Want to learn faster? Stop multitasking and start daydreaming

Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin explains how students can avoid letting social media and multitasking ruin their study time.

Information is being created and disseminated faster than any of us can absorb it. Google estimates that humans have created more information in the past five years than in all of human history - 300 exabytes of information (300,000,000,000,000,000,000) to be precise. If all that information were written on 3x5 index cards, your personal share of it would wrap around the earth twice. The pile of cards would reach to the moon three times.

Social media, emails, texts, WhatsApp messsages and phone calls take up an increasing amount of time. Our to-do lists are so full that we can’t hope to complete every item on them. So what do we do? We multitask, juggling several things at once, trying to keep up by keeping busy.

Research by Earl Miller of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and others however shows that multitasking doesn’t work - simply because the brain doesn’t work that way. If you’re studying from a book and trying to listen in on a conversation at the same time, those are two separate projects, each started and maintained by distinct circuits in the brain. Pay more attention to one for a moment and you’re automatically paying less attention to the other. 

To make matters worse, learning information while multitasking causes the new information to go to the wrong part of the brain, as shown by Russ Poldrack of Stanford. If students study and watch TV at the same time, for example, the information from their course work goes into the striatum, a region specialised for storing new procedures and skills, not facts and ideas. Without the distraction of TV, the information goes into the hippocampus, where it is organised and categorised, making it easier to retrieve it. 

“People can’t do [multitasking] very well, and when they say they can, they’re deluding themselves,” says Miller. And it turns out the brain is very good at this deluding business.

How anxiety scrambles your brain and makes it hard to learn

Levels of stress and anxiety are on the rise among students. Juliet Rix has tips to control the panic and thrive academically.

Olivia admits she’s always been a worrier – but when she started university, her anxiety steadily began to build. One day she was simply too frightened to leave the house. For two weeks she was stuck indoors, before she was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and began to get the help she needed.

With support from her GP and university wellbeing service, and courses of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), she was able to stick with her university course and to start enjoying life again.

But Olivia is far from alone in her anxiety: the number of students declaring a mental health problem has doubled in the last five years, to at least 115,000.

“And that is a very small proportion of the students who are having mental health difficulties,” says Ruth Caleb, chair of Universities UK’s mental wellbeing working group.

A study of UK undergraduates has found that even among students symptom-free before starting university, some 20% are troubled by a clinically significant level of anxiety by the middle of second year.

What does anxiety do to students? It causes the body to prepare itself for fight or flight.

“If you are in a situation of imminent actual threat, then the increased alertness and body response can be lifesaving,” explains Chris Williams, professor of psychosocial psychiatry at the University of Glasgow, and medical advisor to Anxiety UK.

“But if it occurs when trying to revise, or present a talk, or at such a high level that it paralyses or causes errors, it can interfere with what we want to do.”

What it takes to teach a large class – and do it well

You don’t have to suffer from glossophobia to hyperventilate at the thought of standing up in front of a large hall full of people. Many university lecturers dread the thought of teaching a large class. That’s because teaching large classes is hard. It can be scary and stressful, and it takes a lot of time and preparation.

Adding to all of that stress, large classes also don’t have a good reputation when it comes to fostering student learning. We know that students struggle in these contexts to stay engaged, to perform well and to develop important skills like critical thinking.

But large classes are a reality in many developed and developing countries. They form part of the drive towards the massification of higher education.

So what is a “large class”? It can’t be defined by a numerical threshold: instead, it’s a context where student learning is negatively impacted by the number in a class. Large classes have different meanings in different disciplines. A biology class may have more than 800 students before it’s considered “large”, while a sculpture course may be classified as “large” with 20 students.

There are two dominant logics that drive the emergence of large classes in higher education. The first is about efficiency, and suggests that large classes will result in increased revenue and decreased costs to the “system”.

The second is a progressive logic which argues that higher education is key to resolving problems of poverty, inequality and economic development. To do this, access to higher education needs to be increased.

Neither of these logics places student learning front and centre. Nor do they consider how student learning might be negatively affected. How can we address this?

