Sans Forgetica (The font of all knowledge? Creators claim new typeface boosts memory, 5 October) is an innovative application of the “desirable difficulty” learning principle identified by Robert Bjork more than 20 years ago.
Making learning more difficult slows it down and leads to the material being analysed at a deeper level so that more connections with established knowledge are made. This improves learners’ memory for it. However, it also makes the experience less enjoyable for the learner. (As the developers of Sans Forgetica point out, you would not want novels printed in it.) Thus, for a given set of material, more enjoyable learning is generally less effective.
This can have perverse effects. When employees attend training courses and when university students go to lectures, they are often asked to provide feedback afterwards about how much they liked the course, whether they enjoyed attending it, and so on. The teachers themselves are assessed on the quality of this feedback rather than on how well learners have remembered the material. In other words, they are incentivised to make courses more enjoyable but less effective.
Nigel Harvey
Department of experimental psychology, University College London
• Another way to avoid the practice of students buying essays (Letters, 27 September and 1 October) is for universities to operate a simple, formal quality assurance procedure – a sample (random or otherwise) of essays to be the subject of a short oral exam. The sample need only be very small to act as a huge deterrent. Staff will already be familiar with the viva process. Students who haven’t cheated will learn important new skills.
Katie Carter
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
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