the brain
• The path to complex mastery or expert performance does not start from exceptional genes, but it certainly entails self-discipline, grit, and persistence;
• Conscious mnemonic devices can help to organize an cue learning for ready retrieval until sustained deliberate practice and repeated use form the deeper encoding and subconscious mastery

Make it stick

for teachers

Explain how learning works, in particular help student to understand fundamental ideas:

• Some kinds of difficulties during learning help to make the learning stronger and better remembered.
• When learning is easy, it is often superficial and soon forgotten.
• Not all of our intellectual abilities are hardwired. In fact, when learning is effortful, it changes the brain making new connections and increasing intellectual ability.
• Your learn better when you wrestle with new problems before being shown the solution, rather than the other way around.
• To achieve excellence in any sphere, you must strive to surpass your current level of ability.
• Striving by its nature, often results in setbacks, and setbacks are often what provide the essential information needed to adjust strategies to achieve mastery.