UCLA Professor Says Conventional Wisdom on Study Habits Is All Washed Up 329
An anonymous reader writes "Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? According to Robert Bjork, director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab, distinguished professor of psychology, and massively renowned expert on packing things in your brain in a way that keeps them from leaking out, all are three are exactly opposite the best strategies for learning."
Do Not Want (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to academia. If you don't tell people you are important, they won't know and won't care. There is a saying that a PhD is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. An academic career is 10% inspiration, 40% perspiration and 50% marketing.
Re:I have to say (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Forget everything you know about learning. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to the old system, it was easy.
Not to me.
Endless rote memorization: writing, flash cards, drills, ugh!
Humans naturally want to learn. It's innate in our being and yet, we get to school and hate it - at least 90% of us do. (The other 10% are the A students. )
When we're left to our own devices and learning something that we're interested in, do we learn like we do in school? I don't. It's all one big discovery. And the wonderful thing about the internet, it makes following curiosities even easier - until you tired and head over to Fark.
Re:His brain is better than mine (Score:5, Insightful)
That might work for him because his brain has the capacity to recall all the stuffs _after_ the class is over. Not me.
If I waited till the class is over and _then_ started to write down the notes based on what I recall, I probably can recall 15% to 20% of the total thing.
That might be true, right now. How about after a little bit of practice? You might be surprised to find out that it won't take too long for you to be able to improve your after-class recall ability.
This seems so obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have to say (Score:2, Insightful)
you could just record your class. another way to do it would be to take notes during class and take another set afterwards after class without looking at your originals. this would be effective due to an effect called the "testing effect."
Re:Forget everything you know about learning. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to the old system, it was easy.
Not to me.
Endless rote memorization: writing, flash cards, drills, ugh!
Humans naturally want to learn. It's innate in our being and yet, we get to school and hate it - at least 90% of us do. (The other 10% are the A students. )
When we're left to our own devices and learning something that we're interested in, do we learn like we do in school? I don't. It's all one big discovery. And the wonderful thing about the internet, it makes following curiosities even easier - until you tired and head over to Fark.
This is easily the most insightful yet commonsense comment in the entire discussion. Modern schooling sucks the life and soul out of learning and produces factory-style people who have forgotten what curiosity and the joy of discovery is all about.
I believe that's by design. It results in people who can't or won't educate themselves, who were raised to believe that education is something another person must give to you. They're simply easier to rule, especially when propaganda (particularly framing) and soundbites are your major tools.
Re:His brain is better than mine (Score:5, Insightful)
The learning assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this approach is that it assumes students are in class to learn.
But that's not the system we live in.
Increasingly, students are in class to memorize material so that they can quickly recall it on one of many tests.
Tests. Memory. That's what we're teaching to these days. Not learning. Key difference.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that thereÃ(TM)s a trick implied by Ãoeprovided the retrieval succeedsÃ: You should space your study sessions so that the information you learned in the first session remains just barely retrievable.
And how are you supposed to accomplish that? I'm sure that it really does work in the tests they've performed. But how would you implement that on your own?
What Professor Bjork proposed does work, but only to some degree, based on my own experience
For me, the learning process is a bit like digesting food
My puny little brain just can't process all the new info/ideas/concepts that it has just received, and a lot of those new info ended up somehow cramped up in some secret compartments somewhere
As time goes by, my brain (and this puny little semi-retarded brain of my does not stop working even when I'm asleep) digests the stored information, bit by bit - often without me knowing what's going on
But those bit-by-bit info-digestion do add up, and they contribute to moments of "insights" or "enlightenment" when I encouter some sets of similar but un-related information
Take language --- I am not an English native speaker.
The first time I learned English it took me literary years to comprehend the basics
But when I encounter Spanish, French, Italian, Portugese, Latin in later years I found that I can get along with these language much faster than I first encounter English
It might be that the digestive-process of the English Language in my mind that took decades somehow contributed in my enhance ability to match words (similar but not exact match) and that helped a lot
How do you know that you're about to forget something if you don't recall it within the next 24 hours? Without recalling that you recall it right now?
All I can say is that while our brains may be similar they are still different
Maybe Professor Bjork's brain is much better than mine that's why he could master things that I can't.
And maybe there are people with brains that are much superior than the one in between the ears of Professor Bjork, and they can get instant recall to _every_single_thing, without effort.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Again as with the initial "notes after class". How do you KNOW that you have NOT forgotten something?
Because instead of being a stenographer, you were paying attention and learning. If you listen to the lecture knowing that you will have to summarize it right after, you will remember what needs to be remembered. It's the difference between learning something and memorizing something.
