I’ve been listening to an audiobook called “Make It Stick” by Peter C. Brown et al. In the past, I’ve come across to references to this work on educational methodologies and underlying psychological principles in my work as a university professor. I even recorded a video note to my students on the so-called curve of forgetting (see below). This time, I stumbled upon a review of this book in the “Perpetual Chess” podcast and decided to listen to the entire thing. It certainly doesn’t disappoint in terms of the academic soundness of the presented ideas and a good mix of psychological principles and practical takeaways. As I listen to it, I am constantly tempted to ask my daughter to listen to some parts that relate to study skills in the hopes that she would be able to use these techniques for herself. I actually did so the other day and, in the spirit of what is argued in the book, even asked her to summarize what she learned in her own words. I probably used up quite a bit of my parenting credit with her, as she obliged. I am not sure if that was in any way productive, but for what it’s worth, here is my own summary of that part (advice for students) that we listened to together:
- Embrace the fact that effective learning is challenging. Self-quizzing as the main study technique is very effective.
- Practice, i.e. retrieving the learned information from memory, is most effective if it is spaced in time and interleaved. Spacing means that instead of long continuous practice sessions that immediately follow the introduction of the new material, we should allow some between the sessions in order to some amount of forgetting to take place. The effort of trying to recall the information makes it stick better. Interleaving means that several topics/subjects/skills are better studied together, rather than in blocks of similar examples/problems. This approach models real-life situations, where identification of the types of problems is necessary. Spacing and interleaving are so called “desirable difficulties“, and they subjectively do not feel as effective as massed practice. One needs to “trust the system”, though, to benefit from it.
- Elaboration is an effective technique for reflecting on the learned material. It means formulating the concepts in your own words and using analogies with already-familiar concepts (e.g., warming your hands on a cup of coffee as an example of thermal conduction).
One thing I noticed as a result of this exercise is that my “spaced repetition” video needs a footnote that it is not re-reading of the material that is beneficial, but self-quizzing of it.