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Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning 1st Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 329 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0674729018
ISBN-10: 0674729013
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Belknap Press; 1 edition (April 14, 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0674729013
  • ISBN-13: 978-0674729018
  • Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.8 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (329 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

By Kevin Currie-Knight VINE VOICE on June 6, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Okay, well maybe I am overstating that a little. But the main "thesis" of Peter Brown's book - aside from being a summary of what cognitive science data shows about how we learn - is basically that many of the things we often assume about learning are wrong. Here are some of them: we learn best by reading and rereading a passage until we really understand it. WRONG! We learn best when we isolate a skill and practice it over and over again. WRONG! We all have learning styles that are the way we learn best. WRONG! IQ (or something like it) imposes relatively firm limits on how much information we can absorb. WRONG!

In this pretty easy-reading book, Peter Brown summarizes some of the latest findings in cognitive science, and many of these findings contradict what is often assumed about learning. First, many k-12 and college students are taught to (and do) use the 'reread and highlight' method to try and absorb content. Well, while this works to an extent, it leads more to an illusion of mastery than mastery. What works better? Read the content and quiz yourself; information retrieval is the key. Retrieving helps to build stronger connections in the brain that will lock information into memory. What's more - and this is another chapter - the harder the retrieval, the stronger your retention of what is retrieved. (So, writing a short essay recalling the concepts works better than true/false and multiple choice recall.)

Another myth? While we all certainly have learning preferences (I like to receive my information in written form), that doesn't mean we learn best when receiving information in that form (I can do as well when I receive information audibly as when it is written, even though I prefer the latter).
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Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Is there anything new in this book? I believe there is sage advice in it for many of us.
That our brains adapt is good but also bad for studying. We become bored.

For many of us, we were never taught how our minds work and how we should leverage its natural processes to learn. Sometimes, practice or studying feels painfully slow and we often switch to another method that feels good. Unfortunately, we often fail at assessing how much we're learning and have actually learned.

Some students were never taught how to learn, and had few, if any, good teachers/mentors.
Some teachers were never taught how to teach, and have forgotten what it was like to be a student.
This book is for those both groups. The examples and advice for teachers and corporate trainers is also well written and useful.

If you have had good teachers or learning examplars, you might find this book less valuable than will most people.

SUMMARY:
PROs: This book will show you how to structure your learning and assessment processes to learn and confirm you're actually retaining the material. It provides 27 pages of endnotes on scientific studies that support its recommendations. Having read and applied the principles of both MIS and WSSK (see below), I can say they do work, very well.

CONs: Be prepared to look for what you want. Most of us will focus on the prescriptions of Chapter 8: e.g. avoid rereading as a primary study method, and do use the blank paper assessment test, etc..
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Format: Kindle Edition
So I read about 10-20 reviews of this book because it sounded very interesting.

I came to this conclusion. It probably has some good info but it's surrounded by hundreds of pages of fluff. If you read a lot of books about learning new skills or other nonfiction, you know this to be a FAR too common theme among newer books. It's like they can't sell it if it doesn't reach 300 pages. No one will pay for a well written concise 20-40 page book.

Well, after reading through reviews I found the article this was based on - if you have good google skills, then you should be able to find the PDF for free (I did):

What Works, What Doesn't - Some study techniques accelerate learning, wheras other are just a waste of time -
The Scientific American Mind (mind.scientificamerican.com) - by John Dunlosky, Katherine Rawon, Elizabeth Marsh, Mitchell Nathan and Daniel Willingham

This is a little 6 page article which seems to explain >80% of the key points listed in this book. Glad I read it and saved tons of time!
13 Comments 332 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Summary of the key concepts in the book:

Conventional Wisdom: Make learning easy
Best practice: Design learning with desirable difficulties
Discussion: “Learning is deeper and more durable when it is effortful.” “Difficulties that elicit more effort and that slow down learning… will more than compensate for their inconvenience by making the learning stronger, more precise, and more enduring. Short-term impediments that make for stronger learning have come to be called desirable difficulties.” “Don’t assume you are doing something wrong if the learning feels hard.” “Not all difficulties in learning are desirable ones. Anxiety while taking a test seems to represent an undesirable difficulty.” Slow down to find meaning. Always read prior to the lecture. “Training has to be engaging in order to hold employees’ attention.”

Conventional Wisdom: Concentrate on one topic at a time (aka. massed practice)
Best practice: Interleave different but related topics
Discussion: “Learning from interleaved practice feels slower than learning from massed practice.” While interleaving can impede performance during initial learning (tests taken immediately after exposure), interleaving has been show to boost “final test performance by a remarkable 215 percent.” In addition, “commonalities… learned through massed practice proved less useful than the differences … learned through interleaving.” “In interleaving, you don’t move from a complete practice set of one topic to go to another. You switch before each practice is complete… You need to shuffle your flashcards.
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