Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn

New research makes the case for hard tests, and suggests an unusual technique that anyone can use to learn

For years, many educators have championed “errorless learning,” advising teachers (and students) to create study conditions that do not permit errors. For example, a classroom teacher might drill students repeatedly on the same multiplication problem, with very little delay between the first and second presentations of the problem, ensuring that the student gets the answer correct each time.

The idea embedded in this approach is that if students make errors, they will learn the errors and be prevented (or slowed) in learning the correct information. But research by Nate Kornell, Matthew Hays and Robert Bjork at U.C.L.A. that recently appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition reveals that this worry is misplaced. In fact, they found, learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors.

Read more . . .

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Tags: aging brain, brain function, classroom teacher, internet use, journal of experimental psychology, memory and cognition, multiplication problem, robert bjork, ucla study

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Scientific American, learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.