How people learn to program9 min read

Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology

John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, Daniel T. Willingham · 2013 · Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14(1), 4–58

Ten popular study techniques graded on the evidence: two work, three are situational, and five of the most popular — including highlighting and re-reading — barely do anything.

Read the paper ↗doi:10.1177/1529100612453266 ↗

The short version

→High utility: practice testing and distributed practice. Both work across ages, materials and subjects, and both are cheap.
→Moderate utility: elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, interleaved practice — good evidence, but narrower or more dependent on how they are done.
→Low utility: summarization, highlighting and underlining, the keyword mnemonic, imagery for text, and re-reading — the five most popular techniques among students.
→The ranking is not about which feels productive. Highlighting feels excellent and does close to nothing.

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