To many, learning new knowledge or skills, the “hard way” signals wasted time and effort. People believe good teaching should be customised initially to the various learning styles of students and use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick, compiled by Peter Brown and published on April 14th, 2014. Throws light on ways to make your learning better and more effective—reflecting on modern research in cognitive psychology and other specialities.
HOW THIS BOOK HELPED US?
Make It Stick helped us realise that we can acquire mastery of a particular skill through iterative practice. When practising, space out the practice sessions. The book also helped us understand that authentic learning is effortful. When it’s easy, it’s usually superficial and forgotten soon.
THE BOOK EXPLAINED IN UNDER 60 SECONDS
- Make It Stick describes authentic learning as effortful and how poor we are at judging whether learning is going well and productive and when it’s not.
- Attention is put on retrieval practice as a better learning strategy than rereading. Remembering events and facts from the memory results in retaining information and strengthening memory.
- The writer emphasises interleaved practice when learning. Interleaved practice is difficult and slow, something that makes learning productive. Switching between different problems helps learners select the correct type of solution.
TOP THREE QUOTES
- “The more you can explain the way your new learning relates to your prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later.”
- “It’s not failure that’s desirable. It’s the dauntless effort despite the risks, the discovery of what works and what doesn’t that sometimes only failure can reveal.”
- “Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful. Learning that is easy is like writing in the sand, here today and gone tomorrow.
BOOK SUMMARY AND NOTES
Chapter One: Learning is Misunderstood
Authentic learning is effortful, which makes it more durable. When learning something seems easy, it appears accurate and genuine until examined more closely: it’s like writing in the sand; it’s here today and gone tomorrow. When written down, information seems obvious, but the value of effort put in when noting isn’t always obvious. Still, it’s one of the easiest ways of getting the knowledge into the head.
We are poor at judging when our learning is well and productive and when it’s not. When learning is difficult and slow, it does not feel productive. Therefore, we turn to strategies that feel more generative and fruitful, unconscious that the achievements of these strategies are provisional. Rereading and massed practice of information are scholars’ most preferred learning strategies. But they’re also the least productive. Massed practice is the single-minded, rapid repetition of something you’re trying to put into memory. Cramming is a good example. It might help you recall the information for the next few days but will not efficiently encourage long-term retention.
Rereading and massed practice generate feelings of fluency, considered signs of mastery. But these strategies could be a better use of time for actual knowledge and durability.
Retrieval practice—remembering events from the brain is a better and more effective learning strategy than reviewing by rereading. Retrieval strengthens memory and interrupts forgetting.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “Trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning, even when errors are made in the attempt.”
Chapter Two: To Learn, Retrieve
Retrieval practice—remembering facts or events from memory is a more effective learning strategy than rereading. An essential type of learning comes from reflection on personal experience. The effort needed to remember events or concepts you studied earlier results in retaining information and strengthens the memory. Reflection involves various cognitive activities that result in more robust learning: retrieving knowledge, connecting this knowledge to new experiences, visualising, and mentally rehearsing what you learned.
To ensure that the new learning is obtainable when needed, memorise a list of the things you need to worry about in a specific situation and drill on them. With proper practice, you won’t have to go through the list repeatedly but rather a matter of reflexes to take the correct action.
The Testing Effect
The power of retrieval as a learning tool is the Testing Effect. In its usual form, testing is used to weigh learning and allocate grades in school. The act of retrieving events from the brain makes knowledge much easier to access again in the future. From empirical research, exercising retrieval makes learning more effective and sticks far better than rereading the original content.
To optimise the act of retrieval, it has to be replicated repeatedly but spaced far enough that the recall, instead of becoming a pointless recitation, requires some cognitive effort.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “Exercise in repeatedly recalling a thing strengthens the memory.”
Chapter Three: Mix up Your Practice
It may not be instinctive that retrieval practice is a far more robust learning strategy than repeated review and rereading. Yet, most of us take for granted the significance of testing.
The Myth of Massed Practice
Most of us believe that learning is more significant when we approach a task with a single-minded purpose: the practice that’s supposed to burn a skill into memory. Faith in the focused, iterative procedure of one particular skill until fully mastered is common among teachers, athletes and corporate trainers. Learning is obtaining new knowledge or skills and applying them later. Through practice, students can use knowledge in the everyday world. Practising is crucial to learning, and it’s much more effective when split into separate intervals of spaced-out training. Practise that’s varied, interleaved or spaced out generates better mastery, longer retention and more versatility. Massed practice includes cramming, summer language boot camps or continuing education seminars where training is condensed into a single weekend.
Interleaved Practice
Interleaved practice involves learning spaced out and mixed with other types of learning. Interleaving the practice of two or more topics or skills is a more formidable option to mass practice. Interleave practice is more complex and slower compared to massed practice. Teachers and students can sense the difference. They feel that their grasp of each element is processed more slowly. And, the compensating long-term advantage needs to be made apparent to them. Switching between various sorts of problems instead of focusing on a single problem helps learners distinguish between these problems. And learn to select the correct type of solution and understand the problem within a broader context.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “It’s not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.”
