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

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

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

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