In 1980 Howard-Yana Shapiro, an independent researcher discovered something strange in the Sierre Mix mountains in Mexico. Giant corn stalks that grew to be 16-feet tall, with aerial roots covered in mucus. But that wasn’t the strangest thing. This giant corn grew in nitrogen-poor soil.
Plants cannot grow without nitrogen, so where did it get its nitrogen from?
In 1980, the technology to get the answer didn’t exist. But recently, a team of researchers led by Allan Bennet applied modern tests to uncover the truth. The mucus contains bacteria that convert nitrogen from the air into a form the corn can use.
Normal corn can’t grow in the Sierre Mix mountains, but this super-corn can due to its powerful strategy. Similarly, we can succeed in tough courses in which many students underperform when we employ powerful study strategies. We’ll discuss three such study strategies:
A: Self-explanation
B: Drawing concepts and ideas
C: Self-testing
A: Self-explanation
Self-explanation involves creating an explanation for a concept or idea in writing or spoken aloud. This technique is a powerful way to learn because when students explain a concept they often spot weaknesses in their understanding of a concept.
The results of self-explanation are powerful
In one meta-study, a study that compiles the results of other studies, it was shown that self-explanation was as powerful as peer-tutoring and mastery learning, the two strategies that improve learning more than any other according to past research. It was also found to be more effective than note-taking, summarizing or merely thinking out loud.
So how do you do self-explanation?
First, you consume some learning material such as a book, video or audio. Then you create explanations for what you’ve learned. One way to do this is with questions.
After learning some new material, you might ask yourself questions like “What was it?”, “What happened?” and most important “Why did that happen? So if you’ve just read an article about the Battle at Waterloo you could ask “What was the Battle of Waterloo?” “Why did that battle take place?” “Why did Napoleon lose?” When you answer those questions, especially the why questions, you are engaging in self-explanation.
How do you know if you’re doing it right?
When you can’t answer some of your own why questions. This means there is something you don’t understand — a big clue for what to look at more closely when you study. After using self-explanation, you’ll have a greater understanding of the ideas. Now it’s time to embed them in your memory. I’ll talk about a fun way to do that, next.
B: Drawing concepts and ideas
If you are thinking “I can’t draw. I can barely make stick-figures.” Not to worry. You don’t need to create anything artistic or beautiful to gain the benefits of drawing on memory. Researchers found that creating an image to represent the definition of complex ideas such as isotope or spore improved memory better than writing out the definitions by hand. This was true even for people who just drew stick figures.
This may be because drawing forces you to elaborate on the information and translate it into a new form. Further studies showed that the physical movement of hands and arms as well as seeing the drawing take shape were also important in producing drawing’s effects on your memory.
So after you’ve created your self-explanations, make a drawing to solidify your memory of new concepts and ideas. And while drawing may be a fun, no-fail way to improve learning, sometimes we have to fail a bit to truly improve. That’s where the next strategy comes in.
C: How to fail your way to better learning
Imagine that instead of spending a little more time studying, you decide to just take a test instead. And this test is extraordinarily difficult. You get only 30% right. But instead of being disappointed, you smile. Why?
Because you succeeded in creating a test hard enough to dramatically improve your learning.
Yes, failing at a test can improve memory via something called the “testing effect.” Studies of this phenomenon have shown that taking a hard test – one in which you get many of the answers wrong – improves learning 50% more than spending an equal amount of time on additional study. Of course, no one wants to ruin their GPA just so they can experience improved learning after the test, so many students create their own difficult tests.
One way to do that is with websites like Quizlet, that let you enter facts and ideas and then generate your own tests and quizzes. I used Quizlet when studying for a written exam in Karate a few years ago. I had to remember many Japanese terms as well as fighting concepts – there were literally hundreds of bits of information. I entered all of them into Quizlet and created a very tough test.
I got only 30% right the first time I took one of those tests
The next time I took a Quizlet-generated test, I got 50% right without having studied yet. This was the testing effect in action. I continued to take tests and do some light studying over a few weeks and eventually got 95% correct. Taking such hard tests can be painful if you do so with the expectation that getting all the answers right is what makes you successful. But when you realize that getting many answers wrong actually promotes learning and memory, you’ll find yourself looking forward to taking challenging tests that can reduce your study time.
Summary
We’ve discussed three ways to improve learning and memory: 1) Create self-explanations of new material by asking yourself questions, 2) drawing pictures of concepts and ideas and 3) taking hard tests in which you get many of the answers wrong.
The giant corn of the Sierre Mix mountains succeeds where other corn fails not because more time or money is spent on its cultivation. It succeeds because the corn has found a way to get nitrogen from the air. As learners we too can succeed where others fail without always working longer and harder. This requires finding those activities that produce the most benefit for the least amount of effort such as the strategies discussed above.
Next steps
Use the concepts in this article to remember the concepts in this article. Try making a drawing of all three ideas. Try explaining them to someone else. And if you really want to go far, make a hard quiz and test yourself.
And to further increase your learning, read my article on How students who struggle with a course become masters of learning. You’ll learn three ways students who at first perform badly in a tough course end up succeeding.
