Practice testing --- Self-testing or taking practice tests over to-be-learned material
Distributed practice --- Implementing a schedule of practice that spreads out study activities over time
Practice testing --- Self-testing or taking practice tests over to-be-learned material
Distributed practice --- Implementing a schedule of practice that spreads out study activities over time
3.5 Summarization: Overall assessment. On the basis of the available evidence, we rate summarization as low utility. It can be an effective learning strategy for learners who are already skilled at summarizing; however, many learners (including children, high school students, and even some undergraduates) will require extensive training, which makes this strategy less feasible. Our enthusiasm is further dampened by mixed find-ings regarding which tasks summarization actually helps. Although summarization has been examined with a wide range of text materials, many researchers have pointed to fac-tors of these texts that seem likely to moderate the effects of summarization (e.g., length), and future research should be aimed at investigating such factors. Finally, although many studies have examined summarization training in the class-room, what are lacking are classroom studies examining the effectiveness of summarization as a technique that boosts stu-dents’ learning, comprehension, and retention of course content.
I read through a good portion of it and they are mainly focused on k-12. The research they cite consists of remembering facts, not understanding technical content such as physics and math.
Getting through an advanced math textbook is nearly impossible without taking notes and summarizing the main ideas.
I've seen the sort of summarization described in the original post used as a form of practice testing. For example, a similar method (5 minutes reading, 10 minutes writing a summary, followed by 5 minutes re-reading, and another 10 minutes of summarization) showed very good results in this article.
http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/journal/karpicke-sci11a....
http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/08/10/you-know-what-you-writ...
(the Cal Newport blog has 2 posts about summarization but nothing conclusive AFAICT
http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/08/16/experiments-with-the-t...
His Hattie Ranking might change the way you view education: http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect...