I am a teacher, and the spacing effect needs to be more emphasized everywhere. Thanks for mentioning it.

Remind me to watch this video again in three or four days.

I'm surprised this video wasn't sponsored by Brilliant or Skillshare. Quizzes, quizzes everywhere.

hank: "don't cram" me: _already planning out my cramming for the next few tests_ "yeah but that's just a suggestion right"

A student teacher here! You beautifully condensed a full semester class into 14 minutes. I’ll be sure to try these in my classes that I’m student teaching with! :D

*watches this while procrastinating studying for the organic chem exam I have in 3 days...*

Go teachers! We love you.

I can still remember all the things we learned in classes where there were activities to discover the answer to a problem by yourself. Around 15 years ago. This checks out!

all this video tells me is: 1. to marathon all sci-show videos at least once month to retain the factoids better 2. not reading the manual is a good thing

My final year project at uni was about optimal learning techniques. I read more than 50 studies (Dunlosky et al. 2013 was the most informative overall) and wrote a 10k word report on it. Felt so excited to immediately understand everything in this video.

Wow didnt expect this to validate my study methods. Which literally consists of me just testing myself over and over until I remember it again. Yay quizlet and proprofs xD

In college I literally ONLY studied woth practice tests and I would highly recommend it. To study for each test get ahold of as many practice tests as possible (optimally 3). Then Make a cheat sheet Take the timed practice test. Grade it and find out why the right answers were right Repeat (including making a completely new cheat sheet) If you start evening out on a grade because of mostly dumb mistakes then just remember how many you tend to make and on the actual test double check for that many dumb mistakes. And if you can't remember a concept, (even if you dont have access to the cheat sheet) try and remember where you put it first and then what it was.

I can confirm that this definitely works. Our physics professor used to have "feedback sessions" every day where he asked questions related to the material we had studied the day prior. And we kept coming back to our older concepts throughout the year. I retained a lot of information and didn't have to study as much for my finals because of that.

As a teacher myself, what I can say about being a teacher is that it really isn't easy as it seems. Thanks for the tips!

Just took my "last" CPA exam (won't get scores back until next month), and I can confirm that consistent testing/quizzing definitely was more effective than studying for hours every day. On test day, it was so easy to recall all of the information because it was just like another day of quizzing. I was only stressed in the sense that I was very alert. Not nearly as stressed as I had been on the exams that I had studied traditionally.

The spacing method makes a lot of sense evolutionary animals encounter lots of novel things they never encounter again, remembering all of it would be wasteful, but if you encounter something more than once the chances of it being useful information necessary for the future increases substantially

Thanks for this video. I've been trying to teach my chickens to look both ways before crossing the road. :)

Trying to explain something to a mate seems to be very helpful to understand it yourself

I saw a video once where Itzhak Perlman was giving practice advice, and he recommended small chunks of practice spaced out during the day -- still intense practice, though. I mean, this is Itzhak Perlman we're talking about. But his defense of this was, "If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly." It gets time to soak in. This video just reminded me of that phrase of his. If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly.

I love my teachers and I'm so thankful for them. They're not appreciated enough especially by some other fellow students

As a current student and a (hopefully) future teacher this is very useful

Teacher's over worked and under paid. Thank you 😊 you are appreciated

Thanks! I'm in teacher training for primary school and I love to know about the science background of it. Also, thank you that you always emphasize on how important this job is. I feel like it usually isn't considered how much teachers shape society

Thanks, I took notes on this to share with my co-workers at the English Kindergarten in which I work here in Finland.

As a person who's deep in the Education literature, I loved this video. It's a summary of a lot of the stuff I talk about and have tried to implement. One important detail you missed out though: Learning styles *are* indeed ineffective, however multi-modal learning is well-supported by the literature. So teachers who use the ideas of learning styles, actually accidentally end up improving their outcomes. (Provided they aren't actually splitting kids up by learning style.)

Whenever I hear hippocampus I always pictures Hyppos in college 😂😂

I teach programming. Active learning is the bread and butter of this field. The burnout rate is still a problem though.

