4 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2022
  2. Jul 2022
    1. The effortinvolved in writing a note in their own words, whichinstructional designers like to call a “desirable difficulty”helps shift the idea from short-term to long-termmemory (this is the same reason many note-makers areshifting back to hand-writing on cards rather thandepending on automated apps)

      The work of writing things down or transforming them into pictures, diagrams, song, art, other creates a context shift in the material which requires greater engagement within the brain and may help to improve understanding.


      Compare/contrast the ideas of context shifting with desirable difficulty.


      Note that this use of "context shifting" (within the pedagogy space) is dramatically different to that used by people like Cal Newport and others (within the productivity space).

  3. Apr 2022
    1. You might find that reviewing in Anki is harder than normal study. This means it’s working – Anki’s goal is to show you mostly the material you’re struggling with and the material you’re most likely to forget, so it will feel harder than an average study session where you study hard and easy material in more equal amounts. However, the difficulty and the number of cards you appear to be forgetting might make you feel like it’s not working. Give spaced repetition a few weeks and see how well you remember your content then; that’s the only way to really know how well it’s going. (This phenomenon is well-known and has a name, desirable difficulty.)

      Desirable difficulty is a learning task which one has a desire to know, but which is sufficiently difficult enough to be challenging. Spaced repetition systems, if properly filled with topics in which one has an interest, will surface the least well known material for revision and should provide a sufficient level of difficulty for learning.

      see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desirable_difficulty