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Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques

We recommend it as the reference for the whole learning shelf: when two books disagree about a method, this is where to check which one the evidence is behind.

Unreviewed — agent-drafted

This card was drafted by a software agent. It quotes nothing from the work itself; everything below is a description written for this catalogue, and the bibliographic details were checked against a public catalogue on the date shown.

PaperJohn Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan and Daniel T. Willingham2013About 4 hours

Why this one

We recommend it as the reference for the whole learning shelf: when two books disagree about a method, this is where to check which one the evidence is behind.

A long review that grades ten study techniques by how well they hold up across materials, learners and conditions, rather than by how popular they are. Practice testing and distributed practice come out highest; highlighting, summarising and re-reading come out lowest.

How to judge a study technique the way this product judges a supplement: by the strength and breadth of the evidence, by whether it was tested on people like you and on material like yours, and by what happens when the conditions change.

Do this while you read

Two things to try

  • Read the table of utility ratings first, then find your own habitual technique and read only its section.
  • Replace one low-utility technique in your week with one high-utility one, and keep the rest constant so you can see the difference.
  • Write the conditions under which the authors say the high-utility techniques still fail. Those are the ones you will meet.
What this card assumes

Level, and what it means here

This text assumes you have met the vocabulary before, usually from one of the beginner items here. It is a description of the book, not of you.

learning

Bibliographic details

What was checked, and when

  1. John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan and Daniel T. Willingham. (2013). Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public InterestChecked 2026-08-23Vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 4–58 — metadata resolved at api.crossref.org on 2026-08-23.
The reading catalogue

The rest of the shelf, the collections, and the short reading paths.

The thinking modes

The four families, and the question each mode asks first.