My online school embeds formative quizzes into the course content and they always really help me remember what I just read. Retrieval practice at it’s best

Another hack they taught us in the Navy is to involve as many senses in the learning process as possible. For example a teacher reads something to us which we hear, then we write that info down with pen and paper, then we read the information out loud. Each of these will help build those memories.

Thanks I am a teacher as well as a student

The problem I run into when using discovery-based lessons is time. It takes more time to both prep and deliver discovery-based lessons than traditional lecture. Plus, there exists a list of things that I HAVE to cover in one semester. It's such a careful balance to keep; I often have to ask myself: Do they earn a deeper understanding for a few topics, or do I cover everything on that list? There are a few forgivable omissions to the curriculum, but it's frowned upon. ...It's a pickle.

My AP stats teacher does the opposite of these

As a dance student and an aspiring dance teacher I’d love to learn how well these methods work and translate over to physical/non academic settings. Or if there are other science backed methods that work better for non academic classrooms. I already feel there’s an advantage with dance/sports since there’s such a physical hands on element to it. But knowing the best science backed methods to improve myself or students would be cool

As an aside I teach adults with developmental disabilities how to do art. We see their improvements over the years not weeks. So, it’s really interesting when someone says they haven’t learned anything, you just pull out their earlier work (from like five years ago) and the difference is remarkable.

1. Space learning over time vs. 'cramming' 2. Quizzing is valuable to practice memory recall 3. Active learning: 'let students teach themselves' ex. through group work or 'problem based learning'

When your a preschool teacher, trust me, enthusiasm matters! Also, young children learn the best through play. They learn emotional regulation, social skills, problem solving, self awareness and many pre math and pre reading skills. Parents, ensure your young children play socially as much as possible, they will be better students and better people for it long term. This is well studied and more people need to hear it.

We had PBL classes in college (problem based learning). But they were done so wrong, because there was so much report writing and you could leave when your group was done that it naturally shifted that those who already had the knowledge of the problem solved it, and those who had writing and editing skills were just writing the report at the same time. Our group tried switching it up to help with the learning, but it was difficult not to get social pressure to leave earlier when you saw other groups leaving hour or two earlier. I can honestly say I can't remember anything from those PBL classes, because I just wrote and edited our reports to teacher about how much everyone learned about the subject and please give us all the best grades for this class please please please. Just... had to get this of my chest because hearing words problem-based learning awoke this memory and I had many not-so-great feelings about those classes

Teachers rock, and our society would crumble without you. Yes, Hank. You are SO RIGHT!!!!

I want to emphasize a point made in the video about problem-based learning. It is a useful tool, but you must have students who possess a degree of mastery with the content before it is beneficial. I see such a big push in education to use problem-based learning or inquiry learning with minimally guided instruction. Let students decide what they want to learn. Let students decided the question they want to tackle. This is a great learning strategy, but only when students have been provided with a solid foundation to build from. I see this step to establish a foundation skipped, sometimes to the point where any direct instruction is discouraged. This is not what the research says is productive. As someone involved in education for over a decade, I am consistently saddened by the rush to adopt the "next best thing" in education without bothering to see what the research shows.

