Make It Stick
Written by Peter C. Brown, Henry I. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel.
⏱️ The book in three sentences
Highlighting, rereading and open-book testing are the wrong way to go about learning and this is how most of us spend our study time.
Testing our knowledge, correcting the mistakes, spacing our testing over time, and mixing up the material rather than studying one topic in bulk are far more effective strategies.
Trust the process; the best techniques are slower and feel less effective, but our feelings towards learning are frequently misleading.
🪞 Reflections
The first four chapters of this book, along with chapter eight, should be mandatory reading for students and educators. The authors build their argument off the back of both scientific studies and anecdotal testimonies. The way we are studying is wrong. Students who have changed their study style to integrate Make it Stick's suggestions quickly rose to the highest rankings among their peers.
Those changes we as students need to make are not complicated, but that doesn't make them easy either. One of the books' key points is that when learning is difficult, that difficulty, in and of itself, is what makes studying effective. The dichotomy between what feels effective and what is effective is discussed at length, and repeatedly, throughout the book. It may seem repetitive, but I applaud the authors for taking this approach. If the best techniques are counterintuitive, it's necessary to convince readers to stick with the strategy long enough to see results.
Despite the utility of the information in the book, some of the middle chapters felt like filler. Those on learning styles and mindset were particularly useless, in my opinion. The bulk of these chapters boil down to believing in yourself and having a long-term view. My guess is that if you are reading a book about how to improve the efficiency of your learning, you already have the right mindset for life-long self-development and improvement. Regardless, these sections do not take up much of the readers' time and the good in Make it Stick far outweighs the bad.
💥 Personal Impact
The chapters focused on testing, spacing, and interleaving were especially impactful for me.
Testing was something I learned early in university as a technique that was much more effective than just rereading the text. Although, I was not aware of the scientific literature on the subject. On reflection, however, I’ve realized that a large part of my testing strategy was flawed. I often committed the critical error of immediately looking at the answer if I did not know how to solve the problem. Make it Stick’s chapter on testing was insightful for providing evidence on how the actual act of effortfully and thoughtfully attempting the question is what makes the learning “stick”. Beyond that, after attempting the question and checking the answer, spending time to debrief the correct methodology locks in the learning further.
The section regarding how we trick ourselves into thinking we know the material was also interesting. I am certainly guilty of skimming over questions and skipping those which I tell myself “I already know that”. It’s important to write down your answer, both to prove that your ability to withdraw the information is strong and galvanize the ability further.
Spacing and Interleaving - After reading the book, I believe these two techniques should be dealt with hand in hand. Spacing requires one to test themselves repeatedly over time, rather than bulk-studying a topic at once. Interleaving, similarly, encourages the student to study multiple topics at the same time, instead of mastering one topic before moving on to the next. According to the authors, together, these two techniques develop powerful neural connections and mental models. The wider these models span, the better we become at applying knowledge to broader, more complex, real-world scenarios. Furthermore, combining these two techniques make sense logistically. It's probably impossible to perfect your understanding of a topic on the first try. Allowing yourself to move on to a new subject not only promotes progression but actually encourages a better subconscious understanding of the material in the long term.
🗣 Top three quotes
"Embrace the fact that significant learning is often, or even usually, somewhat difficult. You will experience setbacks. These are signs of effort, not of failure." (Pg. 201)
"It’s not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later." (Pg. 57)
"We make the effort because the effort itself extends the boundaries of our abilities." (Pg. 199)