Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down (2009) | Hacker News Reader

Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down (2009)

chronicle.com

121 pointsTomte33 comments

I've always found it particularly useful when learning from a source, to write down questions that go to the heart of the matter being presented, rather than just summary notes.

If one later writes answers to the questions, it highlights what one doesn't understand, what one needs to relearn, and how to explain it to oneself and others. It then becomes valuable in the future when needing to review and test key concepts.

I think this is somewhat in line with the ideas presented in this article.

This study is consistent with the model of how connections in the brain are made.

The brain forms memories through connections in neurons. One part of the neuron, the dendrite, which connects neurons at the synapse only forms after the neuron has been stimulated.

The neuron path required to recall a memory without direct access to the information has to be created without direct access to the information or else connection between neurons won't form.

This is why active recall i.e. flashcards is so effective. A person can read and read and read, but until a person recalls the memory, it isn't being formed. Recollection is the point a memory is made. Using flashcards is an effective tool.

There are comments about people taking notes as an effective learning tool. But, this study suggests writing the notes after the lecture is more effective.

This is important for people interested in educational software start ups. The big take away here is that the studies show an effective way to learn that is consistent with our understanding at the neurological level of how memories are formed. However, within the learning and teaching community it is not accepted as the best practice. In the case of people developing educational software they will be torn between creating products that meet demand and creating products that are effective.

>He and his colleagues have also been promoting the idea of frequent low-stakes classroom quizzes

The more successful educational software applications, Khan Academy[2] and Doulingo, do just this but more importantly take the students answers into consideration, formative assessment, whereas the researcher in the article would only be concerned with seeded or piquing the students

>Mr. Daniel points to a disheartening 2004 study that found that some features of contemporary textbooks — prominent subject headings, questions and outlines at the beginning of chapters, and so on — actually seem to hinder some students' learning, because students read only the bells and whistles and skip the main text. Many of those textbook features were based on scientific studies of learning — but putting them into real-world practice may have backfired, at least for some students.

In the lab, introducing students to an overview of material before focusing on the specifics worked but in a real classroom, students being lazy didn't study the specifics of the material. The author is discussing lots of different concepts here. Active learning, 'interactive courses', and the type of learning suggested by this study are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps, in the case of the study but not in the real world. Search for an answer on Stack Exchange. Open the IDE. Write some code. This is a process that uses both methods but even if learning isn't the goal is probably the most effective way to learn to code.

There is a problem with education that treats learning like it is linear. Learning is cyclic. The mathematician Alfred North Whitehead had already applied Boyd's Law of Iteration[1] to education circa 1929.[3] The first step is the romantic phase where a student is casually introduced to new material. To learn about biology of fishes, go to an aquarium and experience fish, wonder about fish, be introduced to the concept of a habitat and see a cuttlefish up close. The second step in education is the precision step. This is rout memorization. This is knowing the names of different fish and which environments they live in. Learn the parts of the fish, the heart, the gills, and the lateral line. The last step is generalization. It is here that relationship between the lateral line and detecting movement is understood and new and original ideas are formed.

During this learning process on fish there is also a cyclic learning math. At some point the cycle begins anew with math and fish together. The generalization step is a grad student working with a research scientist using knowledge of fish and statistics to monitor the size of fish populations deriving conclusions that lead to policies effecting fisheries and conservation.

There is still a cycle after this. What if the grad student needs to learn a computer language to manage data and build models?

It doesn't seem wise to through out a chapter overview and outline which research shows helps if students are just lazy. This phase should be the romance with the subject matter. It should create interest on the subject that the student carries during the rest of the phases of learning.

I'm searching for information about Whitehead's Aim of Education and found an overview for teachers.[4]Is Depaul a serious university? In the OP article there are two camps; the romance and generalization learning camp and the precision active recall camp. Remember that I don't believe they are mutually exclusive. Whoever wrote this chart is clearly in the generalization only camp because their examples of precision are about making generalizations. There is a whole group of people who don't believe memorizing stuff is important and they are rewriting or misinterpreting stuff to fit their narrative.

[1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of-iteration/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtKJrB5rOKs

[3] https://books.google.com/books?id=WbXs-vyWPPgC&printsec=fron...

[4] http://teacher.depaul.edu/documents/romance-precision-genera...

That sounds like a great strategy. Thanks for sharing it.

I find it interesting to see how people note take, if at all. I did one of those degree courses where note taking was what you did, continually. Then you re-read your notes and wrote them up properly, then you used those notes to complete the assignment. So for me note-taking is baked in, it is what I do.

I find it odd working with people that do not even use or own a pen, never mind a paper notepad. What I find odd is hen talking through a process or problem I am the one doing the 'napkin sketches' with the no-note people being 'mute' as far as sketching diagrams is concerned.

I find myself doing something similar while learning a new lang / framework. For example, I'll watch a pluralsight video, then challenge myself to see how far I can get from a blank directory to a working blogging app without getting stuck (too much). When I do get stuck, I'll refer back and catch the minor details I might have missed trying to copy the code, etc.

