BrainiLab Academy · Learning
Remember, organise and compare
Try recall, chunking, interleaving and self-explanation, then plan, monitor and evaluate your approach to learning.
Start learning →
What you’ll explore
An answer can look familiar without being easy to recall later. Begin by turning one interesting fact into a question you can try again.
Then explore how meaningful groups can organise information, and how mixed practice can help you compare related examples. Each approach has limits. Try the short optional quizzes to check the ideas, rather than treating a score as a promise about your memory.
Try explaining one connection in your own words, then check the precise step you were unsure about.
Bring the approaches together by planning a task, monitoring your strategy and evaluating what helped.
One discovery at a time
Your lessons, step by step
- 1
Read →2 min read · Quick quiz
How to remember what you learn in a quiz
Distinguish recognition from recall and check an answer after attempting it.
Ready when you are - 2
Read →2 min read · Quick quiz
What is chunking? Give your memory fewer things to juggle
Explain why familiarity makes a group useful as a chunk.
Ready when you are - 3
Read →2 min read · Quick quiz
What is interleaving? Give your practice a little shuffle
Distinguish purposeful interleaving from mixing unrelated topics.
Ready when you are - 4
Read →3 min read · Quick quiz
Can you explain what you’ve learned?
Make a causal connection in an explanation and check uncertain steps rather than merely changing the words.
Ready when you are - 5
Read →2 min read · Quick quiz
What is metacognition? Be your own quiz coach
Use planning, monitoring and evaluation to check learning rather than rely on confidence.
Ready when you are
A few words worth knowing
- Recall
- Bringing information to mind without seeing the answer.
- Chunk
- A meaningful group that can be treated as a unit.
- Interleaving
- Alternating different kinds of examples or problems during practice.
- Self-explanation
- Working out how or why an idea makes sense, using your own words.
Curious to dig deeper?
- Roediger & Karpicke — The power of testing memory (research review)
- Cowan and Chen — How chunks form in long-term memory and affect short-term memory limits (author manuscript, PDF)
- Kornell and Bjork (2008) — Learning Concepts and Categories (original research, PDF)
- Hausman and Kornell (2014) — Mixing topics while studying does not enhance learning (original research, PDF)
- Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu & LaVancher (1994) — Eliciting Self-Explanations Improves Understanding (original research, PDF)
- NASA Science — Facts About Earth: orbit and rotation
- Education Endowment Foundation — Metacognition and self-regulation
- Cambridge International — Planning, monitoring and evaluating learning
Follow the sources, explore a little further, or tell us if something needs a correction. Suggest a correction.