Teach Your Children Well

Students develop individual strategies for learning. Some read the material several times, some take notes (and take notes on the notes), some use practice tests (especially for board or licensing examinations). Is one way of learning “optimal”? This two-part study assessed the effectiveness of strategies for learning scientific material.

First, 80 undergraduates studied a short scientific text via one of four methods: (1) study once; (2) study in four consecutive sessions; (3) elaborative study (study, then create a “concept map” of the text); and (4) practice retrieval (study, a free-recall test, restudy of the text, and recall again). Strategies 3 and 4 involved similar learning times. One week later, students took a short-answer test wit…