Most of us think we know how to learn without giving it much thought. What’s there to think about? You learn some material, remember it and use what you’ve learnt when needed.
But for the pilot who finds themselves having to land a plane with no functioning engines, or a doctor who has to resuscitate someone who’s heart has stopped, there is no room for forgetting things or making mistakes.
How many of us can remember details of the last book we read? Or, worse yet, being questioned after you’ve learnt something only to provide a jumbled explanation realising you didn’t understand it all along!
I’ve obviously experienced this a few times myself 😀
Being a better learner is something I aspire to myself, so I’m excited to get stuck into this one. I want to emphasise that this is about learning not the best way to pass a specific test, which will include additional things such as exam technique.
I’ve ruthlessly summarised a large amount of information directly from cognitive scientists to keep things as concise and practical as possible. I’ve put all the resources in the further reading section, in order of how heavily I’ve drawn on them. They are super interesting books, so I would recommend adding at least one to the bookshelf – especially Make It Stick.
Let’s hand over to the cognitive scientists to tell us the best ways to learn.
Firstly, there are a few misconceptions about learning that may surprise you.
| Misconception | Evidence says… |
| Re-reading information multiple times will help it sink into your memory | – Gains achieved during continuous practice in a short period fade away quickly – Repetition by itself does not lead to good long-term memory Growing familiarity with information does not mean you are mastering the content |
| Aiming to make learning easier and faster is better | – When learning is easy it is often superficial and easily forgotten – Harder and deeper thinking leads to better retention – You learn better when you challenge yourself to try and solve problems before knowing the solution – Challenges in learning provide useful feedback and information needed for learners to master the material |
| To master a new skill, you should give it your entire focus and practise repeatedly | – Spreading out learning of a topic, returning to it periodically over time, leads to better memory – Mixing the study of different topics, you learn each one better than if you had studied them one at a time in sequence |
| You learn better when you receive information in your preferred learning style e.g. visual, auditory, written text etc. | – Everyone has learning preferences, but you learn better when you draw on all of your abilities and resources, than when you limit yourself to a particular ‘style’ – The method of learning should match the subject being taught e.g. learning geometry should be visual, learning poetry written etc. This leads to better learning, but applies to everyone |
| Skills are more important than knowledge | Mastering something requires the possession of ready knowledge and the understanding of how to use it |
| Testing children is unnecessary and harmful | – Testing is a very effective way to learn as it requires engagement and effort to retrieve things from memory and allows feedback to be given to identify areas to work on – Testing can be harmful when it is purely viewed as a way of grading students rather than used to improve learning |
Fundamentally, the brain learns efficiently only if it is attentive, focused and active.
We can think of four pillars that will determine the speed and efficiency of how we learn:
1. Attention
Have you ever daydreamed through an entire page of a book and not taken in a single thing. This is because your attention was somewhere else. Attention is what we focus on and can be increased by anticipating a reward (e.g. financial, joy from solving a problem etc.) or having a good level of challenge.
The key thing to remember from this section it is that we only process a limited amount of information at any one time and it is very important to avoid overloading our attention.
When you feel like you’re multi-tasking, you’re actually switching back and forth between the two things you’re trying to pay attention to, which diminishes efficiency for both of the tasks.
A good example is counting from 1 to 26 and A to Z separately Vs trying to switch between them A – 1, B – 2, C – 3…switching will take longer.
You also pay more attention to material when you are interested in it and it is presented in an engaging way, so reading around the subject and real-world applications can generate interest in a topic that will help to increase your attention.
Here are some tips to increase your attention.
2. Active engagement
How interested and curious we are in the material encourages our brain to test new theories and to think about the meaning of what we are learning. You won’t learn much if you’re being passive and not engaged by the material!
You should constantly be translating what you learn into your own words and thoughts. This is what I am doing right now as I write this blog drawing on new material from four chunky books!
Thinking about how things work out of curiosity and how theories apply to the real world can generate more engagement.
3. Error feedback
Making mistakes is actually a crucial part of learning, because we are able to compare our predictions with reality and correct our models of the world.
This is not to say that you need to get things wrong continuously. When you get things right, there is usually a degree of surprise linked to our expectations or predictions.
For example, when we test ourselves and are not 100% sure of the answer, even if we get the answer right there is a feedback signal to verify what the incorrect answer was. The important part is receiving the feedback to remove the uncertainty – in your brain this error signal spreads and updates your knowledge, increasing your chances of responding correctly in the future.
This leads us to an important point – in order to learn you need to have quick and accurate feedback. This is why doing regular self tests with feedback on where you went wrong is such an important part of learning.
4. Consolidation
This is when what we have learned becomes fully automated.
At some point none of us could read. There was also a point where we could read but had to sound out letters to form the words. Our learning then became consolidated, which is the process that allows us to read without thinking about it.
There are things we can learn and then practise until we don’t need to consciously think about doing them, like reading, driving, doing kick-ups with a football (and aspects of every single sport) or playing a musical instrument.
Consolidation is essential for your brain because it frees up brain power for other purposes – remember we cannot multitask.
This is why it is crucial that we become automated in reading and arithmetic as early as possible in our lives, so that we are able to focus our attention on the important things, such as the real meaning of sentences.
A common complaint about times tables are that they boring and not useful. The boring part may be true to some extent, but the reason why we drill times tables is to make this fundamental arithmetic automated in our brains, so when we have a tricky problem to solve that involves arithmetic we don’t spend all our brain power trying to figure out what 7 x 9 is and focus on the actual problem to solve.
Two key aspects of consolidation are regular practise and sleep.
