

Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down. - msie
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i34/34a00101.htm

======
mkn
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?

~~~
10ren
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.

~~~
eru
Perhaps that's why oral exams seem to work much better for me than written
ones.

------
teilo
This reminds me of the single best advice ever given to me about how to learn
a difficult subject: Pretend that you are teaching it to an invisible
audience, lesson by lesson. It is amazing how much faster you can comprehend
even very complex topics this way.

Preferably do this while wearing a bluetooth headset (it can be turned off) so
people don't think you are crazy.

~~~
ajju
Best use of bluetooth headsets ever (I hate them)

~~~
oscardelben
I also use headsets without music when I don't want to be disturbed.

------
llimllib
Seems like it works the same way that showing somebody else your unfixable bug
and explaining to them why it's impossible works for fixing it. Having to
teach/explain/write about a topic without a book forces you to examine your
implicit beliefs about it, to show you where you've left holes.

~~~
lutorm
I think you're partially right, but I think there's also something else going
on here. The key about the memory is recall. Just _writing_ multiple times (ie
reading the book over and over) doesn't increase the reliability of
memorization as much as _reading_ the address. It seems the act of forcing the
brain to find the information makes it put more effort into indexing that
piece of info. I think that's apart from the effect you are talking about
which is about how you integrate information when forced to explain it in a
coherent way.

~~~
10ren
Maybe a way to think about it is that practicing placing it into memory makes
you get better at placing it into memory; and practicing recalling that
information from memory makes you get get better at recalling it from memory.

I've noticed that I know I lot of things that are difficult for me to recall:
there's not much point having something in memory if you can't recall it, so
maybe that's the important thing to practice?

------
williammmeyer
If someone has access to ScienceDirect or Wiley InterScience they can read the
actual papers:

ScienceDirect - Contemporary Educational Psychology : The limited benefits of
rereading educational texts/
([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WD1-4TBHNB8-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=665cfbfc793b502ceab37ec86f414b52))

Wiley InterScience - Psychological Science : The Read-Recite-Review Study
Strategy: Effective and Portable
([http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122269051/abstrac...](http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122269051/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0))

Psychological Science is available on EBSCOhost, but articles are embargoed.

------
bbg
Can't help but add Socrates' comments to Phaedrus in the Plato's dialogue
_Phaedrus_ (around section 274), to the effect that writing destroys man's
faculty of memory, and bestows only a superficial sort of learning.

As Socrates relates it, the Egyptian god Theuth describes various inventions
to the king Thamus:

"But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians
wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and
for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor
of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own
inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father
of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to
attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of
yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not
use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not
remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not
to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but
only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have
learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know
nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the
reality."

[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:tex...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0174:text=Phaedrus:section=274e)

~~~
sundarurfriend
> they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of
> themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory,
> but to reminiscence [...]; they will be hearers of many things and will have
> learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know
> nothing;

Somewhat OT, but this seems to apply very well to the effect of Google on many
of us too. While this originally referred simply to the 'availability' of
knowledge in external sources, with Google (and the Internet as a whole) it
becomes 'easy accessibility', which is perhaps even more dangerous. Dangerous
unless we make conscious effort to avoid this phenomenon and use the
technology for our enrichment.

~~~
eru
Yes. Recently I make increased efforts to not just recall information, but
also sources.

------
edw519
Alternatively:

Don't miss class. Take good notes. Read the book. Party the night before the
test.

I'm still amazed that half my fraternity brothers spent 40 hours per week
"studying" and the other half spent 40 hours drinking beer and playing bridge.
There was no correlation between which group you were in and your grades.

~~~
llimllib
but are you sure that there weren't two different types of people? That some
people inherently need to study 40 hours, while others can party them away?

Your observation matches my own, but I'm not at all certain that it's not due
to differences in learning style.

------
tommusic
When I wanted to make sure that I knew a class subject area front and back,
I'd get into a room with a whiteboard. Preferably with other students.

We'd make an agenda, or use a study guide, and take turns presenting the
material at the white board.

You feel yourself writing it. You read it. You say it. You hear it.

It worked like gangbusters. A wild-draw-4 of learning styles.

------
noss
I have always been told that recall is worst for that you only hear, better
for that you read, gets better if you write it down, and best if you teach it.
(Funny enough, I never bothered to look it up until now, and I cant find a
good reference by googling.)

My take away on this is that I never bothered reading my lecture notes, I took
notes only to write down what I heard to improve my recall of it.

Also, I often tried to hold a mini lecture or summary when I was studying with
my friends to see if what I understood was transferable to them, and if not,
what I was missing to make it so. Often it was me lacking understanding in
some area, but unconciously denying it.

------
billswift
In the third level of knowledge, you understand the material and are able to
explain things in your own words. You can draw new relationships between
facts. You need to be able to remember details to explain things in your own
words - for a long time I deluded myself that I could understand the material
because I could follow along with the explanation easily enough as I read it.
But you do not truly understand something until you can explain it in your own
words from memory.

[http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/learning-
journal-a...](http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/learning-journal-and-
record.html)

------
srn
I got good grades in college and retained none of the information. Perhaps it
was because the tests were open book and I am good at applying rules to a
given problem, but my memory is terrible. Now I want to be able to derive
everything from as close to first principles as I can. Then if I forget I can
recreate the material.

------
pavel_lishin
What's a book?

~~~
whacked_new
A container of distilled knowledge. Quite nice for people with patience :)

~~~
windsurfer
Isn't that what blogs are for? ;)

