How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine …

Another recent study shows that when students are allowed to use their smartphones in class, their performance suffers, even months later, when they are tested on the specific content of that day’s class.27 For optimal learning, the brain must avoid any distraction.

Self-testing is one of the best learning strategies, because it forces us to become aware of our mistakes. When learning foreign words, it is better to start off by trying to remember the word before receiving error feedback than to merely study each pair (top).

First, students must be encouraged to participate, to put forth responses, to actively generate hypotheses, however tentative; and second, they must quickly receive objective, non-punitive feedback that allows them to correct themselves.

In this view, learning becomes similar to programming: it consists of selecting the simplest internal formula that fits the data, among all those available in the language of thought.