More about successful learning. Desirable difficulties lead to greater learning. Learning happens through encoding, consolidating, and reconsolidating.

1. Embrace
Difficulties
The importance of variety in
practicing
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3. Short-term
impediments
that make
for stronger
learning
have come
to be called
desirable
difficulties.
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4. How
learning
occurs
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5. encodingPhoto by Jefferson Santos on Unsplash.com

6. This process of converting sensory
perceptions into meaningful representations
in the brain is still not perfectly understood.
We call the process encoding, and we call
the new representations within the brain
memory traces.
(Brown, et al. 2014)

7. Photo by Jefferson Santos on Unsplash.com
encoding

8. Photo by Mike from Pexels.com
consolidating

9. Prior knowledge is a prerequisite for
making sense of new learning, and
forming those connections is an
important task of consolidation.
(Brown, et al. 2014)

10. Consolidation helps organize and solidify
learning, and, notably, so does retrieval after a
lapse of some time, because the act of retrieving
a memory from long-term storage can both
strengthen the memory traces and at the same
time make them modifiable again, enabling them,
for example, to connect to more recent learning.
This process is called reconsolidation.
(Brown, et al. 2014)

11. … when you let the memory recede a little, for
example by spacing or interleaving the practice,
retrieval is harder, your performance is less
accomplished, and you feel let down, but your
learning is deeper and you will retrieve it
more easily in the future.
(Brown, et al. 2014)

12. Photo by alan bridges from FreeImages
retrieval

13. Having effective retrieval cues is an
aspect of learning that often goes
overlooked. The task is more than
committing knowledge to memory. Being
able to retrieve it when we need it is
just as important.
(Brown, et al. 2014)

14. Learning happens as we…
•encode
•consolidate
•reconsolidate
•retrieve (timely)

16. Embrace
Difficulties
The importance of variety in
practicing
Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels.com