Mark A. McDaniel

A friend recommended that I dive into this book since I was hoping to learn about the latest theories on learning and cognition; one reason for my search is to be a better coach with volleyball athletes, but as it turns out, this book is helping me become a better college professor.

The authors devoted the opening chapter to the myths and sacred cows that we carry in our minds about how we learn and how to best create an environment that is suited for teaching. They recount the large number show more of beliefs that many hold dear as the absolutely truth and then give evidence which debunks them one by one.

The central tenet for the book is stated clearly very early in the first chapter: learning needs memory and the ability to recall from the memory; people will need to continue to learn and remember throughout our lives in order to function; and finally learning is an acquired skill, not a natural skill, one that need to be practiced.

Very early on in this book, the authors laid out their own beliefs. The first is that learning needs to be effortful in order to be effective, that is, we learn better when learning is difficult. They also believe that people tend to be poor judges when it comes to determining how well we learn a subject; we often overestimate our learning prowess. One of their biggest pet myths is that rereading and massed practices - the perennially preferred studying practice of most people - is the worst and least effective practice habit.

What do they believe in? They believe that learning comes from our ability to retrieve knowledge from our memory, and that we need to exercise that memory retrieval constantly in order to makes sure that it is always there for our recall. They believe that the exercise of retrieval and recall needs to be done with built in gaps in timing, i.e. they need to be spaced; they believe in making the repetitions be unpredictable and irregularly spaced in time, i.e. interleaved. They believe that before being shown how to resolve a problem, the learner needs to wade into the problem without any clue as to how to solve the problem. They believe that searching for and discovering the underlying reasons for a piece of knowledge is much more important that just being able to perform a skill repetitively, although they do acknowledge the importance of being able to repeat a task procedurally.

Although the ideas and methods that is covered in this book is not all completely new to me, the presentation and organization is quite interesting. They can cite a great number of studies in the scientific literature that effectively and sufficiently support their arguments against the stated myths while citing enough studies which also amply support their arguments. The most interesting part of the book came to me after I had read it from cover to cover and was sitting down to review what I had learned. What the authors cleverly did is to use the very desired practices that they are espousing in structuring the book. They spaced the same descriptions of the desired practice repeatedly through the text, they interleaved certain arguments in all the chapters, they gave the reader time and room to discern the underlying principles, and they motivated the reader to elaborate on what they had learned to themselves, at least I did.

I am relatively certain that this was deliberate. Indeed, I followed the rut that they had called out in their recitation of bad learning habits and strategies as I was reading, rereading, and taking massive amounts of notes in order forcefully lever the ideas into my head. Little did I know that the authors had, by the nature of how the book is structured, created an opportunity for the reader to practice what they had preached.

As I stepped through my memories of the time that I was reading this book, along with a couple of other books on how to best learn, I unintentionally spaced and interleaved my learning from this book because I was switching between books, a practice that I had picked up as a matter of habit as my learning habit throughout my life. The real question is then whether this tactic was successful: did it accomplish the goals in the way that the authors had intended? I can’t speak for the longevity memory retention of the lesson from the book, but I can say that I did spend a lot of time thinking and understanding the underlying principles. I will be able to speak to the longevity of my learning with their preferred methods when someone asks me about the book in a few years, but as of now, I had worked long and hard on learning from this book. show less

We’re often tempted to cram, but that’s an ineffective strategy for true learning, which requires interrupted/varied practice and things like quick quizzes or flashcards—effortful retrieval and the process of putting concepts into our own words enhance learning, even if they feel less helpful than rereading the material or “mass practice” (solving a bunch of the same type of problems at once). Repetition alone increases the feeling of knowledge, but not the reality—I was charmed show more by the example of trying to figure out which of various images is the real image of a penny (google “penny test”). You’ve seen it zillions of times, but that doesn’t mean you know it. People resist this conclusion because they feel like repetition and “massed practice” helps, but the studies consistently show it doesn’t. That sense of struggle that comes from delayed/interleaved practice is actually a sign of enhanced learning. The authors advocate low-stakes quizzing and self-testing; I’m still thinking about how to implement low-stakes quizzing in a larger classroom. (I have to confess that I did very little of my own studying using the recommended techniques, at least consciously. I usually relied on raw processing power, though I did take a lot of notes and I do believe that writing stuff down in your own words is a great way to learn the concepts better.) I loved the authors’ analogy between beginning learning and a bad first draft, since I’m a huge believer in forcing oneself to produce a bad first draft as a way to get to the good final draft. show less

NOTE: If this is your first exposure to the principles of how to effectively learn things add 1 star to my rating.

After reading multiple books on this topic (such as Mind for Numbers) I've become aware of one thing they have in common and that really bugs me: the information contained in the book does not support its length - for example this book would make a wonderful article, metanalysis, or even a short, 150-200 pages long book. But I guess that would not be very profitable so instead we show more have to deal with a lot of repetitive or irrelevant information that diminish the overall quality of the book which is high.

What I really liked about this book in particular is that the focus is not only on school / education style of learning (structured information, exams etc.) but also on lifelong learning, retention of information relevant to our interests or professions etc. There are nice examples from real life (education of pilots for example) and the information can be broadly applied to many areas.

If you have already read some similar book about learning (recall, spaced repetition, testing, metacognition etc.) then expect a lot of repetition, but very well written and illustrated on various examples and studies, but also quite a lot of new concepts and information that I've not seen anywhere else (such as emphasis on reflection) and I in my estimation it is still worth reading.

If you are absolutely new in this area then look no further - this book can provide you with lifechanging information about learning, memorization and absorbing information. show less

(13) I read this for the education part of my job - teaching graduate-level professional students that should be high-performers. The concepts which are evidenced-based tenets from the science of learning and effective studying are clearly presented but lets just say . . . not scintillating. The authors do weave in stories of successful learners at all levels as well as from athletes, pilots, surgeons. But for me, I have heard it all before so that not only the initial time the info was show more presented it bored me - but the subsequent 90 million times the author's presented it again (and again) it bored me more.

So I think my rating of this book is low for me on a personal level, but it may not represent for someone else for whom this information feels new. My issue is that I have always been a successful student and figured out 'how to study' on my own long ago - it boggles my mind that a student could get to the level I teach at and need to be spoon-fed these skills. What the hell are our secondary schools and colleges and universities doing (besides it seems grossly inflating grades?) It has always been that frequent quizzing and worksheets and going to the board and doing problems are used for young students to teach them all this. Then - when you are an adult (which should be college age) you understand how to study and can deal with writing papers and/or having one mid-term and final because your professors have a lot of other things to do besides baby-dog you. Sigh. It appears college professors and professors at medical school and law school now need to throw their other work aside in order to create juvenile assignments like - "what are the main points of the lecture?" "compare and contrast x and y?" "now pass in your sheets for me to read."

OK, I digress. So I am cool with the science of learning and studying and this is a clear presentation - it is a very good piece of work which tries really hard to keep the reader engaged. However, even though the authors warn you they will be repeating things; the repetition is mind-numbing and I only skimmed the whole end of the book with the 'tips for students and teachers" part. show less