I don’t think we can solve the challenges of large classes outright – but we can attempt to mitigate their negative effects by adopting strategies that we know are good for student learning and generally good for speaking to large groups. Here are some things that may work, based on research I’ve conducted and recently published in book form.

1) Treat your large class like it is a small class. Small classes are great for learning because they allow interaction, discussion and debate. Yet many lecturers actively try to avoid this in large class scenarios. This avoidance is usually justified through concerns about “managing” and “controlling” students. Lecturers argue that a class may become unwieldy if students are allowed to speak. But unwieldiness can be avoided by properly structuring the interaction moment.

Student gardeners: here's how to grow your own fruit and veg

Whether seasoned seedsmen or gardening greenhorns, all students can harvest the benefits of growing their own food.

From nurturing a few fresh herbs on a windowsill, to making regular trips to your local allotment, growing is the gift that keeps on giving. Gardening can provide fresh food at student-friendly prices. It’s a perfect antidote to work stress and the best way to win someone’s heart, should you wish to.

Whether you’re at one with a trowel, or a gardening novice, there’s always something new to learn. Here’s how to get growing while at university.

Growing with no garden or with limited space

If you live in student accommodation, you may find that the closest you get to a garden is the Great British Bake Off finale, when Mary Berry and Paul are joined by bakers and their families to celebrate outside the tent.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Mark Ridsdill Smith founded Vertical Veg in 2010 to encourage people to grow food in containers if they don’t have access to gardens. As well as running the online project, Smith gives workshops in cities across the UK. “You’ll be amazed at what’s possible in a tiny space. Try it,” he says.

Observing how much sun your growing space gets is key. Three hours or more a day and you’ll be able to grow salad leaves and other leafy greens like kale and chard, says Smith. If it gets five or six hours you can grow peas, beans and potatoes. Over six and you can grow fruiting crops like tomatoes and courgettes.

Sunshine aside, make sure containers are kept well watered as they dry out easily, and check how windy your growing spot is – as rooftops and balconies are often exposed. Smith offers more advice on container growing on the Vertical Veg website, as well as a list of 10 edible growables to get you started.

How to help a perfectionist student

Starting a university is often a stressful time and can lead to perfectionist tendancies. If you 're a worried parent, here's how you can help.

Unmanageable to-do lists, working late into the night, an internal voice demanding success. These are all typical traits of a perfectionist student.

Myra Woolfson, of the University of Nottingham’s counselling service, says that perfectionists are often too overwhelmed by their own expectations to start work. “Perfectionism can lead to an almost complete withdrawal of study – and sometimes from everything else. It can involve procrastination until the deadline gets close,” she says.

“This behaviour is often not entirely conscious. One of the reasons for it is that the student can tell themselves that if they had worked harder or for longer, they might have achieved more.”

Many people spend their lives pursuing unattainable perfection. It’s a mission rooted in feelings of inferiority or the impact of bullying, says Woolfson. It could also be caused by a family that prioritises success and status or a school under pressure to deliver good grades. For self-confessed perfectionist Alice Lovatt, studying A-levels in Newcastle, it’s sibling rivalry: she wants to achieve at least as much as her sister.

“A perfectionist approach to studying is the only way I can succeed,” she says. “Errors mean failure, and failure means disappointment. Sometimes I worry that I need to learn how to fail and how to take to it better. If I was to suddenly suffer a slip in my standards it would come as a shock.”

The transition to higher education can be a turning point for perfectionists. Self-learning, independent living, a lack of structure, fewer and less obvious targets and more talented and competitive peers can all derail a student who has been used to excelling at school.

According to Alan Percy, head of counselling at the University of Oxford, perfectionism is “an increasingly insidious phenomenon” at UK universities. More students are taking smart drugs to get higher grades and universities are experiencing an increase in mental health problems. Meanwhile, the cost of tuition fees and living, along with the pressure to get jobs, can put strain on students.

How to have a healthy exam term

With exams fast approaching, here’s how to boost your mental and physical performance.

