March 13, 2018

The Art of Manliness: Learning How to Learn

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Intro

• 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

Peter’s Book – Make it Stick

• 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

Other Learning Illusions

• 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

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

• 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

What role does IQ play in learning?

• 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”

Learning Styles (Audio vs. Visual lLearning)

• 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

What’s the best way to learn?

• “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

Other Tips for Better Integrating the Retrival Process into the Learning Method

• 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)