Do we learn best if we cram or if we plan?

Oxford neuroscientists are marking British Science Week and Brain Awareness Week (11th-17th March 2019) with an interactive experiment to help schoolchildren understand how to improve their revision skills.

Researchers from Oxford Neuroscience have designed a fun game that can be downloaded and played on a phone, which will test whether cramming for exams is successful, or whether learning something over a longer period of time produces a better outcome.

Once downloaded, users will be sorted into two groups: one group will take part in the quick learning, which is done in a single day, and the second group will be selected to take part in a week of learning, where they will play the game every day.

The University of Oxford will be collecting anonymous data about which group of people has most success in the game.

The results from the 'Find the Brain' game will be revealed live on Friday 15 March at 3.00pm, as a volunteer also plays the game while in an MRI scanner to show what’s going on in our brain when we are learning.

Throughout Brain Awareness Week there will also be events to delve into more detail about how the brain learns, how we can re-learn after stroke, how we learn during adolescence, and how sleep and exercise affect our learning.

Through interactive Facebook Lives with researchers, Twitter Takeovers and podcasts, researchers will be working with young people to explore how we can improve the way we learn.
Find out of you are a crammer or a planner by downloading the game from the dedicated microsite that has been created in partnership with British Science Week: www.oxfordsparks.ox.ac.uk/brain-discovery-week

Watch the results of the fun experiment revealed live from the fMRI scanner at the University of Oxford on Friday 15 March, 3.00pm, to find out who learned best: the crammers or the planners! www.facebook.com/OxSparks