Many students are now in their final term of the academic year: all the hours spent attending classes, studying and revising culminate in the assignments and exams scheduled for the next couple of months.

With the pressure and stress of having so much to do, avoiding procrastination and getting work done efficiently can be more difficult than it seems. So with exams fast approaching, here are some tips to make your life easier and increase your productivity.

Sleep

Having a consistent sleeping pattern is one of the most essential things for getting through the term. Under- and over-sleeping are as bad as each other, so aim for between eight and 10 hours. Working through the night and sacrificing sleep can be counterproductive.

Students are using new methods to keep themselves well rested, such as binaural beats, a type of sound that can affect the brain. Prajesh Patel, 20, an economics student at Queen Mary, University of London, takes power naps consistently and is a fan of this technique.

“Binaural beats are particular frequencies that can be played through earphones to stimulate a particular brain state, such as studying or sleeping,” he says. “I take a 20-minute nap with the aid of a binaural beat soundtrack every day after lunch. I wake up refreshed and more focused to tackle the second half of my day.”

Diet

Food is also incredibly important, and maintaining a balanced diet will make you feel better and give you the right nutrients to work that little bit harder (pdf).

Coldwater fish, such as tuna and salmon, may not sound like a library-friendly snack, but they are a rich source of amino acids, which improve brain chemical levels and your ability to revise efficiently. Walnuts and flaxseed are also recommended, as they’re known for keeping attention spans under control.

Five secrets to revising that can improve your grades

An expert on revision gives his top five tips on how to revise for exam success.

How do you get the most out of your revision time, and end up with the best grades you can? Or, if you're a different sort of student, how can you get the same grades you're getting now, but spend less time revising?

Either way, you need to know how to learn better. And fortunately, decades of research carried out by psychologists about learning and memory has produced some clear advice on doing just that.

As an experimental psychologist, I am especially interested in learning. Most research on learning is done in a lab, with volunteers who come in once or twice to learn simple skills or lists of words.

Wouldn't it be better, I thought, if we could study learning by looking at a skill people are practising anyway? And could we draw links between how people practise and how good they eventually get?

Computer games provide a great way to study learning: they are something people spend many hours practising, and they automatically record every action people take as they practise. Players even finish the game with a score that tells them how good they are.

Using data from a simple online game, my colleague Mike Dewar and I could analyse how more than 850,000 people learned to play. The resulting scientific paper, showed in unprecedented detail the shape of the learning curve, allowing us to test existing theories of learning, as well as suggesting some new ideas on the best ways to learn.

So here are my five evidence-based tips on how to learn:

1. Space your practice

Our analysis showed that people who leave longer gaps between practice attempts go on to score higher. In fact, the longer the gaps, the higher the scores.

The difference is huge: people who leave more than 24 hours between their first five attempts at the game and their second five attempts score as highly, on average, as people who have practiced 50% more than them.

China says no room for 'western values' in university education

Education minister says books which ‘smear socialism’ will be banned.

 

 

China’s education minister has vowed to ban university textbooks which promote “western values”, state media said, in the latest sign of ideological tightening under President Xi Jinping.

“Never let textbooks promoting western values appear in our classes,” minister Yuan Guiren said, according to a report late Thursday by China’s official Xinhua news agency.

“Remarks that slander the leadership of the Communist Party of China” and “smear socialism” must never appear in college classrooms, he added according to Xinhua.

China’s universities are run by the ruling Communist party, which tightly controls discussions of history and other topics it construes as a potential threat to its grip on power.

The party often brands concepts such as multiparty elections and the separation of powers as “Western”, despite their global appeal and application.

China has tightened controls on academics since Xi assumed the party leadership in 2012, with several outspoken professors sacked or jailed.

Xia Yeliang, an economics professor at the prestigious Peking University, was fired from his post in 2013 after a 13-year tenure in a decision he attributed to persistent calls for political change in China.

The Chinese dream for higher education and the dilemma it presents

The number of university students in China, including those in part-time higher adult education, expanded from 12.3m students in 2000 to 34.6m in 2013. China has become an exceptional example of increasing access for students to higher education – but this expansion has also been accompanied by some unexpected and even negative consequences.

