Notes
from Peter Brown’s presentation, Make it
Stick
Glenbard
South
September
2, 2014
·
Graduate of Lloyd College, author of Jumping the Job Track and The Fugitive Wife (historical fiction)
·
He is a writer and his brother-in-law is Henry
Roediger, other author is Mark McDaniel; Roediger and McDaniel are cognitive
scientists at Washington University in St Louis
·
Approached by James D McDonnell Foundation in St
Louis around 2001-02—started with question: what teaching and studying
strategies lead to better memory and learning, team of 11 cognitive scientists
headed by Roediger studied the question
·
Big idea: most effective strategy for learning
is trying to recall, trying to get out of memory; we think learning as trying
to get things into the mind, most effective learning comes from trying to get
it out of the mind
·
Big idea: “desirable difficulties” (Elizabeth
Bjork) some difficulties that slow learning down result in better learning and
longer memory; examples—type a little out of focus, some dysfluency leads to
better memory, some letters missing, sequence of lecture that doesn’t follow
the sequence in the reading, effort strengthens memory
·
Big idea: learn it better when you mix up type
of problems in practice; interleaved—varied or mixed up practice, example—mix
up painters and participants learned to identify them better even though they
thought it was better to focus on at a time; people persist in thinking it is
better to focus on learning one thing at a time even when study shows that it
is better to mix up the problems
·
Big idea: when you are required to generate the
answer before you are taught and then you are taught the solution after, you
remember the solution better; priming effect—found what you know, found the
gap, then taught
·
New memory resides in hippocampus, takes time to
move to long term memory, consolidation—brain tries to make sense of material,
effort to retrieve, consolidate makes it stronger in LTM
·
Study: more test periods, better recall;
repeated study periods didn’t help, retrieval practice did help
·
Re-reading creates illusion of matery
·
Better to keep practicing items you know and
those you don’t know—better memory for all of them
·
Spaced practice works better
·
Coach students to develop the habits and
attitudes to succeed
·
Carol Dweck—students who believe effort matters
select more challenging problems, better to praise effort
·
“reach back, carry forward”
·
mix up topics and problem types
·
use self-testing to calibrate judgment
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experiment, elaborate, reflect
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practice retrieving new learning from memory
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adopt a growth mindset
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mental effort increases mental ability
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teacher applications: low stakes quizzes,
retrieval games (Quia.com), weekly essential question, study guides
·
Mary Pat Wenderoth at Univ of WA, intro college
biology, reduce failure rate, especially with minority women—daily 10 minutes
to free recall and write down everything you remember from class, then look at
your notes
·
Before reading something ask yourself, “What do
I hope to learn from this?” and read for answer
·
Short answer better to generate answers but
multiple choice is better than nothing
·
Most research so far in lab settings, just
starting to research in classrooms