Incidentally, I find the biggest value of writing code comments is a deeper understanding of the problem at hand. The more verbose, the better. As I keep writing and rewriting descriptions for various warts of the implementation, I start outlining how to fix them in the future, and as each new iteration writes itself, the problem becomes clearer. And then, before I know it, a proper solution emerges, one that is free of warts and without a dire need of being explained in details. Once the problem is rectified, the comment gets retired, as it has served its purpose.

I've been solo coding a lot lately, after doing a lot of pair programming professionally. I find keeping a diary is incredibly important. I just ramble through whatever I'm sorting out until I feel like I either can get back to coding, or have enough food for thought to go out and ponder on a walk.

I did my best engineering work when I was working all by myself, far out. However the calibration of the sense of where to direct my efforts went completely out of whack in about 7 month. I have coded two beatific systems in the next 6 months after that, but none of my users cared enough, or even had the opportunity to appreciate it.

Yeah, I have a very specific real-world goal I am trying to fulfill, so that helps me aim.

A related method of studying is copying a text. This was actually the way music composition was taught at the time of Bach. A student would take manuscripts of the master and copy them, thus internalising the rudiments. In my personal experience this works much better than studying the dry rules of counterpoint.

It has been my experience teaching college math that there is a strong correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students believe (and the people who give ed tech workshops strongly encourage this view) that they should just sit back, because they will get the beamer slides later, or watch the online videos.

And taking a picture of the board with their smartphone, rather than writing out what is written there, seems to me to be a quite good predictor of having trouble.

What they are doing is logical but experience shows that for many students it is not as effective as actively writing the material.

I don't doubt that your observed correlation is true, but I think you have cause and effect reversed.

When I understand material, it's easy to copy it down in its entirety because I can internalize and reproduce the meaning. In this case I'm with you that taking notes is a net positive, because it lets you exercise the concepts as you "copy" them.

However, when I don't understand material, copying it down is much more challenging. I can't internalize the meaning so I have to resort to glyph reproduction which is a much heavier cognitive burden and much less instructive. This makes it even harder to keep up let alone untangle the conceptual debt that got me into the situation to begin with. In this case I think notes are a net negative.

If you let people make the choice on their own, the kids who get the material but don't want to take notes suffer. If you force people to take notes, the people who are already having trouble suffer even more. Therefore I tend to favor giving (and receiving) choice. An exception would be online classes which have pause buttons that conveniently bypass the tradeoff.

> strong correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students believe [...] that they should just sit back,

The important thing is not to take notes per se, but to make sure to engage with the lecture and focus, and fully follow the mathematical argument being presented. Personally I pay attention much better without writing notes, but I know other people who pay attention best while drawing unrelated doodles, or by writing down everything that goes on the chalkboard. If I try to write everything down, the action of mechanical symbol copying takes up brain cycles and prevents me from thinking about what I’m hearing/reading.

The “strong correlation” you noticed is because taking notes is a clear signal that the student was paying attention at least enough to write something down. However, you’re looking at a symptom rather than the root cause of the problem. For those students who don’t take notes, some of them might be fully mentally engaged, and others might be daydreaming or checking facebook on their phones. Of course this group is going to do less well on average than the note-taker group when you lump them all together.

An English teacher I had once explained that this works because you're engaging different areas of your brain in writing notes than you are in reading them. She also recommended handwritten notes because typing did not promote effective recall or understanding.

That seems really strange, as the best way to remember learning material I know is to use it to solve some task that looks like something you'll actually will likely to do on the job.

Because if you ain't gonna use it, why learn it?

They seem to agree. From the article, "...after you've read something once, you've gotten what you're going to get out of it, and then you need to go out and start applying the information."

Which exercise would you propose for War and Peace?

I'm not trying to be snarky, I actually search for an answer.

When I read it, I was around 14, and it really helped me with creative writing and history lessons in school.

Sure, but it's more a long-term benefit than an immediate exercise. Had you read it right now, what would you do make sure to get the most out of it? Would you sit down and write an essay about a related topic?

This question keeps bugging me. I know what to do about a programming or a self-development book, but humanities are much harder in that regard.

Why would I read it in the first place? That's the question you would have to answer to understand it.

Right now I'm reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and constantly stop to write down scenario ideas based on what he's describing. Of course, I also look up a lot of modern historical research on the matter — so I use recently acquired knowledge to understand related stuff and read about the same things from different sources. I also read comic books, having just finished the original Ghost in the Shell about 2 minutes before starting to write this comment; during the last week, I've set up animated-interactive-comic engine protorype in Unity3d and have been experimenting with primitive compositions that would work well both as game cameras and frozen comic panels.

If you want to read and remember something in the first place, you must have motivation. And creation and curiosity are the best kind.

Oh, and I know for a fact that I won't remember a lot of roman history a year later, and that's ok: I only want to remember staff that I actually find interesting.

I read it for the long term benefits - better command of the language, appreciation of the historical context, understandig human nature as described by the author, trained ability to focus on a long form (and thus a long, elaborate thought), a cultural context that I can refer to in a conversation.

There's a bit of a gap between the long term benefits and immediate actionable exercise.

