Combining Mnemonics and Evidence based learning?

[UsagiChen (Arthur Chenwhitt Evans)]

Has anyone attempted this? Before really diving into mnemonics I first came across Barbara Oakley’s learning how to learn around 5 years back. While she touched on mnemonics it wasn’t in too much detail so I just ignored them in favour for spaced repetition and recall. As I dove further into learning how to learn I came across people like Benjamin Keep, The Author of IDoRecall, and The Learning Scientists. Eventually finding out about the 6 evidence based learning (Those with the most research backing them):

1. Spacing
2. Retrieval Practice
3. Elaboration
4. Interleaving
5. Concrete Examples
6. Dual-coding

I’ve been essentially practicing variations of these for the past few years in variation. Ranging for using Anki flashcards, to blurting out on piece of paper with the free recall exercise, to the feynman technique, to just directly practicing the skill from memory. And all of these variations worked in one way of another. They have mostly landed me around 90% grade marks in school and about a similar retention in casual studies, which for me is programming.

However, my thirst for knowledge and the need to be a good learner didn’t stop there. I wanted to learn things quicker, deeper, longer retention span, and more. There had to be more things I can do. This is where I came back to mnemonics. I was reading up on learning again and remembered how memorising is important to deeper understanding, despite what teachers say. Nearly every researcher on learning I found agreed with this. This made me think “Maybe mnemonics isn’t so bad after all”, so I decided to seriously give it ago starting with Dominic O’brien’s ALI acronym. And wow. Method of Loci + Vivid Peg system (I’m using the dominic system) is amazing. I finished reading his book successfully recalling and keeping a memory palace of 60 items in my second recall.

I then started to wonder how I can combine the practices from learning researchers with memory champion techniques. Surely, this would provide outstanding results right? Sure, it takes more time initially, but theory is that the long term retention and understanding would be amazing. Before I start experimenting though, has anyone else tried this? I have yet to come across an article like this (I may be bad at googling lol), but if you have what worked and what didn’t?

[katiek]

“Evidence-based learning” is not something I’ve studied but I think these are things that memorisers tend to do already, in conjunction with memory techniques. For instance, if I wanted to learn a list of Shakespeare’s plays, I would use a journey (i.e. memory palace) and place an image or story representing a play in each location.

Then I would test my knowledge at increasing intervals (spacing + retrieval practice), interleaving my learning and retrieval with other knowledge. You can also add extra info to each scene that you create (elaboration, concrete examples). As for dual coding, people have different preferences for words/images or a mixture of both, but if you create a scene either mentally or e.g. as a digital image you can certainly use both words and images, e.g. I picture a scene visually and also tell myself the story of what’s happening.

[Lusid (Beson)]

I can suggest a method. It is a time-consuming method, but it works. You need to create 60 different images for 60 items. I use Photoshop and Dalle3. For example, I created an image of a perfume bottle with inside beer and a toy alien in the background. Even after months have passed, I still remember it. So, I don’t just memorize by imagining, I create images on my computer using Photoshop and Dalle3.