Learning 101: The Untaught Basics

Learning 101: The Untaught Basics

Junaid Qadir and Muhammad Ali Imran. 2018. (View Paper → )

Despite the accessibility of a wealth of information in the current era—in the form of books, universities, or online 'massive open online courses (MOOCs)—well-intentioned hard-working students often fail to learn effectively due to deficient learning technique or mindset. Two reasons in particular hinder students from achieving their potential:

• Firstly, the intuition of students regarding how learning works is often flawed and counterproductive;
• Secondly, despite significant progress in the research discipline of "learning sciences", these hard-earned scientific insights have not yet filtered their way through the research community onto the students who stand to benefit most from this knowledge.

We aim to popularise the important insights learnt by the learning science researchers by making it accessible to students, who continue to largely use suboptimal intuitive learning techniques not knowing any better.

Meta-learning or learning how to learn should be the first thing on the school curriculum. It wasn’t until the last few months of higher education that I gave it much thought.

Key Highlights:

• Effortful learning is better learning: Learning that requires effort, such as retrieval practice, spaced learning, and interleaving, leads to deeper mastery and long-term retention, even though it feels more difficult.
• To Learn, You Must Forget, Then Interrupt Forgetting: Forgetting is part of the learning process. Periodic retrieval after forgetting strengthens memory more effectively than cramming.
• Disfluency/Uncomfort Can Be Good for Learning: Slower, effortful learning, which induces a feeling of discomfort or confusion, leads to better retention and deeper understanding.
• Fixating on Perfection is Counterproductive: Mistakes are essential for learning. Embracing errors and viewing them as learning opportunities leads to better mastery.
• Fluency is Not the Same as Mastery: Fluency, or the feeling of ease when rereading or massed practice, gives an illusion of learning but does not result in durable knowledge.
• Variety Enhances Learning: Interleaving topics, using different learning environments, and exposing oneself to diverse information sources improve long-term retention and problem-solving skills.
• Testing and Retrieval Practice: Testing yourself on material, rather than just reviewing, leads to better retention and helps identify areas of weakness.