The annual number of graduates is expected to reach 7.27m in 2014 and the challenge is to find them appropriate jobs, especially as over-education – where the supply of graduates exceeds labour market demand – is becoming serious. An uneven distribution of higher education by geographic region and social group has also resulted in growing inequality of opportunity, creating barriers for students from inland regions and from rural families, especially those applying to key national universities.

Such achievements and problems were considered in the 2012 Ministry of Education’s Guidance and Measures document on quality, structural adjustment and educational equality. This policy change, signalled by China’s president, Jing Xiping, has offered an opportunity to rethink the relationship between social justice and Chinese higher education.

What do world university rankings actually tell us?

From the “best beaches” to the “best slice of pizza” to the best hospital to have cardiac surgery in, we are inundated with a seemingly never-ending series of reports ranking everything that can be ranked and even things that probably shouldn’t be.

Over the last few decades, schools and universities in many parts of the world have become targets of this ranking mania. Some of these are official, state sponsored rankings, such as those used in various performance-based funding formulas or, in the US, President Barack Obama’s yet undefined plan to rank American universities. Some are unofficial, such as the World University Rankings just released by the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine, or the Shanghai Rankings and US News & World Report ranking of American universities also recently released.

A real measure of quality?

But do all these rankings actually tell us anything substantive about the relative quality of universities? Should US or UK universities be concerned with their slippage in the latest THE rankings? There are 74 US universities on the new list – the most from any country – but this was down from 77 last year, and 60% of American institutions lost ground in the rankings. The UK, in second place, now has 29 universities in the top 200, two fewer than last year.

Do such rankings separate the chaff from the wheat, or the pure from the dangerous, or are they distractions and distortions to achieving a real equality of quality? Are they incentivising universities to perform better or actually inviting cynical “gaming" of the system?

Natural pecking order

Despite the various methodological caveats contained in the small print, in their more positivist moments, the agencies and magazines who produce university rankings contend that rankings do in fact unearth and quantify a naturally occurring pecking order. There is never much difference at the very top. In this year’s 2014-15 ranking, California Institute of Technology retained its top spot, followed by Harvard University in second and Oxford University in third. 

Loeb Classical Library 1.0

When James Loeb designed his soon-to-be-launched series of Greek and Roman texts at the turn of the twentieth century, he envisioned the production of volumes that could easily fit in readers’ coat pockets. A century later, that compact format is still one of the collection’s hallmarks. Beginning in September, however, the iconic books will be far handier than Loeb had hoped: users of the Loeb Classical Library (LCL) will have the entire collection at their fingertips. After five years of dedicated work on the part of the library’s trustees and Harvard University Press (HUP), which has overseen LCL since its creator’s death in 1933, the more than 520 volumes of literature that make up the series will be accessible online. Besides allowing users to browse the digitized volumes, which retain the unique side-by-side view of the original text and its English translation, the Digital Loeb Classical Library will enable readers to search for words and phrases across the entire corpus, to annotate content, to share notes and reading lists with others, and to create their own libraries using personal workspaces.

LCL managing editor Michael Sullivan, whose position was created earlier this year to supervise the virtual library, said that the digitization project is “a major leap forward in the history of the Loeb.” According to HUP executive editor-at-large Sharmila Sen, the launch of the digital LCL marks “a moment of rebirth” for the historic collection. She explained that in the years preceding the library’s 2011 centenary, the trustees and HUP administrators began to think about how to make the LCL “relevant to the twenty-first century.” Even though online databases of Greek and Latin literature have existed for years, said the library’s general editor, Jeffrey Henderson, a classics professor at Boston University, the digital Loeb will be unprecedented in its accessibility and scope: for the first time, readers without knowledge of Greek and Latin will be able to explore a vast range of the classical literary heritage online through high-quality, modern translations. He added that the project, which cost the LCL foundation more than $1 million, will serve as a model for the digitization of other HUP series, noting, “It’s strange that the oldest literature becomes the model for the digital age.”

