Strategies for Learning mega thread

One of the most helpful lenses to look at Learning is through Bloom's Taxonomy. Each layer is a different phase of Mastery. (Below, I'll mention tips for every layer.)

There are so many techniques beyond spaced repetition...

Bloom's Taxonomy

For context, Bloom's is a way to organize different objectives in learning. (We'll use it as the outline for this thread.)

The six layers are:

- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Analyze
- Evaluate
- Create

You'll notice that each layer requires more skill

REMEMBERING

The foundation of Bloom's is Remembering. Memorization gets a bad rap because rote learning is often over emphasized, but being able to recall facts is an unavoidable foundation of understanding.

Knowledge is foundational we can't have learning without a structure of knowledge to learn from

So if you want to recall something then *practice recalling it*. The more times you pull something from memory the deeper the neural pathways are carved and the better you're going to be able to recall it in the future.

This is where spaced repetition shines: if you have facts that you want to remember, practice recalling them just after you've "forgotten".

(See: @ncasenmare's https://ncase.me/remember/  for a good overview)

But there are other ways to practice recall, too.

Where do we usually practice recall in the classroom?

Through quizzes and tests. But the problem is that testing is traditionally used a means of *evaluating* rather than a means of *learning*.

Your brain is more receptive to learning when you're relaxed, but the stress of high-stakes testing can negate some of the learning opportunity.

One of the key ways you can improve learning is through frequent low-stakes testing. Not only do you get practice for the real test, but more importantly, practicing recall will strengthen your ability to recall in the future.

The type of quiz questions matter. Short answer questions tend to aid long-term recall more than multiple choice or T/F questions.

The downside of short answer is that it has a higher grading burden.

But the upside is that we remember what we think about.

Short answer has the advantage that students must verbalize beyond checking a box.

Verbalizing what we've learned pushes us up into the next layer of Bloom's Taxonomy: Understanding

UNDERSTANDING

While in Remembering we're able to recite facts, repeat lists, or name ideas. In Understanding we're able to paraphrase what we've learned, summarize key points, and (hopefully) explain it to someone else.

The One Minute Paper

is quick way to verbalize what you've learned (and also aid with recall). The idea is, at the end of class write down:

1. the most important concept from that day and

2. one question or confusion that remains

This idea of asking questions is key to Understanding. When you ask a question you're opening a path to make connections between the knowledge you have and what you want to learn.

A variant on asking questions is making Predictions.

Prediction

Prediction improves retention because it also drives you to seek connections.

When you make a guess about what's coming next you're more interested in the answer.

If you've made a Prediction you're going to listen more closely to get the satisfaction reward of being right.

And if you're wrong? Wrong guesses expose fluency illusions.

When your Prediction is wrong, then it gives you the chance to examine your own thinking and diagnose how you ended up on the wrong track.

"Wanna Bet?"

@AnnieDuke suggests that asking "Wanna Bet?" will clarify your own thinking

When you bet on what you think you know, you immediately take an "outside" view of your opinion (metacognition) and account for uncertainty, presuppositions, and alternatives

(For more on this idea, I recommend @patrick_oshag's excellent podcast episode w/ Annie here: http://investorfieldguide.com/annie/ )

If you're in a classroom setting, one idea for using Prediction is to give students a pre-test on topics that will be covered in the lecture — *before* they've been taught the material.

Another idea is:

Pre-reading Questions

Scan the headlines and diagrams to get a big picture outline of the text/lecture and then write down questions you expect the text/lecture will answer.

True curiosity will search for answers

Another easy classroom teaching technique is to interrupt yourself mid lecture and take a poll.

In "Small Teaching" James Lang calls this "Pause-predict-ponder":

Pause-predict-ponder

During a lecture:

1. pause and
2. ask the students to predict what comes next and then ask *why* they made that Prediction.

After you've shown the answer

3. ponder. if the Prediction was wrong, what was different?

Prior Knowledge Napkin.

The idea is, before a lecture, take a couple minutes to fill a napkin (or sheet of paper) with everything you think you already know about a subject.

This is related to Prediction, but the emphasis is on *what you already know*, not guesses.

The motivation here is similar: you're activating the connections and models you already have in your brain to prepare your mind to make new ones.

QUIZ TIME

What's the name of the framework we're using to look at the different layers of Mastery?

One of the barriers we have to Understanding is that we fall into a metal rut when we're cramming just to pass a test.

