Encouraging Effective But Unpopular Learning Methods

How do you get students to use effective but unpopular study methods? I've had almost no success with this. Even students whose own performance proves the superiority of the unpopular methods say those methods don't work.

I'm talking about methods that are ~indisputably effective, but don't always feel effective in the moment, such as:

1. Single-tasking and concentrating rather than multi-tasking.

2. Quizzing oneself rather than rereading or mindmapping or note taking.

3. Once repetition has granted you reasonable competence with one skill (e.g. converting fractions to decimals), start mixing up your practice (e.g. fractions to decimals, percents to fractions, ratio word problem, repeating decimal to fraction, etc.).

The conversations often go like this.

Teacher: "Many people believe they are good at multitasking, but literally no controlled experiment has ever has found anyone whose multitasking performance exceeds their singletasking performance. You need to focus on your essay."

Student: "But those researchers haven't met ME. I'm an exception. I know myself. I know I'm better at multitasking than singletasking; I can feel it in the moment. It's just how my brain works. That's why I'm going to leave the music on and stay involved in SnapChat while I write my essay."

What do you do next?

Submitted December 20, 2017 at 02:18AM by WeCanLearnAnything http://ift.tt/2CJOArT