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UCLA Professor Says Conventional Wisdom on Study Habits Is All Washed Up
An anonymous reader writes "Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? According to Robert Bjork, director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab, distinguished professor of psychology, and massively renowned expert on packing things in your brain in a way that keeps them from leaking out, all are three are exactly opposite the best strategies for learning."
I do not want to hear about experts in learning from someone who non-ironically refers to one of them as a "massively renowned expert."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I majored in music in college. Throughout my life, I've gone through various phases of being out of practice, getting back into the practicing groove, falling out of it, getting back into it again, and so on. I've noticed every time I return to the instrument after having taken a long break, there is a short period of difficulty followed by a burst of learning and progress. Sounds just like what the prof is talking about.
Bjork should stick to making creepy pop music and leave education to the professionals.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I gotta concede that Professor Bjork's brain is much better than mine.
Bjork also recommends taking notes just after class, rather than during â" forcing yourself to recall a lectureâ(TM)s information is more effective than simply copying it from a blackboard
That might work for him because his brain has the capacity to recall all the stuffs _after_ the class is over. Not me.
If I waited till the class is over and _then_ started to write down the notes based on what I recall, I probably can recall 15% to 20% of the total thing.
Granted, not every single word from the lecturer mouth is useful, but still, about 30% of the stuffs an average lecturer taught in an average college level class is relevant in _someway_ to the subject in hand.
My own ability to recall only 15% to 20% means that there will be essential stuffs that I would have missed.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Thanks to the old system, it was easy.
Not to me.
Endless rote memorization: writing, flash cards, drills, ugh!
Humans naturally want to learn. It's innate in our being and yet, we get to school and hate it - at least 90% of us do. (The other 10% are the A students. )
When we're left to our own devices and learning something that we're interested in, do we learn like we do in school? I don't. It's all one big discovery. And the wonderful thing about the internet, it makes following curiosities even easier - until you tired and head over to Fark.
Thanks to the old system, it was easy.
Not to me.
Endless rote memorization: writing, flash cards, drills, ugh!
Humans naturally want to learn. It's innate in our being and yet, we get to school and hate it - at least 90% of us do. (The other 10% are the A students. )
When we're left to our own devices and learning something that we're interested in, do we learn like we do in school? I don't. It's all one big discovery. And the wonderful thing about the internet, it makes following curiosities even easier - until you tired and head over to Fark.
This is easily the most insightful yet commonsense comment in the entire discussion. Modern schooling sucks the life and soul out of learning and produces factory-style people who have forgotten what curiosity and the joy of discovery is all about.
I believe that's by design. It results in people who can't or won't educate themselves, who were raised to believe that education is something another person must give to you. They're simply easier to rule, especially when propaganda (particularly framing) and soundbites are your major tools.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The problem with this approach is that it assumes students are in class to learn.
But that's not the system we live in.
Increasingly, students are in class to memorize material so that they can quickly recall it on one of many tests.
Tests. Memory. That's what we're teaching to these days. Not learning. Key difference.
As the newest math professor in the department, of course I was lowest of the low. I was informed that there was no classroom available in the classroom building and I had to choose between one in Animal Husbandry and Poultry Science. In a moment of true quantum stupidity I chose the one in Poultry Science because it was closer to my office.
The classroom sat adjacent to a room that contained hundreds of chickens, maybe more. You had to smell it to believe it. Of course the students complained but there was nothing I could do.
The class actually did quite well, that is, until the day of the final exam. When I got there to deliver the exam (which of course was being given at a different time) the door was locked and no key could be found. I was forced to walk the entire class over to the classroom building and give the exam in an empty classroom.
Checking the scores against the midterm, I found there had been a significant drop for almost every student. To this day I am convinced that the context change and the lack of that awful smell was as or more responsible for the difference than all the chaos leading up to taking the exam.
Again as with the initial "notes after class". How do you KNOW that you have NOT forgotten something?
Because instead of being a stenographer, you were paying attention and learning. If you listen to the lecture knowing that you will have to summarize it right after, you will remember what needs to be remembered. It's the difference between learning something and memorizing something.
There's a lot of talk as to what you should do while an after the prof is speaking, but so far very little has been said about what to do *before* the professor speaks it. During my Physics undergrad, I would challenge myself to try to derive results and formulas before the prof finished. I was often wrong, and I usually had to have my notes at least nudged along at least a few times per lecture, but trying to derive on the fly is an awesome way to learn something. There's nothing quite like figuring out a problem by yourself to have it really gel with your overall understanding.