Perhaps you are correct, and if I take each one of the benefits individually I can come up with an exercise that drives the point home. It seems like a daunting task though...

Professors make the subject of study their profession of exercise. That's not at all their assignment in lectures. It is to help the students pursue the profession of the subject. The professor's profession of exercise in class is pedagogy. As this article clearly describes, most professors are in fact deeply incompetent.

Combine this method with trying to solve a problem with your own ideas before even opening a book. This works especially well in some areas of programming, for example algorithms. After having done this, I can compare my own ideas with the ones presented in the book.

Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10513291

In university I learnt about the PQRST method:

1) Preview - browse through the text or chapter quickly. 2) Question - think about what this text is about. 3) Read. 4) Summary - make a summary. 6) Test.

This method actually was promoted in a psychology book about memory and memorizing. So not only did they teach about how memory works, but they gave tips how to memorize that, and on top of that they set up the complete book (which was about more than memory) that way. So the chapters in the book had some kind of "preview", a short intro about what the chapter was about, a summary and some test questions, with many pictures and side notes that kept you going.

Most textbooks aimed at schoolchildren (from first grade through college) have this kind of format built into them. Personally I found them patronizing and tedious to read, as they take 3x more space than necessary to make their point, and lots of the little called out side notes seemed irrelevant. This format is almost always the product of some kind of committee process rather than a primary author with a strong voice.

Just because it’s more effective for someone to {quickly skim, think a bit, read the chapter, then think a bit more} doesn’t mean that including those features explicitly in the text is helpful; it’s like taking a full meal and blending it into a smoothie, so the eater doesn’t need to chew. Some students will skip the main text and just read the summary bits, assuming (usually correctly) that that will suffice to pass the next quiz. Others will try to read the book but be distracted by the disjointed presentation and lose track of the shape of the arguments. Students who get used to this format will be completely lost once they hit harder material which hasn’t predigested everything up front. Many of the better students who are used to real books will find the format patronizing.

It is easier to skip over extra material than to imagine missing material. Textbooks serve a diverse audience.

Also, it is possibly that the egotistical reader doesn't actually know better than the author.

rote learning is incredibly powerful. it's one thing to understand what you need to do, and it's something else to have it at the tip of your fingers all the time.

some of my friends in the fuzzy field - policy making, legal - have such impressive recall when framing problems and solutions that right away they are already thinking of the knock on effects of various solutions several levels deeper.

rote learning is incredibly powerful

It really is. I had very similar experience with learning Chinese.

At first I was all about trying to learn smarter and avoiding the 'outdated' techniques such as rote learning, but several years in I started doing some drills to push my level forward and found that rote learning, and in particular making sure to use active recall rather than passive recall helped immensely.

Of course you also need to have deeper thinking and learning going on, but as you mentioned, with rote learning and memorisation all the basics become instantly available at your fingertips and you can expend your mental energy on more productive thought processes.

I find it beneficial to answer questions on Stack Exchange sites relating to a topic that I’ve recently learned or worked on. It’s particularly useful for reinforcing knowledge of subjects that I might have learned a month ago – but which has already started to fade from memory.

I also like books that have questions at the end of each section or chapter. As the original article states, it’s easy for the reader to mislead themselves into thinking that they’re familiar with the subject area while reading – or re-reading – the text. It’s not until they’ve finished reading and attempt to answer questions that they know how well they’ve actually retained the material.

How important is it really to be able to recall information using ones long-term memory these days though? With my phone I pretty much have access to all the information in the world from one single place, from almost anywhere in the western world. Why would I want to memorize most of it? Books are not only for sharing knowledge but also remembering it? These days, just memorizing core concepts such as finding the correct information, how to evaluate it, and how to apply it should be enough? Leave the rest of the recalling for our computers.

It's a difference in speed. I know people who can give an estimate of a scientific/technical idea working within about a minute by calculating things like signal strength by Fermi estimate.

It moves conversations along with a much better flow, because now you can focus on how to improve that, make a new estimate and iterate, and discuss the real-world implications from this, such as could you provide that much power or can you buy the components somewhere.

So, enough knowledge for Fermi estimates is really useful.

I think it's at least very helpful in building emergent knowledge, knowledge of connections between things that, only after experience / long-term processing, you realize are instructive or related or at least similar or, very commonly, "Y is really just a special case of the more general X" idea.

It's still completely possible to learn some of the outgoing connections or equivalences after a specific search of the internet, but the more things you spend time ruminating on, the more connections/realizations seem to almost "bubble up" out of your subconscious/whatever. I think this is what [inspiration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_inspiration#Ancient_m...) is: the result of subconscious processing or drawing relationships between thoughts in your head that are memorized. That, I think, is what you wouldn't have anymore if you were to completely outsource your knowledge to the Internet. I have witnessed some brilliant statisticians come up with completely new ways for researchers to think of their data/analysis, without ever consulting Google...though that's a relatively poor example, and more related to developed Mathematical Intuition than anything else. I would argue that said developed intuition is a perfect example of drawing underlying connections between things by letting them stew around in your brain, connections that would be very much harder to find overtly.

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