The Bookshelf Behind the Method
There are many books and studies out there that side with our method. Here are our top picks, which were used to build the Norudit sequence, and a brief summary of why you should read them.
The basis of the Norudit sequence
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Brown, Roediger & McDaniel (2014). This book explores commonly used study techniques that have been scientifically proven to be of low utility and often a waste of effort, and suggests highly effective, evidence-based strategies grounded in cognitive psychology.
This book contains 8 chapters, from breaking down common misconceptions even at the institutional level to giving sound advice on the current best study methods based on cognitive science. The best part about the book is that it isn't filled with technical terms so anyone can properly understand it.
If you'd like to learn more about Make It Stick, the full review is here.
Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Dunlosky et al. (2013). This is an extensive monograph that evaluates ten popular learning techniques to determine their relative utility for students and educators.
Published in 2013, it analyses over 100 years of empirical psychological evidence, drawing from hundreds of experiments conducted since the early 20th century. It's based on 4 evaluation frameworks: learning conditions, student characteristics, type of material to be studied, and criterion tasks (different ways success is measured).
If you'd like to learn more about this monograph, read the full breakdown here.
The cognitive science
Why Don't Students Like School? Willingham (2009). A cognitive scientist explaining, for teachers, how thinking and memory actually work, with a one-line takeaway: memory is the residue of thought. You remember what you thought hard about, which is why passive review leaves so little behind.
How We Learn. Dehaene (2020). The neuroscience view: attention, active engagement, feedback on error, and consolidation are the levers that turn experience into durable knowledge. It is the case for why being wrong and finding out is not a failure state but part of the process.
Multimedia Learning. Mayer (2009). The evidence for the multimedia principle: words and pictures, presented together and in step, are remembered better than either alone. Its principles are the reason an explanation should be shown and narrated together, not dumped as a wall of text.
The primary sources
Behind the books sit the papers the whole method leans on:
| Finding | Source | What it settles |
|---|---|---|
| The testing effect | Roediger & Karpicke (2006) | Retrieving beats re-reading for long-term memory |
| Desirable difficulties | R. A. Bjork (1994); Bjork & Bjork (2011) | Harder, well-formed practice transfers better |
| Self-explanation | Chi et al. (1989) | Explaining to yourself correlates with deeper understanding |
| Elaborative interrogation | Pressley et al. (1992) | Answering "why" beats passive reading |
| Knowledge tracing | Corbett & Anderson (1994) | Mastery can be modelled per concept, over time |
Read more
- More on the most commonly used techniques: Ten Techniques, Ranked
- The five research findings Norudit's whole method is built on: Built on the Science of Memory
- A book about the common misconceptions in learning written by 2 psychologists and compiled by a third, a writer: Make It Stick