Hey, these methods are things that I already directly employ in my courses - primarily undergraduate-level anatomy & physiology courses, although I refer to them as self-assessment and teach-it. The spacing out I tend to cover by informing them that cramming shouldn't work, and they should be studying each week from the topics we've gone over, despite high-stakes assessments coming about once a month. I stress to my students that using methods and technologies to test themselves of the concepts is very important and shouldn't be over-looked. I present the quizzes we have each week as an opportunity for them to identify what they know well, and identify what they still need to work on to improve their understanding for the exams. In addition, I provide additional sources of test-like questions (some multiple choice, some more open-ended critical thinking to weave together a larger tapestry of that information we've covered) and tell them to use it to evaluate where they stand. The students that take my advice and approach it this way tend to be more engaged in lecture, ask more probing questions along the way, and show a much higher performance when it comes to exam time. For the teach-it, I often tell my students that the best way to see if you know something is to have someone ask you questions about it. Which does overlap with the self-assessment in some facets, but expands upon it. For this example in particular, I openly admit that I didn't have the same deep comprehension of anatomy and physiology when I was a student in my own intro courses. It wasn't until I was teaching it, had to explain the topics in my own words, and answer the questions that students asked (typically relating to some medical condition) that I began to look at some of these relationships in far more detail. Have a study group? Bounce ideas off of each other. Even if you know the answer yourself, hearing someone else explain how smaller pieces of information fit together to answer it can help you refine your own understand of it. And it can obviously help that other student while they solidify their knowledge through the explanation itself. Thanks for the video on this, I will certainly be sharing it with my students to try to convert the others that have been a bit resistant to giving some of these changes a try.

Problem-based case study is the way to go, it's actually enjoyable, boosts your curiosity so you wind up wanting to figure out the subject, even if it's not your favourite. The only drawback is if you don't have enough background information about it and don't know where to even start looking for it - in that case the stress will take over. :/

I’m currently studying to be a band teacher, I think it’s interesting how this applies to stuff that exists outside of the normal core classes

Thank you so much for this video! I've been teaching English for 7 months now in Korea and my Co-Teachers don't like that I spend so much time each day reviewing what we did before. Now I can tell them confidently that science is on my side! And my students really do enjoy the freer, collaborative activities that we do together more than the straight-laced lecture styles of my colleagues.

Thank you Hank! Your programs are awesome!

Every teacher should show this video to their class on the first day of lessons.

A great aid to this "spacing" effect approach is to have a college or university professor that actually covers the materials in a good book that they actually use. I would strongly suggest teachers practice making a "spaced learning" curriculum in the form of a book they find. If the teachers can't find a good book on the life experience they had learning their trade, then maybe they could learn how to become a published author of their own curriculum after "clinical study" in the classroom. Follow-up exams to alumni and course exit interviews on beginning material is ideal to show what was captured successfully on average by a wide spectrum of students. This could help you gage your own performance for requesting a promotion.

When I was a TI in grad school, I had the two day a week evening class. So I broke it down into 1/3 lecture and 2/3 problem solving the first 1/3 of that was homework review and the second 1/3 was to do more practice problems in the material we had covered that day before the homework was assigned. It seemed to keep people alert as everyone had to get up and do a problem (usually in groups of three) with a random choosing of students (I had the students names and a number assigned and with my calculator's random function choose the students. The other was a pre-test study session during office hours for anyone who wanted to attend.

Thank you patreons! Thank you SR FOXLEY for that continued support for science and learning! : )

My best method: Revising while making turn-around flashcards with questions/things I have to answer then, spending an hour every day or so answering those flashcards. Currently learning the entire semester of physics this way..

You guys are amazing. I mean, I heard every single one of those techniques at the university in the lecture about psychology of learning, but exactly that is what amazes me. I think we live in a great time of human history and the discovery of the human mind might be as fascinating as lashing out into the universe.

Active learning is the best way forward in my opinion. Of course provide help to those who need it otherwise but collectively it seems like a more well rounded approach it just needs some development.

Teach less and reinforce frequently, if you want people to remember for life, rather than just long enough to pass a test, then forgetting everything, making it a waste of time, while appearing to work. School is cram and move on. I actually learned almost nothing at school, but I graduated. It's a shame to waste time teaching facts that honestly don't matter at all, instead of being sure people actually learn things that they will remember for life and be useful for life.

when i was still going to school, i'd "learn" from the initial lecture and then the spaced review came weeks later just before the exam... 4.0, baby

Aye, Thank You SR Foxley. You are making a really big difference in the lives of thousands of people. Some of them are over 63 like me.

