Teaching and learning learningMake It Stick – The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel, Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 2014. US$27.95, hdbk (322 pp.), ISBN 978-0-674-72901-8
Ulrich R. Ernst
KU Leuven - University of Leuven, Research Group of Functional Genomics and Proteomics, Laboratory of Socioecology and Social
Evolution, Department of Biology, Naamsestraat 59, bus 2465, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Book Review
Universities have two main tasks: research and teaching.Researchers investigate and disseminate their knowledge;students learn facts, concepts, and methods, and developvarious skills. While it can be argued that within theresearch activities the scientific methods employed arelargely validated (but see [1,2]), university teaching andlearning methods are often less substantiated and areconsidered to be less efficient. Successful learning andteaching methods have been identified and investigatedbut are rarely used, according to Make it Stick, a recentbook by novelist Brown and psychologists Roediger andMcDaniel. The authors ask why this is the case, andprovide answers and suggestions, although these answersmight be inconvenient for learners of all ages and teacherswith years of experience. Most professors are not hiredprimarily for their teaching skills, and Brown et al. avoidelaborating on political implications that the findings inthe field of learning and teaching may have. Instead, theyfocus on what individual students and teachers can do toimprove the performance of their respective tasks.
In reviewing the vast literature on human learning theauthors conclude that, contrary to widespread belief, count-less repetitions (‘massed’ practice) are not the most efficientway of learning. Rather, learning phases should be spreadover time (‘spacing’), and practicing varying jobs (‘interleav-ing’) is more successful than training one specific task overand over. Even so, students prefer the ‘massed’ learningbecause they perceive more success in the short term. How-ever, retention of such learned material is poor and, aftersome weeks or even days, most will no longer be accessible tothe student. Why does this matter? Because the encoding ofinformation is only half of the learning process. Equallyimportant are the storage and retrieval of learned material,and these processes are best accomplished when the encod-ing process is made more difficult. Thus, instead of rereadinga paragraph, one should test oneself and try to summarizeand repeat the key points, linking them to previous knowl-edge, visualize them, and connect them to familiar examples.Basically, you quiz yourself to benefit twice: retrieval willstrengthen your memory, and it will reveal what you do notknow yet, allowing you to go over these items again. Sometime later you repeat this test, and include quizzing aboutmaterial studied earlier on, thereby further strengtheningretrieval routes and, if need be, correcting mistakes and gapsin knowledge. This ‘testing effect’ has been examined in thelab as well as in schools, colleges, and sports training, and hasproved superior to the traditional learning and teaching
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.10.003
Corresponding author: Ernst, U.R. ([email protected]).
654 Trends in Ecology & Evolution, December 2014, Vol. 29, No. 12
methods. It applies to all ages and all environments, andthus is also of relevance for academics, whether they teach orneed to learn (and remember) the latest developments intheir field. If professors, teachers, and trainers strive to teachmore efficiently they will need to rethink the way they designtheir classes and training sessions; and students will beobliged to adopt different learning styles, which may beperceived, initially, as more strenuous or unpleasant, butwhich will prove to be more efficient and valuable in the longrun.
Why are these methods not employed more often? Brownet al. suggest that this is likely because the method appearsmore difficult and less rewarding for a student: durablelearning requires more effort than merely rereading a textor reciting from short-term memory, and retrieval aftersome time reveals what is no longer accessible, leading todisappointment. Therefore, teachers should help their stu-dents to reach their learning goals by teaching the somewhatunintuitive methods, encouraging students to take control oftheir own learning, and applying methods that involve fre-quent quizzes and spaced and interweaved practices. Brownet al. dedicate a whole chapter to tools, tricks, and mindsetsthat help to achieve long-lasting learning and success.
The authors seek to make their book broadly readableby using many examples and avoiding technical jargon. Asthe authors make a point of applying what they try toconvey they interleave several topics and repeat frequentlythe key idea: practice retrieval. These redundancies, how-ever, contribute to a relatively low information density thatmakes several chapters somewhat lengthy for busy aca-demics. In fact, the authors lay out their claims on fivepages – leaving more than 300 pages to elaborate on them.Curiously, the authors refrained from what they praisemost: there are no quizzes included, nor do they prompt tointerrupt reading for a self-test. Wouldn’t that have beenhelpful? Similarly, the authors declare that ‘Humans re-member pictures more easily than words’, but there is not asingle graph in their book. However, the examples of howtesting, spacing, and interleaving could be integrated inclassrooms and course works are useful.
While the book is written for a diverse readership, itscontent is highly relevant to academic teaching and learn-ing, and it is hoped that its key points will inspire studentsand lecturers alike. Now, can you recall, connect, andelaborate on three arguments of this review?
References1 Ioannidis, J.P.A. (2005) Why most published research findings are false.
PLoS Med. 2, e1242 Altmann, D.G. (1994) The scandal of poor medical research. Br. Med. J.
308, 283–284
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