This applications aims to help students and professionals who struggle with reading comprehension or just learning in general. It is something that I personally struggle with as well as my daughter.
As it turns out, our education system here in the United States puts those with learning or memory deficiencies at a huge disadvantage [whether medically diagnosed or not]. Grade school, and sometimes university, focuses on cramming as much information into our brain as possible through sheer lecture and reading. For young hyperactive boys, this clearly is not an effective way to learn. The education system excels at teaching kids how to find information but really fails at teaching them how to extract and use the information they have obtained. Most of the time, learners only get to put their knowledge in practice during a graded assessment usually at the end of a long series of lectures over several weeks or months. For some of us, we are already so dissuaded by our progress we have already given up by the time test day comes.
That was me. I was never a strong academic and it took me a long time to figure out “how I learn” most effectively. It wasn’t until I became a teacher that I discovered that I am one of those people that learn best by not only doing but also by teaching. Honestly, I never thought I could be a great teacher if I also wasn't a great student in the past. This turned out to be an incredibly inaccurate assumption. I have spent hundreds of hours at the podium teaching technical topics to hundreds of students. Becoming a teacher was one of the most pivotal points in my 20 year career. I felt like I really unlocked my “learning super power” by standing at that podium and articulating every minor detail of the topic we were studying. The act of having to articulate what you have learned verbally or by word is when that switch finally flipped for me. It wasn't enough for me to just read something, in fact, it was almost useless. I learn best when I have to articulate what I know to someone. However, not everyone gets the opportunity to be a teacher and get time to stand at a podium. The tool I am building now aims to solve that by encouraging learners to explain what they knew through written word.
The tool I am developing aims to fill that gap for those who have a similar learning style. Active recall learning is nothing new and it is quite well studied. If you are not familiar with what active recall learning is then let me explain it to you:
I think most students are guilty of cramming for a test last minute by simply re-reading all their lecture notes. This works to some extent but it focuses too much on putting information into your brain as opposed to actually pulling it out. With active recall learning techniques, instead of re-reading your notes ad nauseam and praying for a miracle, you instead spend most of your time studying by articulating either through voice or written word your understanding of a subject.
It’s kind of like Rubber Duck Debugging where you talk to your rubber duck about the software bug you are working on and BAM!, you have an epiphany and remember that small mistake you made. Re-reading your code over and over again isn’t what solved the problem, it’s the act of speaking your problem out loud and pulling that information out of your brain that solved the problem. My tool aims to exercise that portion of your brain by providing you a learning buddy that never sleeps and is always ready to listen to you no matter how dry the discussion may be. It's always exciting to a computer after all.
