Make It Stick (1-4)

1. Learning is Misunderstood
   • learning: acquiring knowledge / skills and having them readily available
     • requires memory
     • need to keep learning and remembering all our lives
     • learning is an acquired skill
   • claims
     • effortful learning sticks
     • we are poor judges of when we’re learning well or not 
     • the most preferred study strategies are the least productive (rereading text, etc)
     • retrieval practice is an effective learning strategy
     • spacing out practice results in longer lasting learning
     • trying to solve something before being taught the solution leads to better learning
   • all new learning requires a foundation of prior knowledge
   • elaboration: giving new material meaning by connecting it with what you already know
   • mental model: mental representation of some external reality
     • people who learn to extract key idea from new material and organize them into mental model have an advantage in learning complex mastery
   • cognitive psychology: basic science of understanding how the mind works
     • conducts empirical research into how people perceive, remember, and think
2. To Learn, Retrieve
   • reflection: retrieving knowledge and connecting to new experiences and visualizing / mentally rehearsing
   • retrieving knowledge from memory has the effect of making that knowledge easier to remember in the future
   • massed studying (cramming) leads to higher scores on immediate tests but results in easier forgetting than retrieval
   • when retrieval practice is spaced, it leads to stronger long-term retention
   • corrective feedback is useful for students
     • produces better learning of the correct answers
3. Mix Up Your Practice
   • practice is more effective when broken up into periods of time and spaced out
     • better mastery, longer retention, more versatility
     • requires more effort
     • allows for consolidation of knowledge
   • interleaved practice - mixing of problem types
   • varied practice - improves ability to transfer learning from one situation to different applications
     • also beneficial for motor learning
   • these skills help develop discrimination skills
     • “What type of problem is this?”
   • these principles are broadly applicable
4. Embrace Difficulties
   • desirable difficulties: short-term impediments that make for stronger learning
   • how learning works:
   • encoding: converting sensory perceptions into meaningful representations in the brain
   • consolidation: strengthening mental representations for long-term memory
     • helps organize and solidify learning
   • retrieval: being able to retrieve information when needed 
     • capacity is limited
     • we reassign cues to memories all the time
     • sometimes forgetting is essential to learning 
   • effort helps:
     • reconsolidating memory
     • creating mental models
     • broadening mastery
     • fostering conceptual learning
     • improving versatility
   • generative learning: the process of trying to solve a problem without being taught how
   • impediments you can’t overcome become undesirable difficulties

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