March 13, 2018

The Art of Manliness: Learning How to Learn

Most people repeat facts over and over to learn things
Dr. Peter Brown, co-author of Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, says you’re just fooling yourself by doing this

The book is a culmination of a decade of research by 11 cognitive psychologists, trying to understand what leads to better retention
What they found – the strategies we are drawn to for learning, are low yield strategies
- Things like reading and rereading, or doing acts over and over again (like putting a golf ball)
- These strategies feel productive, but the fluency and improvements you see are leaning on short-term memory, not long-term memory
Strategies like the above work well for cramming right before a test, but you won’t remember most of the material a week later

In instructional settings, there’s a temptation to sometimes make the material easy/as clear as you can for the learner
- The learner then develops a confidence that they are on top of that piece of material
- However, it’s just an illusion of knowing it, the brain hasn’t actually struggled to learn anything
- We tend to think easy material sticks easier, not the case
Another misconception – if you intend to remember something you will
- The intentionality doesn’t make learning stick
“All new learning has to connect to something we already know, or we won’t learn it”
- To make learning stick – it’s essential our brain is engaged to connect the new learning to other things we know

Some people are immune to the normal signals the rest of us get from other people
- Signals like “I should be doing better, I need to try harder”
Not everybody has the ability of seeing where they stack up in terms of whether they know something or not
The big idea – if you engage in low productive strategies for learning, you may be more likely to think you know something, when you actually don’t

IQ has some impact on your potential, but using effective strategies can allow anyone to bring up their mental abilities
“The more you know, the more you can learn”

There’s no evidence that supports using one’s learning preference to learn, actually leads to better learning
However, a person is more likely to stick with it longer if the material is presented in the way a person prefers
“All learners learn best when the material is presented in the form that fits the material best”
- Geometry needs to be visual
- Language needs to be a combination of visual and oral

“If you want to make learning stick, practice getting it out of the brain, not getting it into the brain”
After you’ve read the material once or twice, put it aside and ask:
- What are the main ideas of this?
- How do they relate to what I already know?
- How would I put this in my own words explaining it to somebody else?
Practice recalling the knowledge later, spaced out, when it’s harder to recall
- This strengthens the connection of that material in the brain, and your ability to recall it
- Do this instead of repeating things over and over all at once
Mix up examples
- Do different types of problems and questions that are somewhat related
- This strengthens the learning, even if you might not do as well
“When it feels like you’re not making progress, that’s actually probably when you are making progress”
- The process of learning should be difficult
- When you’re learning, you’re moving material from short to long-term memory, and this happens over time (hours) – sleep helps
- “Short term memory is just electrical and chemical traces, but long-term memory involves actual physical change to the brain” – that’s why real learning takes time

Elaborate when you’re learning something – pause and ask:
- How does this relate to what I already know?
- Is there any way to visualize this? – memory requires cues/pathways to call the information up when you need it
“Flashcards are very potent”
- There are apps and websites that make flash cards for you, check out Anki
Low stakes quizzing
- This is a very powerful way to help learners lock in information over time
- Quizzing before you learn the material may help as well, having already wrestled with the question enables you to better remember the information when you actually learn it
The easier it is to recall, the longer you should wait to try and recall it
Constantly go back to the basics
- You might discover you may have had some skill degradation
- “We’re always needing to re-calibrate our judgment of what we know, and what we can do”
- This is why cumulative quizzes work well (quizzes with both new and old information)

learning, quiz, studying, test
Notes By MMiller