Consolidating a vast literary corpus involving two different alphabets into an interconnected, elegant, and easy-to-use website required much behind-the-scenes work, Sen said. Designing the software for the digital library and transferring the data have concluded, she noted, but the project overseers view the current product—which will be available by subscription to institutions and individuals—as only a 1.0 version. The website will be a dynamic workspace, Henderson pointed out, adding that user feedback will help the editors increase its functionality.

Helping students with Asperger's prepare for university life

As the number of autistic students soars, universities are trying hard to help them with their social and life skills.

 

"I am quite a fussy eater. I only like avocado and boiled egg," Stefania Hanson explains, as her friend pushes a trolley past the frozen peas. They're navigating their way around Asda in Birmingham's Perry Barr, finding ingredients for a cookery session.

The activity is part of a three-day summer school for students with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) who are starting university this month. Run by Birmingham City University (BCU), the programme helps those who are academically very able, but may not have some of the social or life skills that university demands. "It's also a chance for the students – who can have very specific dietary or sensory needs – to have a practice run before the real thing," says Karin Qureshi, manager of counselling and mental health at BCU.
The number of autistic students going to university has soared in recent years, growing by more than 200% in five years – and this figure does not include students who haven't disclosed their disability. Academics believe the rise is driven by greater awareness of autism and better opportunities for those who have the condition to reach their potential at school.

"Although diagnosis can be problematic in certain parts of the country, it is generally easier than it was in the past," says John Harding, head of the disability resource centre at Cambridge University. It had 26 students with autism in 2009, and now has 122.

"Most autistic university students have high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome – rather than classic autism," explains Vicky Neale, the National Autistic Society's student support coordinator for London. Students with Asperger's aren't all replicas of The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper, Neale adds – though the highly intelligent, socially aloof character is seen as a hero by some.

Asperger's is associated with people of average or above-average intelligence. They tend to have fewer problems with speech than those with classic autism, but may still have difficulties with understanding and processing language. This could mean they find it harder to understand instructions from lecturers, or to cope with living in student halls.

As more students are identified as autistic, academics are finding new ways to help them – from pet therapy to training for academics. An increasing number of institutions – including Bath, Cambridge and Aberystwyth – offer summer schools to help students adjust to university life.

‘Sense of belonging’ enhances the online learning experience

For the past couple of years Australian universities' enthusiasm for online learning has increased, following the lead of international universities in realising the potential of MOOCs to replace traditional face-to-face learning. While the number of students undertaking studies on campus has remained relatively stable over the past three years, the number undertaking online or a combination of on-campus and online education continues to grow.

The increase in online learning has taken place around the same time as a significant shift in the social and economic background of students. The implementation of the Bradley equity review of higher education has led to modest improvements in the number of university students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, regional/remote areas, indigenous students, students from a non-English-speaking background and students with a disability.

Drop-out rates for online learning are high. Why?

Online learning presents an opportunity to provide access to higher education for traditionally underrepresented groups. However, the combination of the new mode of delivery (online) and working with non-traditional students presents challenges for how to make education inclusive.

The attrition rates for online learning and for non-traditional students are both high, creating a risk that the factors that drive attrition among these groups may compound.

The reasons that students are more likely to drop out of online learning are complex. Some researchers have suggested attrition seems to be affected by a mix of personal, institutional and circumstantial variables.

A Levels must do more than just prep students for university

The first lessons teaching the new linear A Level, designed specifically with the preparation of students for degree-level education in mind, will be taught in schools and colleges from September 2015. But this does not mean that we can expect those students admitted to university from 2017 to be significantly better prepared for our degree courses than they have been previously. This is not because of any fault with the A Level content, but because the idea that they are designed primarily to prepare students for degree-level courses is rather outdated.

Nicky Morgan, the new secretary of state for education, will be responsible for overseeing the introduction of the new A levels. One of her first acts in post was to announce a consultation on further content changes. But the changes are unmistakably the product of her predecessor Michael Gove.

