Make it Stick - The Science of Successful Learning, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brown

Chapter 1: Learning is misunderstood

• “Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful. Learning that’s easy is like writing in the sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”
• We are poor judges of when we are learning well or not. When we’re undergoing a challenge it doesn’t feel productive, so we’re drawn to strategies that feel better, unaware that they may be less effective
• Rereading text and massed practice are not productive, i.e., rapid fire repetition of something you’re trying to learn or cramming for exams. They give rise to feelings of fluency but are largely a waste of time
• Retrieval practice - recalling facts or concepts from memory - is much more effective than review by rereading
• Spacing out practice or interleaving it with other subjects makes it feel more challenging to recall, yet produces longer lasting learning and more versatile application of what is learned in later settings
• Trying to solve a problem prior to being told the solution leads to better learning
• The notion that you learn better according to your learning style, e.g., a visual or auditory learner, is not supported by empirical research. You learn better when you draw on all of your aptitudes and resourcefulness, rather than just the style you find most amenable
• Extracting and understanding the underlying principles or rules of problem makes one more successful at picking the right solution in unfamiliar situations
• People who learn to extract key ideas from new material, organize them into a mental model, and connect that model to prior knowledge show an advantage in learning complex mastery

  Chapter 2: To learn, retrieve

• The stronger one’s knowledge about the subject at hand, the more nuanced one’s creativity can be in addressing a new problem
• Knowledge amounts to little without the exercise of ingenuity and imagination; as creativity absent of a stable foundation of knowledge builds a shaky house
• A 1978 study showed that cramming leads to higher scores on an immediate test but results in faster forgetting compared to practicing retrieval
• Testing immediately after exposure enhances knowledge retention, one study found an 11% increase on test scores on a topic learned a week prior between a group that was tested immediately after and one who had not been tested prior
• Multiple spaced out tests immediately after content is learned serves as an immunization against forgetting the material, the mental strain induced by testing solidifies a foundation of knowledge
• Students who have been quizzed have a dual advantage: a more accurate sense of what they do and don’t know, and the strengthening of accrued learning from retrieval practice

  Chapter 3: Mix up your practice

• Massed practice is prevalent; whether it be summer language boot camps, colleges teaching a single subject promising fast learning, or continuing education seminars with material condensed to a single weekend. It feels productive, yet the material is forgotten as fast as it is learned. Spacing out practice feels less productive as it’s more effortful, yet it generates fertile ground for knowledge to grow out of and flourish
• “The myths of massed practice are hard to exorcise, even when you’re experiencing the evidence yourself.” Massed practice feels better, because as you study you feel as though you’re learning faster and that feels good and more seamless. Yet when compared against the more cognitively challenging varied and interleaved practice, massed practice generally underperforms on later tests.
• Providing a quiz at the end of a conference can help the audience retain some of what they learned. Normally they just listen and walk out, forgetting the material shortly after
• Reflection is a form of retrieval practice, essential to bridging the gap in the learning practice (“What did I do? What happened? How did it work out? What would I do differently next time?”)

  Chapter 5: Avoid illusions of knowing

• A good way to engage in self-insight is to ask yourself: is the world giving me positive feedback? Is the world rewarding me in a way that I would expect a competent person to be rewarded? Is there something I can work on to reduce the delta? “Think of the kids lining up to join the softball team—would you be picked?”

  Chapter 6: Get beyond learning styles

• Fluid intelligence: the ability to reason, see relationships, think abstractly, and hold information in the mind while working on a problem
• Crystallized intelligence: accumulated knowledge of the works, the pattern recognition models one has developed from past learning and experience

  Chapter 7: Increase your abilities

• Myelin coating of axons generally starts at the back of our brain and works it’s way towards our frontal lobes as we grow into adulthood. Myelin coating thickness correlates with ability, and with increased practice, leading to thicker coats that improve the strength and speed of electrical signals
• Automatic actions or responses to stimula, i.e., habits, tend to be directed from a region deep in the brain called the basal ganglia
• Learning to remember the relationship between unrelated items, such as names and faces, stimulates neurogenesis in the hippocampus. This neurogenesis starts in anticipation of the learning event, and persists after it has been completed
• Some individuals aim for performance goals, working to validate their ability. These individuals unconsciously limit their ability, picking challenges that they are confident they can meet so as to validate their ability
• Some individuals strive toward learning goals, working to acquire new knowledge or skills. With a goal to increase ability, they pick ever-increasing challenges, and interpret setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve
• “Emphasizing effort gives a child a rare variable they can control, but emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of a child’s control, providing no good recipe for responding to a failure.”