Old habits are hard to break

Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

We all have all sorts of habits. Some of them are good and helpful while others are not so good or even bad.

In the context of studying, for example, moving your phone or tablet to a different room than the one in which you do your homework and then doing your homework without accessing your social media, is clearly a better study habit than surfing the Web for a few hours every evening before starting your homework or surfing so long that you don’t do it at all.

Logan Fiorella (known to many for what he wrote with Richard Mayer on productive learning strategies – see our overview blog here) published a review article on the science behind habits and its implications for learning and mental wellbeing. In short, learning interventions often focus on informing and motivating learners (how) to use particular study…