Material a learner produces is remembered better than the same material read.
Slamecka and Graf's 1978 experiments had subjects either read a word pair or generate the second word from a rule and a fragment. The generated items were remembered better, and the gap held across variations. The cost is time, which is why generation is dropped first when a syllabus is crowded.
In practice
- A revision session spent producing questions beats one spent reading the answers.
- A team that writes its own checklist follows it; the same checklist handed down is filed.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- What works in learning, and what schools can and cannot change