In Gove’s view – set out in a letter to the chief executive of curriculums regulator Oqual in January 2013 – A levels needed reforming so that their “primary purpose” would be to “prepare students for degree-level study”, something which he believed the previous modular nature of the qualification and repeated assessment windows did not allow. Gove argued that this bite-sized approach prevented students from developing the “deep understanding or the necessary skills to make connections between topics.”

The government’s own data reveals that in 2012-13, 48% of those who took an A level or equivalent level qualification did not go on to university. Figures for last year have been delayed until the end of August. To lump all degree-level courses together as something which a single qualification can prepare for is naive at best.

For Black Kids in America, a Degree Is No Guarantee

A new study shows that African-American college graduates face unemployment rates nearly twice as high as others with the same education. 

 

The Ivy-League-educated barista who can't find a job that pays enough to live anywhere besides her childhood bedroom. The freshly minted MBA and law-school graduates strapped with debt and frustrated about the six-figure jobs and master-of-the-universe titles that haven't materialized.

Nearly five years after the Great Recession officially ended, the struggles and dampened expectations of young college graduates have become a fixture of American politics and even popular culture. But amid all the focus on the difficulties of college-educated millennials, one facet of this upheaval has remained largely unexplored: the continued significance of race.

As a new crop of college graduates joins the American workforce, unemployment rates among minorities with degrees remain distinctly elevated and their economic prospects disproportionately dimmed, a new report released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research has found.

In 2013, the most recent period for which unemployment data are available by both race and educational attainment, 12.4 percent of black college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 were unemployed. For all college graduates in the same age range, the unemployment rate stood at just 5.6 percent. The figures point to an ugly truth: Black college graduates are more than twice as likely to be unemployed.

"We absolutely aren't trying to discourage people from going to college," said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research who coauthored the study. "College degrees do have value. But what we are trying to show here is that this is not about individuals, or individual effort. There is simply overwhelming evidence that discrimination remains a major feature of the labor market."

Are lectures a good way to learn?

Imagine a future where university enrolment paperwork is accompanied by the statement:

Warning: lectures may stunt your academic performance and increase risk of failure.

Researchers from the United States have just published an exhaustive review and their findings support that warning. They read every available research study comparing traditional lectures with active learning in science, engineering and mathematics. Traditional lecture-based courses are correlated with significantly poorer performance in terms of failure rates and marks.

The study’s authors boldly compare our new awareness of the harm done by lectures to the harms of smoking. Their article – they claim – is the equivalent of the 1964 Surgeon-General’s report that led to legislated warnings about smoking in the United States. The renowned physics education researcher Eric Mazur has described continuing with lectures in the face of this new evidence as “almost unethical”.

This paper is so important because it combines 225 individual research studies through a technique called meta-analysis. So although individual studies published over the past 70 years may have occasionally found lectures to be better, we now know that the collective evidence is in support of active approaches.

UK students taking languages degrees at record low

Number of undergraduates on full-time modern foreign language courses at lowest point in a decade, new report concludes.

The number of students taking a language degree is at the lowest level in a decade. A report released today from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) found the number of students being accepted onto full-time modern foreign language (MFL) courses dropped by nearly a quarter (22%) between the academic years 2010-11 and 2012-13.

Ucas data in the report shows the fall in applications to MFL courses in 2013-14 were reflected in the acceptances, which are now at their lowest point in the last 10 years. Acceptances to non-European languages fell by 14% compared to the previous academic year (2012-13) and by 6% for European languages.

"A worrying fact is that the data has seen a fall in applications to foreign modern languages in 2013-14 cycle. Ucas data is for applications, not enrollment, but it indicates there may be a continuation of what we've seen last year," says Janet Ilieva, co-author of the report.

One of the key findings of the report is that the fall in language undergraduate degrees has shifted from an issue concentrated among part-time students, to a problem now among full-time students. Until 2012-13, the long term decline in entry to MFL courses was primarily affecting part-time programmes. Data for the most recent academic year shows a 22% decline in full-time undergraduate study.