![]() So this is a seductive thing that we have to, instructors and students alike, have to understand and have to move beyond those initial judgments, I haven’t learned very much, and trust that the more difficult practice schedule really is the better learning.Īnd I’ve written more on this since Make It Stick. That’s producing robust skills that stick with you. But in fact, that effort to try to figure out what kinds of approaches do I need for each problem as I encounter a different kind of problem, that’s producing learning. And the signals to your brain are, I’m not getting this. And in doing that, it feels difficult and it doesn’t feel fluent. ![]() You want to randomly have a problem of one type and then solve a problem of another type and then a problem of another type. What you want to do is interleave practice in these problems. So even though instructors who feel like their students are doing great with block practice and students will feel like they’re doing great, they are doing great on that kind of block practice, but they’re not at all good now at retaining information about what distinguishing features or problems are signaling certain kinds of approaches. You are getting better at these problems.īut the issue is that can you remember how to identify which kinds of problems go with which kinds of solutions a week later when you’re asked to do a test where you have all different kinds of problems? And the answer is no, you cannot when you’ve done this block practice. And as you get more fluid, and as we say in the book, it looks like you’re getting better. You know exactly what the problem is about. Well, it gets more and more fluid because exactly what formula you have to use. And the parameters on it, the numbers might change, but in your homework, you’re trying to solve two or three or four of these work problems in a row. So for example, in a physics course, you might get a particular type of work problem. You may have encountered this in your own math courses, your own physics courses. One of the standard ways that instructors present homework is to present the same kind of problem in block fashion. It’s situations in, say, the STEM fields or any place where you’ve got to learn how to solve certain kinds of problems. But we misinterpret that as meaning, I’ve really got this. And we misinterpret these fluency cues that the brain is getting. Parsing the structure of the sentence is more fluent. It’s very clear from much work in reading and cognitive processes during reading that when you reread something at every level, the processes are more fluent. And we mistakenly judge familiarity as meaning robust learning.Īnd the second cue is fluency. So as you keep rereading, the material becomes more familiar to you. Older learners really want to try to leverage their prior knowledge and use that as a basis to structure and frame and understand new information coming in.Īnd two of the primary cues are familiarity. Older learners shouldn’t feel that they’re at a definitive disadvantage, because they’re not. There are cues present that your brain picks up when you’re rereading, when you’re repeating something that give you the metacognitive, that is your judgment about your own cognition, give you the misimpression that you really have learned this stuff well. ![]() McDaniel: This judgment that repetition is effective is hard to shake. And these beliefs are validated time and again by the visible improvement that comes during practice, practice, practice.” ![]() You write, “We harbor deep convictions that we learn better through single-minded focus and dogged repetition. Harvard Extension: In your book, you talk about strategies to help students be better learners in and outside of the classroom. In this Q&A adapted from a Career & Academic Resource Center podcast episode, McDaniel discusses his research on human learning and memory, including the most effective strategies for learning throughout a lifetime. McDaniel coauthored the book Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Such questions are at the center of the work of Mark McDaniel, professor of psychology and the director of the Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education at Washington University in St. How do we learn and absorb new information? Which learning strategies actually work and which are mere myths?
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