Preface

• Guiding principles
  • Spaced repetition of key ideas
  • Interleaving of different topics

Chapter 1 - Learning is Misunderstood

• Acquire skills and knowledge to have them available for future problems and opportunities
• Immutable aspects of learning
  • Learning requires memory
  • We need to keep learning and remembering all our lives
  • Learning is an acquired skill

Claims We Make in This Book

• Learning is deeper when it takes effort
• We are poor judges of when we are learning well
• Re-reading text and massed practice are some of the least productive strategies for learning
• Retrieval practice is more effective than review
  • Flashcards are a simple example
• It is okay to space out practice
  • It might feel bad
  • It might even seem harder
  • The effort to remember will produce better results
• Try to solve a problem before being taught the solution
• Meeting people’s learning styles for effective learning is not supported by research
• Testing helps calibrate our judgment
• All new learning requires a foundation of prior knowledge
• Elaboration vs repetition
  • Repetition is simply trying to cram as much knowledge