Practising things regularly will lead to automation. Also, while we sleep, our brain remains active and replays the important events it recorded during the previous day. It gradually transfers them into a more efficient compartment of our memory.
Deep sleep is the key part of the process, so make sure you spend the last hour before bed winding down and getting ready for a good night of learning 🙂
Key messages
These pillars taken together can be summarised into the following messages if you want to be a great learner:
- Fully concentrate – do not try and ‘multitask’!
- Participate in class – stay engaged and think about real world applications of what you are learning
- Learn from your mistakes – shift your mindset to realise that making mistakes is actually a form of learning
- Practice every day and sleep well every night for the things in your life you want to become automated
Now, let’s look at some learning strategies that can help us to learn better based on evidence and how our brain works and how we learn.
Learning strategies:
1. Retrieval
This is self-quizzing yourself after you’ve read material, to force you to retrieve knowledge from memory. It should become your main practise instead of rereading.
It also helps to identify where your weak areas are.
Why? – rereading creates the false impression that you will remember the material, hence retrieval is more effective.
Retrieving key ideas from new material and connecting them to prior knowledge improves your mastery of the material.
How? – complete a simple self-quiz after reading information or learning something new. Pause periodically to ask yourself questions from memory such as:
- What are the key ideas?
- What terms or ideas are new to me?
- How does this related to other topics I’ve learned?
- What was the definition or process of X, Y, and Z?
Look out for questions at the end of book chapters, which are designed to test your understanding and help you learn. Don’t skip over these!
It might feel: awkward and frustrating, especially when the new learning is hard to recall. It does not feel as productive as rereading your class notes and highlighting passages of text. But when you work hard to recall a memory, you actually strengthen it. If you relearn something after failing to recall it, you learn it better than if you had not tried to recall it!
Outcome: A habit of regular retrieval practice throughout the duration of a course puts an end to last minute cramming. You will need little studying at exam time as reviewing the material in the days before an exam is much easier than learning it!
If you go for long periods without trying to retrieve knowledge or apply skills, you will forget them. If something is important for you to remember or maintain, then create a routine to test yourself every so often.
2. Spacing
This is leaving periods of time in-between retrieval.
Why? – Spacing material or topics between study sessions allows an element of forgetting to kick in since your last practice, so you will have to work harder to reconstruct what you already studied. You’re essentially trying to retrieve it from long-term memory.
The effort to reconstruct the learning makes the important ideas more memorable and creates a stronger connection to related knowledge and more recent learning.
How? – You could leave hours, days, a week or a month depending on how new the material is to you and how well you do at retrieving it initially. Monthly will be the minimum, as even if you have mastered the material, it will need to be retrieved periodically to keep it in your long-term memory.
The principle is that you need some time for a little forgetting between practice sessions, but you do not want too much time so that you would have to re-learn the material.
Flashcards are a good tool as they force retrieval and spacing – they create a period of time between seeing information and force you to retrieve the information from memory before turning over to see if you are right.
It might feel: uncomfortable if you are used to continuously drilling information and focusing on single topics for long periods of time, because this does see short term gains. But without combining retrieval with spaced periods in between, the short-term memory will eventually fade.
Spacing feels more difficult because you have forgotten some of the material, so it is harder to recall. It will usually take you longer to recall the information, but, rather than being less productive, the opposite is happening. As you reconstruct learning from long-term memory you are strengthening your mastery as well as your memory.
3. Interleaving
This is the practise of mixing the learning of different but related topics or skills rather than disproportionately focusing on one topic until you feel like you have mastered it.
Textbooks and courses are usually structured in blocks and so we tend to focus on each block or chapter and practise lots of examples until we feel like we have really mastered the material.
Why? – when you mix practice of related topics and skills, you constantly challenge your ability to recognise different problem types and select the right solution.
The evidence shows that when you interleave the study of different topics, you learn each better than if you had studied them one at a time in sequence.
How? – once you understand a new problem type and its solution, but you wouldn’t say you’ve mastered it, mix this problem type throughout your practise routine so that you’re self-quizzing on various problem types and retrieving the appropriate solutions for each one.
Using the example of flashcards, it is like mixing two different sets of flashcards on related topics.
It might feel: like you are interrupting or disrupting your flow when switching from one type of practice / topic to a different type feels – this could feel counterproductive. However, the evidence shows you will learn all topics overall better.
4. Elaboration
This is when you try to find an additional depth of meaning in the material you have learned and elaborate on how new learning relates to what you already know.
Why? – it strengthens the learning and increase the number of mental cues that you will be able to use to recall and apply things you have learned.
How? – asking yourself how the material relates to other topics and things you already know, explaining things to someone else in your own words
A great form of elaboration is to think of metaphors, new examples or visual images for the new material you have learned.
To wrap up…
I hope these strategies help to take your learning and performance to a new level.
The learning scientists blog (authors of the visual guide in the further reading section) have a nice visual to summarise these strategies from their website and have great posters that go into more detail on each strategy. Maybe one for the wall?
So, now we know how to learn effectively, it’s time for a short quiz!
- What are the four pillars of learning?
- Name three strategies to improve your learning?
- What are two common misconceptions about learning?
- Why is it more effective to mix topics before you’ve mastered them, rather than master each topic before you move on?
- What are your views on skills vs knowledge? Can you elaborate and think of a metaphor to demonstrate your position?
Further reading:
- Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Brown et al, 2014)
- How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain (Dehaene, 2020)
- Understanding how we learn: a visual guide (Weinstein et al, 2019)
- Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom (Willingham, 2021)