Learning Techniques Ranked by Evidence

There is a well-established gap between the study techniques people use most and the ones that work best, and the reason is that effective techniques feel worse while you are doing them.

The techniques that work

Retrieval practice - testing yourself rather than reviewing material - has strong and repeated support across contexts. Spaced repetition, distributing study over time rather than massing it, is similarly well established. Interleaving different problem types within a session outperforms blocking one type, particularly for discrimination between problem categories. Elaborative interrogation, asking why something is true, and self-explanation both have reasonable support.

The techniques that do not

Rereading is the most commonly used technique and among the least effective, though it reliably produces a feeling of familiarity that is mistaken for knowledge. Highlighting performs poorly in controlled comparisons. Summarising has mixed results depending heavily on skill. Matching instruction to supposed learning styles - visual, auditory, kinaesthetic - has repeatedly failed testing despite near-universal popular acceptance.

Why the good ones feel worse

Effective techniques introduce desirable difficulties - conditions that slow acquisition while improving retention and transfer. Retrieval practice feels harder than rereading because it is; that effort is the mechanism. This creates a systematic metacognitive error: learners judge techniques by fluency during study, which correlates poorly with later recall. Knowing this is itself useful, since it lets you discount the feeling that the harder method is not working.

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