IEEE Potentials Magazine - May/June 2018 - 36

For optimal learning, one must understand
a subject, encode it in storage memory
elaborately and memorably, and then practice
it in a variety of settings.
1) Fixating on perfection:
Why mistakes are required
An expert is a man who has
made all the mistakes which
can be made, in a narrow field.
-Niels Bohr
■■Understand the importance of
errors and mistakes: in general,
students view errors and mistakes
as something to avoid (since mistakes are often interpreted as
being inadequate). Mistakes, however, serve as the necessary stepping stones to mastery and advanced learning. Any educational
activity that aims to eliminate all
errors can lead to superficial and
fragile learning. By becoming open
to mistakes, students will be more
amenable to embrace learning
practices laced with desirable difficulties that lead to better, longlasting outcomes.
■■The mirage and futility of chasing
perfection: learning without mistakes is fragile and dangerous,
since it is typically the result of
fluency rather than mastery. It's
important to allow for mistakes
to happen through extensive
exploration of the subject, other
viewpoints, spaced learning, and
interleaving, among others. Fixating on perfection also engenders a psychological mind-set-
called a fixed-mind-set-that is
not conducive to learning. Students with a fixed mind-set see
events and circumstances as a
direct measure of competence
and worth. Students with fixed
mind-sets obsess over documenting their intelligence in stead of focusing on developing
their intelligence.

2) Fixating on fluency:
Why fluency is not sufficient
Rising familiarity with a text
and fluency in reading it can

■

May/June 2018

create an illusion of mastery.
-Brown, Roediger, and
McDaniel
■■The fluency illusion: the fluency
illusion underlies the widespread
adoption of suboptimal learning
techniques such as rereading
and massed practice that engender fluency but are inefficient
compared to other techniques.
The fluency illusion is arguably
the biggest cause of our flawed
learning intuitions. One reason
for its significant role in messing
up our intuition is that fluency
feels good. To further complicate
matters, techniques conducive to
long-term learning (such as
spaced learning, retrieval practice, and interleaving) initially
manifest disfluency. Such techniques do not appeal to students
since learning appears slower
and devoid of the rapid improvements that massed practice can
demonstrate. But fluency-when
not strengthened by repetition
and retrieval exercises-is deceptively transient. Although commonly conflated, it is important
for all students to remember that
fluency and mastery are two very
different things.
■■Massed practice (and rereading)
is suboptimal: the strategy of
rereading text and massed practice (contiguous practice that is
not spaced out) is the technique
of choice for many students since
it aligns well with the intuition
honed on a mind-set that emphasized learning in the short term
and equates fluency with learning. As noted by Brown et al.,
rereading as a learning technique suffers from three problems: 1) it is more consuming; 2)
it does not result in durable
memory, since the forgetting process has not yet set in; and 3) it

IEEE PotEntIals

unwittingly involves a deceptive
feeling of faux mastery that
comes with growing familiarity
with the text.

3) Fixating on discipline:
The upside of variety
You don't understand anything
until you learn it more than
one way.
-Marvin Minsky
■■Idolization of focus and the Einstellung effect: discipline and
focus are celebrated-not without reason-as virtuous facilitators of success. But too great a
focus on discipline can prove to
be an overkill for the purpose of
learning, and a pluralistic and
varied approach that allows for
some serendipity may be better
suited. For example, while we do
need to focus intently for problem solving, too much focus can
block us from accessing fresh
ideas. The more we are focused
on producing creative solutions
quickly, the less likely we are to
be successful. This phenomenon
is called Einstellung and has
been empirically demonstrated in
numerous experiments. Focusing
intensely on a creative task in a
single setting, especially when
one is stuck, may be the worst
possible strategy; sometimes all
you need is a break to freshen up
your thinking. Even though we
stigmatize procrastinating, it may
be good in certain learning situations, especially when we want to
arrive at creative solutions.
■■Variety is the spice of learning: a
variety of environmental stimuli
and input modality is also very
important for learning. There is
no formula for the complex process of learning, but if we had to
come up with a simple one, Mastery = Understanding + Repetition (in varied settings) would be
a good candidate. The learning
potency of variety is also demonstrated in the empirical efficacy
of interleaving (i.e., interspersing
various topics together), and the
positive interleaving effect can be
explained on the basis that it

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Potentials Magazine - May/June 2018