“There are ways of learning that may feel less effective and lead to more errors during the learning process, but that lead to better performance in the long term.” https://t.co/hrQltQ67pg
— Kiran Johny (@johnywrites) September 11, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.
The concept of “desirable difficulties” was developed by Robert Bjork of UCLA. In his research, he noticed various kinds of experimental phenomena which indicated the emergence of 2 predominant patterns in learning.
They are:
- Conditions of instruction or practice (learning) that make performance improve rapidly often fail to support long term retention and transfer. Whereas,
- Conditions of instruction or practice(learning) that appear to create difficulties for the learner, slowing the rate of apparent learning, often optimizes long term retention and transfer.
The first one accelerates the learning(Or speeds up learning), the second one slows down learning by introducing difficulties that benefit long term retention and transfer. These difficulties are what Robert BJORK Calls Desirable difficulties.
The difficulties in the latter category are called desirable difficulties because they enhance the very goal of learning, ie retention and transfer. They are difficulties because they pose challenges and they slow down the rate of performance.
JohnyWrites.com 