MAKING IT STICK
Chapters 3 and 4
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
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By the end of this unit the learner should be able to:
1. Compare the benefits and drawbacks of massed and spaced practice. 2. Explain how mixing up and varying practice can lead to increased success in both sports and math class. 3. Explain how interleaving leads to better discrimination and ability to assess context. 4. Explain how fill in questions and essays can make tests a better learning experience than multiple choice questions. 5. Paraphrase the definition of encoding, consolidation and retrieval. 6. Explain what is meant by the "familiarity trap". |
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WEEKLY CONTENT SUMMARIES
Chapter 3 Summary- Mix up your Practice
The authors of Make it Stick, Brown, Roediger and McDaniel (2014) explain why spaced practice with interleaving and varied training is much more effective than massed practice. Taking the time to reflect afterward and to elaborate on how you would do things differently the next time, make it even better.
Rapid-fire, repetitive practice seems very effective to quickly learn new skills and commit them to memory, but Brown et al. (2014) say that this practice exclusively utilizes short-term memory. In a classroom study, they demonstrated that when content is interleaved with content from other subjects and practiced in a varied way with breaks in between it is three times more successfully recalled in the long term. Varied practice in sports allows for a greater range of muscle memory. This memory is stored in a part of the brain that stores more complex motor movements. Interleaving, for example working a few problems from each section of a math book each day instead of working on one section at a time, allows a student to be able to better discriminate between the problems, better develop rules to follow, and better assess the context of the problem. Conceptual knowledge, as opposed to simple recall, requires the ability to discriminate and to understand the relationships between the parts (Brown et al. 2014).
This is not as straightforward as it sounds, however, because teachers can get frustrated with the slower pace and students feel that just as they were about to fully understand a subject, they were forced to move on to new material (Brown et al. 2014).
Rapid-fire, repetitive practice seems very effective to quickly learn new skills and commit them to memory, but Brown et al. (2014) say that this practice exclusively utilizes short-term memory. In a classroom study, they demonstrated that when content is interleaved with content from other subjects and practiced in a varied way with breaks in between it is three times more successfully recalled in the long term. Varied practice in sports allows for a greater range of muscle memory. This memory is stored in a part of the brain that stores more complex motor movements. Interleaving, for example working a few problems from each section of a math book each day instead of working on one section at a time, allows a student to be able to better discriminate between the problems, better develop rules to follow, and better assess the context of the problem. Conceptual knowledge, as opposed to simple recall, requires the ability to discriminate and to understand the relationships between the parts (Brown et al. 2014).
This is not as straightforward as it sounds, however, because teachers can get frustrated with the slower pace and students feel that just as they were about to fully understand a subject, they were forced to move on to new material (Brown et al. 2014).
Chapter 4 Summary- Embrace Difficulties
Brown et al. (2014) discuss the three steps in learning: encoding, consolidating and retrieving. A sensory perception such as what you see, how something tastes, or how it feels must be encoded into a memory trace in the brain in order to be remembered. These new memories must be stored in an appropriate place in the brain. New memories are quickly forgotten if they are not linked to previous memories or traces of information in a process called consolidation. The more varied information that is stored in long term memory the more cues available for consolidating the information. Sleep seems to help with this consolidation process. Each time information is retrieved from long-term memory it is re-consolidated. This process strengthens the synaptic connections and makes the memory trace more durable. A confounding detail is that sometimes there is a need to forget previous information so that it does not contradict or interfere with learning new material. An example of this is forgetting a language that was learned in school so a new one can be learned without confusion (Brown et al., 2014).
The more information forgotten between recall attempts, the higher the need to learn the material, and the higher the emotional connotation the more effective the learning will be. Higher order learning requires an ability to discriminate between details and be able to generate rules (induction). The best way to make sure this process is successful is to not fear failure and to try to generate a solution before you are given one. A fear of failure can lead to feelings or incompetence and anxiety which will disrupt the learning process (Brown et al., 2014).
Desirable difficulties can make learning more durable by giving the learner obstacles that they must overcome in order to learn the material. These obstacles must be attainable and pertinent to the task at hand. An example given in the text was reading a book with the font slightly off focus. This practice will increase retention because the learner pays more attention while reading the text. The need to focus slows the student down giving them more processing time. Generating a new idea instead of memorizing material also increases learning. Fill in the blank tests and essay questions require people to retrieve information instead of just recognizing it so they will lead to longer retention (Brown et al., 2014).
The more information forgotten between recall attempts, the higher the need to learn the material, and the higher the emotional connotation the more effective the learning will be. Higher order learning requires an ability to discriminate between details and be able to generate rules (induction). The best way to make sure this process is successful is to not fear failure and to try to generate a solution before you are given one. A fear of failure can lead to feelings or incompetence and anxiety which will disrupt the learning process (Brown et al., 2014).
Desirable difficulties can make learning more durable by giving the learner obstacles that they must overcome in order to learn the material. These obstacles must be attainable and pertinent to the task at hand. An example given in the text was reading a book with the font slightly off focus. This practice will increase retention because the learner pays more attention while reading the text. The need to focus slows the student down giving them more processing time. Generating a new idea instead of memorizing material also increases learning. Fill in the blank tests and essay questions require people to retrieve information instead of just recognizing it so they will lead to longer retention (Brown et al., 2014).