But there is a way to break this pattern:

Teach to Learn

Question: would you study harder to:

- make an A on a test or
- teach the material to the class?

If we know that if we will stand before our peers and try to teach a topic, the way we study will be much different than simply memorizing answers

Fluency Illusions

are one of the biggest barriers to learning. We read the text and feel like we know the material when we actually don't

We've all had the experience of reading a math textbook, feeling that we understand it, and then being totally lost when we try to apply it to new problems

As it often happens, Step 1 is admitting you have a problem. Or in this case, recognizing areas you don't deeply Understand

Teaching, like prediction and betting, helps us identify gaps in our own knowledge.

In some ways, teaching to learn is a hack: we're using our social fear of appearing foolish before our peers to motivate us to identify gaps in our own knowledge and close them

This brings us to our next layer:

APPLYING

It sounds obvious, but the best way to help ourselves (or our students) learn a skill is to:

Practice Doing

Whatever skill we are seeking from our students, they should have time to practice it in class.

We often focus too much on conceptual, verbal-based learning (and assessment). But often the actual skill we're teaching is completely separate. We focus on The Test, The Paper, The Lecture, The Homework and neglect The Doing.

There isn't much good in teaching someone how to golf by only reading a book about golf.

The only true way to learn is to Do.

Run before you walk

We should give student the opportunity try their hand *before* they feel ready

This can have huge benefits for learning: when you try something you recognize your shortcomings more clearly (vs. listening to a lecture) and you're more attentive to instruction on how to fix it

Skill Deconstruction

As teachers, we should deconstruct skill practice into its smaller component cognitive tasks - and then teach these smaller skills.

Experts who have mastered a skill often have a set of sub-skills that they do unconsciously (and often don't even think to teach)

A novice who hasn't mastered these sub-skills will struggle with the higher-level task, because they need more granular instruction in these component cognitive skills.

This happens in programming education (my field) all the time. A teacher might say: "write a function to return this result in your app" — but what's involved is quite complicated — and separate from the program the student must write.

To write a function you might need to know how to use a text editor, find documentation and understand it, run a variety of "unrelated" tools and commands, etc.

An expert programmer doesn't think twice about these things, but they're a huge barrier for the novice.

To teach effectively, experts need to be mindful of their own mental infrastructure

If you're a teacher, it can help to brainstorm a comprehensive list of cognitive skills your students will need to develop to succeed in the course

If you're a learner, your job is to uncover the implied skills that the experts are forgetting to tell you. Often when we're struggling with a difficult concept it's because we don't understand the prerequisites

Scaffold practice

One of the ways teachers can ease the cognitive load of practicing a new skill is by creating a "scaffold" of the solution. Problems are often multi-dimensional, and by giving a scaffold you can help the student focus on one specific area.

Next, let's look at:

ANALYZING

An organizing framework helps master conceptual problems

Experts organize knowledge in their minds in a way that novices can't (yet). If you make your knowledge organization explicit then you can share it

One of the easiest ways to do this is:

Concept maps

Concept maps help visualize organization of key ideas.

As both a teacher and a student it can help to be explicit about your knowledge organization by drawing out a concept map.

Two tips for this:

1. Realize concept maps are a Graph not a Tree

Most mindmapping software forces you to organize in hierarchical outline of parents and children.

But in reality, our knowledge is organized like a Graph where you can draw connections between any node.

2. Try multiple organizing principles

First draft concept maps often end up as names of topics. But there are always multiple ways to organize your knowledge and teachers should try to communicate those.

It's worth doing a names-of-topics map just to get it out of the way, but after that, try creating a second concept map with a different organizing principle.

Don’t let your tool restrict your though process. Just use pencil and paper if you need to.

Discipline-specific conventions

Explicitly identify discipline-specific conventions. Programming has tons of these and experts often forget to communicate them

Students create mental connections — teachers can't

If you are a teacher, your goal is to create an environment where the students themselves form their own mental connections.

Lecturing about relationships and insights isn't the same thing as connections being formed in someone else's mind

That's enough for now. EVALUATING and CREATING will have to wait for another day.

Sources:

- Small Teaching by James Lang
- Teach Students How to Learn by Saundra McGuire
- How Learning Works by Ambrose et al.

If you're interested in learning, these books are great

If you made it this far..

What was the most important thing you learned from this thread?

What's one question you still have?