Chapter Four: Embrace Difficulties
Difficulties that elicit more effort and slow down learning, such as spaced repetition, retrieval, varying or combining practice, compensate for their disruptions by making learning more precise, enduring, and vital. Short-term hindrances that make learning stronger are known as “Desirable Difficulties”. Desirable difficulties limit learning and do not feel as productive as other strategies, although they generate better results. For example, questioning students to provide answers on a fill-in-the-blank quiz rather than multiple-choice requires them to use recall more effectively, which takes effort.
Desirable difficulties are complex in a very particular way. They call for cognitive energy to be spent on the subject or skill to be learned. Many strategies make learning more difficult, but they’ll not generate the same positive effect. For example, shouting at somebody or putting them on the spot – the classic “pimping” in medicine unquestionably makes recalling more demanding. Since the difficulty is irrelevant to the skill being learned, it does not assist in learning.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “The easier knowledge or a skill is for you to retrieve, the less your retrieval practice will benefit your retention of it.”
Chapter Five: Avoid Illusions of Knowing
At the root of our effectiveness lies the potential to hold the world around us and estimate our performance. Constantly, we judge what we know and don’t know and whether we are efficient enough to handle a task or solve a problem. When executing a job, we monitor ourselves, adjusting our thinking as we progress—keeping an eye on ourselves while thought is known as Metacognition. This skill helps us avoid blind alleys, make better decisions and reflect on performing better next time.
Poor judgement means we don’t know we have it, leading to incorrect decisions. Everyone makes errors in judgement; therefore, we must become good observers of our thinking and performance. This skill is known as good judgement. Humans usually overestimate our incompetent capabilities and see no reason for change. We are deluded by cognitive biases, illusions and the stories we create to describe the world surrounding us and our place.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “For success, everything must go right, but by contrast, failure can be attributed to any number of external causes.”
Chapter six: Get Beyond Learning Styles
The concept that individuals have definite learning styles has been around enough to be part of educational practice and an essential part of how people judge themselves. The fundamental premise states that people acquire and process new information differently. For example, some learn better when they use visual material. Others prefer learning from written text or documents, and others from auditory material.
Learners are different, and each has learning preferences. Yet, we are not convinced you excel in learning when instruction suits those preferences. The main difference in how people learn that appears to matter is how someone sees themselves and their capabilities. “Whether you think you can do it or can’t, you’re right.”
People who draw out fundamental principles from new experiences are usually better learners than those who take their experiences at face value. Remember to reason out lessons that can be applied in similar situations. Likewise, people who single out essential concepts from inessential information are more successful learners.
Emphasise learning methods beyond your learning styles, such as being in charge, and embracing the idea of successful intelligence or retrieval practice. Using active learning strategies helps you acquire new knowledge and how to access it.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “Everyone has learning preferences, but we’re not persuaded that you learn better when the manner of instruction fits those preferences.”
Chapter Seven: Increase Your Abilities
We were raised thinking that our brain is conceptualised and our intellectual capacity is set right from birth. The simple fact here is that our mental abilities are not predetermined from birth but are ours to mould to a greater extent. The brain is not a muscle; being good at a particular skill will not automatically make you good at others. Learning strategies such as retrieval practice enhance intellectual abilities in the skills practised. Still, the benefits don’t extend to mastery of other skills. The more you practise, the better you perform. What you do shapes who you become and what you can do. The more you do, the more you can do.
Growth Mindset
If you think you can do it or you think you can’t do it, you’re right. The level of your mental abilities is not fixed but instead rests in your own hands. The brain tends to change due to effortful learning. Whenever you learn something new effortfully, the brain creates new connections; over time, these new connections make you smarter.
Deliberate Practice
When you watch an outstanding performance by a professional in any skill, perhaps you wonder at what inborn talent must be in their abilities. But professional performances don’t usually come from genetic preference or IQ advantage but rather from hundreds of hours of deliberate practice.
If performing a task repeatedly is regarded as practice, then deliberate practice is a different concept. Deliberate practice is goal-oriented, and solitary and involves repeated striving to reach far beyond your current level of performance.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful after all.”
HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS
“Make It Stick” by Peter Brown is a book about effective learning strategies that can help anyone, including software developers, improve their ability to retain and apply new information. The book emphasises the importance of active learning, such as frequent practice and self-testing, and the benefits of using varied and challenging examples to deepen understanding. By understanding how the brain works, developers can create learning experiences that encourage active learning, repetition, and retrieval practice, leading to more durable and long-lasting knowledge. By applying the principles outlined in the book, software developers can improve their ability to learn and retain new programming languages, tools, and techniques, ultimately leading to better performance and more successful projects.