That's my advice: rather than just trying to learn, as much as possible *do your own thinking* in class and you'll be amazed at how little you have to work later to recall it.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
For a more general set of suggestions on study skills based on cognitive science, see "How to Get the Most Out of Studying Video Series". This is by Steve Chew, who was recently named a "U.S. Professor of the Year" for his teaching ability. For something printed, but not as detailed, see his "Improving Classroom Performance by Challenging Student Misconceptions About Learning". I recommend the video to all my students (I'm a college economics professor).
I looked over half the thread of comments and glanced at the summary, and it seems that everyone is still missing the way I used to study.
1. Diagram/Map/Lay out the book chapter(s) before the class.
2. In class, just put little dots or something that's a repeat of the book.
3. Then when the Prof. goes off into some other topic, then take real notes, sometimes in a different color. A lot of times those notes are the ones that show up on exams when you get a mean Prof. who prides themselves on making exams "that you had to be in class to pass".
Even better, *Record* the lectures! What's with all this "try to recall it later?" On the couple times I tried it, I did better listening to the lecture *three times* and mapping that out on paper next to the book notes.
It was enough to get me B's and B+'s. (I didn't get A's because I'd always miss something, but overall, I didn't mind the half-grade slide once I left college.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
We need more apprenticeship like learning for lot's of fields.
Less need college for jobs that DON'T need it.
Er, judging by the above, I'd say:
No, son. You really should keep taking English courses. Really. Trust me on this one.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
When I teach, I prepare a set of lecture notes, mostly an outline with key details. I leave room for notes. Then I give the students a copy of those at the start of the class. That way, they can listen and focus on understanding the information during the lecture. If they need to make some additional notes, they can add to the pre-printed lecture notes I handed out, but since the key points and details are already there, they don't need to add many notes. My experience is that students who spend too much time taking notes don't understand the material and don't remember it, so I make is easy for them to not spend time taking notes.
My classroom time is spent expanding upon the material, having discussions with the students, making sure the students understand it and how to apply it, doing hands on or thought experiments as appropriate, and refining my notes for the next class.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
TFA is actually a little light on details, so I'll add a few more. But I am not a psychology researcher, so take my explanation with a sack of salt.
There are basically 3 separate issues that they are looking at with respect to learning.
One is spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is the idea that you forget things over time. The longer you go without recalling something, the higher the odds are that you will not be able to remember it when you try. However, if you remember something, the association will be stronger and the speed at which you forget it is lower (i.e., the drop from 90% recall to 80% recall will take more time). That speed is called the "forgetting curve". The shallower the curve, the less often you have to review something to rememer it. Software like Mnemosyne, Anki and SuperMemo try to time when you are likely to forget something so that you don't waste your time reviewing something that you aren't going to forget.
Another concept is spaced learning. This is different from spaced repetition. It turns out that the space between reviews is actually necessary for long term memory. If you memorize something and then wait for a long time, even if you forget it, you will make a stronger connection the *second* time you learn it. Spaced learning intentionally puts spaces between reviews with the intent that it creates a stronger memory (makes the forgetting curve shallower) the *next* time you learn it. In other words, you intentionally make it difficult to remember the second time around (as opposed to choosing a time when you are likely to remember it). The distinction between spaced repetition and spaced learning is fine but important, I think.
Finally there is interleaved learning. It turns out that time is not the only thing that causes you to forget. As you learn new things, the ability to recall old things gets worse. So if you learn A and that's all, you will forget it slower than if you learn A and then B. Learning B makes it difficult to recall A. You can use this to your advantage. Remember that with spaced learning, if you forget something, it is retained *better* the second time around. So if you learn A and B, and then return to A, you will remember A better than if you spent twice as long on A and then did B.
Basically spaced repetition programs that use SM2 algorithm are implementing spaced repetion. I will argue that they aren't making use of spaced learning, at least intentionally. When you initially try to remember something, you should space repetitions so that it is difficult to remember the item. One of the weaknesses of SM2 is that it doesn't really have any strategy for first learning the item (on the other hand, you are free to adopt your own strategies within the framework of the software). Specifically, there's no concept of getting an item correct and then waiting a short time and reviewing it again. It goes ahead and schedules it for a day or so later. Also, when you get an item wrong, you are back to square one, with the "difficulty" set at the same level it was at before you got it wrong. Spaced learning would suggest that at least the item will get less difficult every time you forget it. So I think there is considerable room for improvement.
SM2 also specifically does not implement interleaving. When learning new material (or even items that you forgot in the review) it would be rather interesting to have it introduce one new fact from 4 or 5 different quizes at a time. It would accellerate the speed at which you forget the item and provide opportunities for spaced learning faster (presuming there was support for spaced learning).
I'm actually the author of another spaced repetition program for studying Japanese, called JLDrill. I use a different algorithm, which I describe here: http://jldrill.rubyforge.org/Strategy.html I'm going to try to implement some of these other ideas in the near future.