Henry Roediger on Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

The Burleson Box: A Podcast from Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA

To most of us, learning something "the hard way" implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners.

Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned.

Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

On this episode of The Burleson Box, we hear from Professor Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III, author of Make it Stick about the importance for students and teachers to know whose advice to take on how best to go about learning, what should we really be asking if we want to solve complex problems, the concept of massed practice and why our faith in it is misplaced, how learning and experience come together, how to avoid illusions of knowing, and how we can be more mindful about how mastery really works.

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Resources Mentioned in the Episode with Henry Roediger:

• Make It Stick by Professor Roediger
• The Memory Lab

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