Hacker News | Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down. - The Diigo Meta page

• 03 Jul 09
  

  Joel Liu

  Learning notes Education

  • The interesting thing, to me, is that this effect could serve as an explanation for the phenomenon described yesterday in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=580209 . Namely, the independent study technique might naturally encourage this mode of learning by sheer accident. In short, you are studying to prepare for a discussion, rather than memorizing for an exam. This naturally causes you to 'close the book', recall, and then speak it out loud. (This article reports that speaking out loud is better than just recalling.)

    In a conventional 'learn to test' scenario, one might feel naturally compelled to read and reread, or to take notes with the book open, simply out of desperation.

    What do you think? Could the success of 'Unschooling' be largely due to the very effect described in the current article?
  • The actual discussion will also improve recall, because you are recalling the information in many ways, and exercising your mental model of it. The process of discussion gives you practice in recalling and using the information.

    You may also learn something from the discussion itself, become aware of gaps, fill those gaps, get addition points of view and ways to think about it, reasons for holding opinions, which ones seem right but are wrong and why (and which ones seemed stupid at first but - dramatically - aren't). The social aspect, and the competitive aspect, will help you engage. Later, you might even recall some aspects episodically, e.g. "Jones said this, and Bloggs undercut him, and then I showed they were both wrong, and everyone laughed". Memorable.

    I agree that anticipation of a discussion will also make your preparation for it more effective
• 28 Apr 09
  

  learning how-to-learn

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