Haven't watched the video yet but here are my predictions: 1. To remember information better make connections for how this information personally relates to you. Connect it to certain mental (or physical) "triggers" to help you recall information easily. 2. To make sure you understand a subject fully you have to be able to teach it [correctly] to someone else. 3. Experiment with learning styles. The more different learning mediums you use to learn something that engage your different basic information absorbing senses - such as visualization, reading, listening & applicating - the better. This is why these kind of videos are so effective - because they use a bunch of different mediums at the same time. (visualizations with the animations and stuff, reading to highlight important points with the text on screen parts, speech (obviously), and having a perky enthusiastic host that makes the information sound exciting and keeps your attention is also a very important feature. The best teachers know how to make the most boring subject an exciting interesting one.) 4. Cut difficult subjects into progressive chunks and learn them in order without making short cuts. When you're learning how to read there's a reason why they teach you the alphabet before they teach you how to write complete words, then sentences and then have you answer questions based on the sentences you just read (to test your understanding of the sentence). It's the natural progression of learning, even as an infant this is the way in which you learn how to speak! 5. Experiment with teaching styles and find the one that you feel you can articulate the information forward with the best, but don't neglect getting better at teaching in other ways because different people learn best in different ways and you need to be flexible and change your teaching method according to their needs. 6. Work on your building healthy student-teacher relationships with your students. If you gain their trust and respect they will be more inclined to listen to you. That goes for other areas in life too, of course.

Very insightful. Thank you doc Hank! 😊👍🏼

I love that part with studying on your OWN.

Im a teacher and i look forward in using this knowledge. Thanks SciShow Psych ❤

This is fantastic thanks! great content as always, well researched. I will be showing this in class tomorrow! (to justifiy my excessive use of quizzing)

One of my geology teachers did the problem-based learning thing and it was awesome!

Your list of sources is very encouraging!

I only did well in school because I unknowingly did a lot of spacing, and focused most of my learning by doing self quizzes, and online game based tests. My grandparents felt I was somewhat of a prodigy, I felt like I just did what was easiest.

Thank you for this video. I'm going to be resuming college courses in the summer after a 4 year break and I'm nervous (and excited) about it

Also redoing quizzes, tests, and midterms for finals is amazingly effective 👍

I'd love it if you guys could talk about open book testing versus closed book testing. I'm most curious about this subject as it relates to engineering, where you're frequently referencing formulas and numbers from specific tables and where your math and creative skills are more important than being able to regurgitate information, but could open book testing be useful for other subjects as well?

Thank you :D Today is my first day in the semester as a teacher assistant

I'm happy to see most of this coincides with things I've learned in pedagogy classes. I'm pretty convinced you guys do great work, but for once it's something I actually know about and you did great explaining these briefly! If only more teachers could be aware of this and strive to make use of this knowledge. It won't always be perfect (some things are hard to fit in prescribed schedules when new tests about new notions need to be done very frequently, for example), but it will be better. :)

Thank you

Thank you!!!

Very useful, thanks!

Teacher here. Great tips! I also loved the "Learning how to learn" course on Coursera.

I'm a proud teacher!

5:50 captions should read “than”

This is really helpful, I'm a teacher and find it better with retrieval study and collaborative problem solving, thanks

I've been using D&D style role play with my 8 year old friend and it's done wonders for his focus and retention of basic math and some spelling! I've been wondering how games could be used for education, and this information fuels my assumptions!

Fun thing, I actually learned about all of it in my first two weeks of university. I’m studying in physical therapy. My university likes evidence based practice a lot... xD Our classes apply everything mentionned in the video. Here’s how it works (for the first year and a half, after it changes a tiny bit but stays similar): We are in small groups of about 10 students with a mentor, who is someone who knows a lot about the subject of the class, usually a physical therapist. A class is divided in several « tutorials » it can be 3 or 7 or anything really. First part of the tutorial: we meet and we read a case, about a person having problem or whatever. Then, we ask open questions. For example: what’s in the blood? Or What can cause [a symptom]? Or How is a bone constituted?. Then we tried to anwser those questions with our hypothesis (the goal is to reactivate memories). Then we get a set of things to read and objectives to cover within 3 days. We also have to schematise the stuff. We then meet 3 days later, with the same people. We read the case again, but then we link things that we read to the case. We then speak of the things that were in the objectives but that we didn’t cover. The mentor is there to correct information if need be and to make sure that the objectives were all covered. And then, we start another case and it starts all over again. So, this way, we have no choice but to always be learning, and learning in advance. Nobody fails exams.

