Education

Effective Learning

The ultimate goal of teaching is to imbue learners with a sense of possibility, creativity and persistence needed for higher learning and success. Even if teachers are successful at imparting these qualities, students still need to learn new knowledge and skills. So, what exactly is learning and how can students (or ourselves) do it more efficiently?

Learning About Learning

Learning describes the process of acquiring knowledge and skills which are then made readily available from memory. Take it a step further and you will form a mental model in which the key ideas are extracted, organised and connected to pre-existing knowledge. This allows us to take a complex set of interrelated ideas, extract the underlying principles and fuse them into a meaningful whole. The result is knowhow; a mental model which can be adapted and applied in a variety of circumstances allowing us to make sense of future problems or opportunities.

Limits to Learning

There is no limit to how many long-term memories we can form provided we relate it to what we already know. This creates a positive feedback loop where the more we learn, the more possible connections we create for future learning. It is only the retrieval capacity that is limited. So, what does this mean?

Retrieval cues are used to retrieve memories formed in the past. If cues get weakened or damaged, you will find it more difficult to retrieve the associated memory or knowledge. But this damaged state isn't inevitable. It is possible to strengthen these connections through periodic retrieval, by increasing the number of associated cues and ensuring cues are formed in a meaningful context. In other words, knowledge tends to be more durable when it is thoroughly comprehended as a concept, is connected to other knowledge in your memory and has a practical or emotional weight.

Effortful Learning

Effortful learning is something we have all come across. Rather counter-intuitively, it leads to one of the best forms of learning. This is because it creates stronger, more precise and more enduring connections. The types of learning difficulty encountered can be broken down into two categories.

Monitoring Learning

Metacognition describes the ability to monitor your own thinking and it is a critical skill for any learner. Why? Because it enables practitioners to analyse the world around them, continually monitor their performance and pass judgement on how to adjust their behaviours in order to impact their future self. This helps keep them out of blind alleys, identify when they might be deluding themselves and enables them to reflect on how to do better next time.

However, you should take care. Judgement is readily misled by illusions, cognitive biases and narratives we create to explain the world around us. One of the biggest illusions is the illusion of learning. Humans are poor judges of whether they are learning well and often overestimate their level of mastery. Furthermore, they frequently fail to identify areas of weak learning and tend to favour less productive study methods.

The Myth of Errorless Learning

There is a belief that errors committed by learners are counterproductive and are the direct result of faulty instruction. The perceived solution is to spoon-feed learners with material and check their learning with immediate quizzing. This serves only to test short term memory and reinforces the belief that students will learn a mistake if it is made.

The reality is far different; errors are integral to reaching mastery, while corrective feedback prevents the errors from being learned. Once students realise that learning is a process of struggling with errors, they will become more likely to tackle tough challenges and start to see mistakes as lessons rather than failure. It is their perseverance in the face of failure that leads them to success. Give them room to struggle with difficulty and they will perform better.

An inability to convince students of this view will result in a fear of failure. This will poison learning by creating an aversion to experimentation and risk taking. Leaners will perform worse when under pressure as their working memory monitors performance and is not fully engaged in problem solving. This fear will also create feelings of incompetence that engender anxiety and disrupt learning.

Effective Study Techniques

Take charge of your learning and follow a simple but disciplined strategy. Structure time to regularly pursue the strategies below. It will be difficult, and setbacks will occur. These difficulties are a sign of effort and it is this effort which builds meaningful connections in the brain allowing us to form lasting mental models. You have to do something beyond passively reading or interpreting information! If used well, these techniques will lead to better mastery, longer retention and a more versitile application. Finally, the improvement gained is often not immediately perceived by the learner. Please persevere.

• Retrieval Practice
• Spaced Retrieval Practice
• Interleaved Practice
• Varied Practice
• Elaboration
• Generation
• Reflection
• Calibration

References

• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning; Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, Mark McDaniel