Video: Making Learning Stick: Evidence and Insights to Improve Teaching and Learning
Mark McDaniel discusses how to make learning stick in this video. He said that Nobel Prize winner, Carl Weiman, asked why there is not more active learning in the college classroom when it has been found to be much more effective than lectures. McDaniel says it is because instructors feel that they do not have the time and resources to change their teaching material to active learning and students want research proving these changes will lead to better retention and learning. He studied students to learn how they study and provided the research. The number one way students study is by rereading. (84% of college students). McDaniel conducted a number of controlled studies to show whether rereading under different conditions provided any benefit on multiple choice and short answer questions. The research results repeatedly came back a resounding no. Rereading makes learning feel more fluid and it falsely gives students the sense that they have learned the material, but there is no deeper understanding.
Instead Mark McDaniel recommends the following:
- rereading must be strongly discouraged
- students need to generate understanding so they need to ask themselves why something is true instead of it just being arbitrary facts, for example mini writing exercises
- spaced study is needed to increase retention instead of cramming or massed study. Have the students learn a part of the instruction over successive weeks instead of learning all of it at once.
- mix instruction- you should present and practice many concepts at the same time, initially the students who get mixed practice will not do as well as students who get blocked instruction, but a week later they do three times as well. The student thinks that they are learning more when you block the information, but it is fluency not understanding that increases. Mixing instruction accentuates the differences not the similarities between categories.
- testing- every time you give a test a student practices retrieving and re-consolidating the material. Testing is not a neutral experience it is a learning event (fandmcollage, 2015).
- rereading must be strongly discouraged
- students need to generate understanding so they need to ask themselves why something is true instead of it just being arbitrary facts, for example mini writing exercises
- spaced study is needed to increase retention instead of cramming or massed study. Have the students learn a part of the instruction over successive weeks instead of learning all of it at once.
- mix instruction- you should present and practice many concepts at the same time, initially the students who get mixed practice will not do as well as students who get blocked instruction, but a week later they do three times as well. The student thinks that they are learning more when you block the information, but it is fluency not understanding that increases. Mixing instruction accentuates the differences not the similarities between categories.
- testing- every time you give a test a student practices retrieving and re-consolidating the material. Testing is not a neutral experience it is a learning event (fandmcollage, 2015).
Video: Anders Ericsson on the Science of Expertise
Anders Ericsson discusses what it means to be an expert. He feels that expertise is acquired and learned. Research has not demonstrated that there is any limits to expertise. To become an expert, a learner needs to seek out a teacher who can help them identify gaps in their learning and then the learner must train to improve that aspect of their performance. This deliberate practice leads to better performance which is backed up by results. Learners are driven by their results or goals. The downside is that many people call themselves experts when they can not objectively demonstrate their superior performance outcomes. Anders Ericsson tells Larry King that experts seem to have a more accurate representation of a situation than non experts. The example he gave is that a chess player can describe the location of all of the chess pieces even when they do not have a physical model to look at (Larry King, 2016).
CONNECTIONS TO FIELD AND/OR DISCIPLINE
Medical workers
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In the medical field there is so much material to be learned in a very short period of time. The curriculum is being reworked in medical schools across the country. There will no longer be block units and instead material will be taught by systems. This will allow interleaving between biochemistry, anatomy and physiology of each individual body system. Students will use a number of different learning modalities to test themselves, be tested by their peers and then finally to be formally tested. Medical students are constantly getting feedback on areas that need further work by their preceptors, peers and standardized patients so they can continue to develop expertise.
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SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION
Medical training
Teachers and students need to move from passive learning to active learning. The material must be presented in interactive ways with multiple subjects interleaved. Moving to a systems based education instead of block units will allow multiple facets of a topic to be presented at the same time. For example, you would have one module on the respiratory system. It would include the biochemistry, anatomy, genetics, physiology and clinical decision making for the respiratory system. Testing must be done on a regular basis, whether self testing or in class. Tests in which students are required to generate, not just recognize, the answer are preferred. Subject matter from earlier in the year must be retrieved and re-consolidated so that the memories become more durable and are stored in long-term memory instead of short-term.
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
Take a moment to practice using the LEARN tool below to practice learning the key concepts covered in this section.
REFERENCES
Brown, P., Roediger III, H., & McDaniel M. (2014). Make it stick; The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA : The Belknap
Press of Harvard University.
King, L [Larry King] (2016, April 22). Anders Ericsson on the science of expertise | Larry king now | Ora.TV [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gn3f8sEb8Y
Franklin &Marshall College [fandmcollege] (2015, April 8). Making learning stick: Evidence and insights to improve teaching and
learning [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=japP8Cr0q6g
Press of Harvard University.
King, L [Larry King] (2016, April 22). Anders Ericsson on the science of expertise | Larry king now | Ora.TV [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gn3f8sEb8Y
Franklin &Marshall College [fandmcollege] (2015, April 8). Making learning stick: Evidence and insights to improve teaching and
learning [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=japP8Cr0q6g