Excellent! Thanks!

Proved this by winning a few rapid memorization contests: if you need to remember a long shopping list, *don't* write it down. either alphabetize everything and then sing it at least mentally bc that uses a different part of the brain which is very strong. You can also visualize the supermarket sections for instance and then alphabetize/sing the list in different sections. Best incentive however is getting home w/o something you forgot and then having to do w/o it the rest of the week.

_I like virtually all SciShows . . . _*_this_*_ one is _*_very_*_ good !!!_

One of the best teachers we had was the least enthusiastic person ever, she never smiled or raised her voice and always talked in an emotionless monotone which sounds like the kind of teacher that will make you fall asleep but somehow she had a very imposing presence, everyone just kept quiet looked at her and her history lessons where really entertaining

Thanks a lot! Great video as always! Good to know that I'm actually doing a good job! 😉👍🏻

Used quizlet alot this year. Helped alot

1. Space out your learnings 2. Concept maps/flash cards 3. Self tests 4. Don’t cram!! 5. Apply things the way u first learn them? 6. Active learning/retrieval practice 7. Teach the concept to yourself 8. Structured then let them do it themselves later 9. Get them to try and remember rather than continually explaining

As a student and a possible future teacher, I love active learning, especially since being talked at is boring as heck

I did education for a living, specifically education strategy and learning methodology. We were struggling to find the best ways to go make learning fun and long lasting. Thank you very much for this very insightful video.

You just explained how my brain works and why I can remember everything so well lol 😂

This 15 minute vid should be an intro to every after school study hall. School to me was another place to escape a dysfunctional environment. I didn't get into study until my Jr year when I dropped out. I got my GED some years later which seems to mean nothing at all to me even now at 58yrs, considering answers responding to /Kimmel asks and similar exercises and abject lack of common sense that appears not so common anymore.

11:30 - the Maastricht University has been practicing PBL and similar approaches for a while with pretty good results.

I always felt like active learning opportunities were too little when I went to school. I never performed well in classes where the teacher spent more time berating me for not doing the homework than helping us to actively learn. Ironically, I performed best in the classes I had with one teacher who admitted that she didn't believe school always had to be fun.

Well done.

I hope you promoted this on Crash Course! Would have loved these tips while I was homeschooled.

This is very helpful i will defiantly start using these methods

thanks for changing my life after 4 years out of school and coming back as a part-time, currently mostly online, and ADHD-having student LMAO. now to stop procrastinating !

Using memes to teach .. one prof of mine did it.. we had a laugh and learned

Thanks again President Foxley!

I teach my Korean by giving myself 10 new sentences each week, I make myself write all the sentences I have learned [currently 60] at least once a week, I try to use as little English as possible, and I give myself a test of everything I've learned at the end of each month. This works very well.

I love this episode❤ It has helped me a lot. I am going to use to for lessons🎉

My personal gestalt-y/Darwinistic philosophical abstraction: you do what you do. If you're about to take a test, test yourself. If you've got a practicum, do mockups. If you a have to run fast, go run as fast as you can. If you have to recall information intermittently, try to remember it (while repairing the lack of recall) intermittently. If you have to remember it in the kitchen, memorize it in the kitchen. If you feel certain responses to certain 'triggers' you'll feel that way again unless you incorporate some other behavioral intervention as a practice . That is so my bestfav word: practice.

As an ADHD student, my experience with spaced learning is exactly the opposite. Mostly because my interest with the subject and my motivation to study will decline over time. Motivation and interest are crucial for learning, and these studies just focus on memorization. My theory is that students with ADHD will benefit with courses that are two weeks long and have more hours per day.

"teachers rock and society would crumble without you" I'd like to introduce you to the U.S's education system