Derive on the fly (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of talk as to what you should do while an after the prof is speaking, but so far very little has been said about what to do *before* the professor speaks it. During my Physics undergrad, I would challenge myself to try to derive results and formulas before the prof finished. I was often wrong, and I usually had to have my notes at least nudged along at least a few times per lecture, but trying to derive on the fly is an awesome way to learn something. There's nothing quite like figuring out a problem by yourself to have it really gel with your overall understanding.
That's my advice: rather than just trying to learn, as much as possible *do your own thinking* in class and you'll be amazed at how little you have to work later to recall it.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:3, Insightful)
That's Common Law modesty. PhDs in most subjects are still quite hard and you have to be reasonably clever to get one.
Re:His brain is better than mine (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. I remember "Electromagnetics II" course and some of the work we did in there. The professor would lead us through some contrived problem which is intended to demonstrate the principles we'd been taught. Trying to do that from memory would be impossible - the man went through 8 chalkboards to solve the problem, including one memorable equation that crossed, from left to right, 10 meters of mathematical expression. So after class... was that integral from 0 to 2*pi, or -pi to +pi, or... ah, let me borrow your notes....
This is not an isolated example for a math-focused student's life. Certainly the ability to regurgitate that equation and the steps required to derive it does not demonstrate understanding of the problem - but understanding was measured by most tests I took in engineering school. Merely the ability to solve the problem for the answer "2 pi" or some similar tripe.
Bjork's recommendations point towards a fundamental problem in education - students are not taught to understand, they are taught to pass the teachers' and system's tests.
Re:His brain is better than mine (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what I've found works for most people if they're willing to try it. Listen to the lecture and make very short notes about the most important points and/or details that you want to remember.
Hence lie several dilemma:
1. When I take notes, even very very short notes, I have to "switch" my focus from "listening to / looking at the lecturer" to focus on "looking at the stuffs I write on the paper / screen"
In other words, the time I use to write / type in the very very short note is the very time I can't focus on the lecturer
2. How do I judge which information are of "more importance"? Take take judgment call, and in order to make a judgment call, I need to scan the info that are already inside my brain and pick out what's more important
And in doing that, I loose focus on the lecturer and what he/she is telling me at that point in time
Then, fill in additional notes at the end of class (or at the next break). Discuss them with other students if needed to fill in what you may have missed.
Yes, I do find that very rewarding, especially if I can find classmates that have the ability to look at the same subject from a different point of view, and we can exchange our different POV on the same subject and we all learn together
Re:His brain is better than mine (Score:4, Insightful)
I always found the key to taking notes was to only jot out very quick ideas that strike you as important, that you might not be able to remember later. Don't try to capture everything, just capture an outline of the most important things that you won't remember on your own.
Then after that, after class, immediately go somewhere and type up your notes. Flesh them out a bit-- give more detail of what you can remember, explain to yourself why you thought the things you wrote down were important. This after-class session gives you a chance to reorganize your notes and add to them while things are still fresh in your mind. It also will help you remember things later. Even write yourself a little report afterwards if that helps.
I've watched too many people takes notes where they seem intent on copying down all the information being presented. This is a bad idea. You get so focused on capturing it all that you aren't paying attention and aren't thinking about what is being presented. If you really need all the information for later, then see if you can record the lecture. However, it generally shouldn't be necessary. Along with everything else, when you take so many notes, they're basically useless later. There's too much. It's much better to keep your notes to the bare essentials.
Re:That might work for him (Score:5, Insightful)
I looked over half the thread of comments and glanced at the summary, and it seems that everyone is still missing the way I used to study.
1. Diagram/Map/Lay out the book chapter(s) before the class.
2. In class, just put little dots or something that's a repeat of the book.
3. Then when the Prof. goes off into some other topic, then take real notes, sometimes in a different color. A lot of times those notes are the ones that show up on exams when you get a mean Prof. who prides themselves on making exams "that you had to be in class to pass".
Even better, *Record* the lectures! What's with all this "try to recall it later?" On the couple times I tried it, I did better listening to the lecture *three times* and mapping that out on paper next to the book notes.
It was enough to get me B's and B+'s. (I didn't get A's because I'd always miss something, but overall, I didn't mind the half-grade slide once I left college.)
Re:Traditional education = poor fit for today's wo (Score:5, Insightful)
We need more apprenticeship like learning for lot's of fields.
Less need college for jobs that DON'T need it.
Er, judging by the above, I'd say:
No, son. You really should keep taking English courses. Really. Trust me on this one.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:His brain is better than mine (Score:4, Insightful)
I went through the Navy Nuclear training pipeline about 15 years ago. The nuclear power school portion was not easy for me. It was in a classroom environment day after day and I spent 14-16 hours 6 days a week for 6 straight months in those classrooms. Not even leaving the building for lunch or dinner. It was not until about 3/4 of the way through and on the verge of failing out that it finally started to "click". Everything suddenly made complete sense and I was able to tie everything past and present that we were learning together and just started to make sense. I ended up doing very well on the final (even better then most in my class that had much higher GPA there than I did. I went on to the next school which was 90% hands on at a nuclear reactor plant and then to a submarine as an operator. The rest of my nuclear training and work was a breeze from that point where it clicked and I made rank and qualified all of my nuclear watch positions very fast. I learn by understanding, strict memorization without understanding does not work for me. I can rattle off neutron life cycle and reactivity equations and give you detailed explanations of theory and power plant operational characteristics but ask me to learn a list of the US Presidents and I will fail miserably.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess it's better to understand 50% than to regurgitate 80% of the material you've been given. Sure, the latter might give you better grades, but if grades are all you care about, I'm not sure you've actually understood the purpose of "learning".
What Professor Bjork is doing, from what I can tell, is giving you a method to learn better, not to memorize better. Anybody can cram stuff the day before the exam, but that knowledge won't last much longer than the time it took you to throw it down on the exam sheet. The method's going to be hard initially, you will forget things, but in the end you'll have a better understanding and a better methodology for learning.
It definitely sounds intriguing and I'm tempted to put it to work, even if I actually do some of the stuff he's talking about already; I tend to find that switching between subjects allows me to "cool down" about each one and come back to them refreshed and oddly more knowledgeable than I was at the end of the last bout of studying. This is often even more obvious after a good night's sleep, where things that eluded me constantly the day before would pop to mind instantly come morning.
Re:His brain is better than mine (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't understand something, go and read a book about it after the lecture.
Even better, go and read the book before the lecture.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Insightful)
You misunderstood what he was saying.
Of course you have to train the basics. Just not one move/method/topic exclusively.
Let's take ballroom dancing as an example: Interleaving for a beginner would mean that he trained the basic steps of Disco Fox, the basic steps of Rumba, the basic steps of Tango... - and not exclusively the basic steps of Disco Fox until he mastered them, only then moving on to the next dance.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Insightful)
His methods all sound nice, "don't take notes!". Well, he should go and try that in engineering. Lets see how long he'll last.
Sounds reasonable to me. Your engineering textbooks contain all the equations, formula, and methodologies you need to learn to get a degree, so why do you go to class? The classes teach you the background of why those methods are used, and when is the proper occasion to use them. When you take extensive notes, half your attention is spent recording the lecture verbatim, and you're not actually taking an active part in learning it.
He's saying don't do that. Pay attention. Think about what is actually being said. At some point in the short term after the class, while all that stuff is still fresh in your mind, replay through the class and write as much of it as you can down. The forced recollection will leave a far better imprint. If there are things you missed, ask a classmate, review the text, go meet the teacher in their office. You've got more than one chance to acquire all this information.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds reasonable to me. Your engineering textbooks contain all the equations, formula, and methodologies you need to learn to get a degree, so why do you go to class?
This may be a surprise, but not all professors teach from a book. In fact, some professors teach information so new that isn't in very many books at all, even Wikipedia.
Further, taking notes shouldn't be just about learning material for an exam. Good notes will serve you well past the final of the course. I still reference some of my notes from my physics undergraduate because they are more clear an concise than any textbook I've found on the subject. And of course they should be, since they were written by me for my understanding.
Some people say all you get when you leave college is a piece of paper. They're doing it wrong. I left with volumes (at least 40 books) of detailed notes on topics from philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, psychology, chemistry, computer engineering, etc.
He's saying don't do that. Pay attention. Think about what is actually being said. At some point in the short term after the class, while all that stuff is still fresh in your mind, replay through the class and write as much of it as you can down. The forced recollection will leave a far better imprint. If there are things you missed, ask a classmate, review the text, go meet the teacher in their office. You've got more than one chance to acquire all this information.
Wast that exponent -b*k_j,i or -b*k_i,j? Can't tell you how many times I've had to remember something so minuscule with so great an impact. And if all of my friends follow this advise, no one will be taking notes and no one will have a definitive answer. And then 40+ people are visiting the professor to clarify stupid mistakes. After answering the same question 40 times eventually he'll just say "you should have been taking notes."
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Insightful)
I vividly remember my acoustics professor pointing out errors in the textbook. If I hadn't taken notes, I wouldn't have been able to identify the particular error later on; If I relied on the textbook I would have been screwed.
Math texts don't always provide derivations, which have to be obtained by taking notes on the lecture. Then study those notes to learn the derivation and pass the test. Unless you're as smart as the guy who did the derivation the first time, possibly after weeks or months or years of struggling, don't expect to be able to do it yourself.