Instructor Guide Overview
Who This Book Is For — As a Course Text
How to Learn Anything was written primarily for the intelligent generalist — a reader who wants to understand the science of learning and apply it to their own life. As a course text, it serves a different population: students who may not have chosen to study learning science, who arrive with existing (often ineffective) study habits they are convinced are working fine, and who need not just information but the kind of sustained engagement that produces genuine behavioral change.
The book's 38 chapters and seven parts were designed with teachability in mind. Each chapter contains case studies, exercises, quizzes, and discussion prompts that give instructors multiple entry points. The four anchor readers — Amara, David, Keiko, and Marcus — provide continuous narrative threads that make abstract research personally relatable and discussable.
This guide is written for faculty or facilitators using the book in a formal or semi-formal instructional context. It assumes you are comfortable with the material but may be new to teaching it in a course context. It also assumes you believe that what you are asking students to do matters as much as what you are asking them to read.
Course Contexts Where This Book Works
1. "Learning to Learn" First-Year Seminar
The fastest-growing application of this material. Many institutions now offer a dedicated first-year course designed to give new students the cognitive and metacognitive tools they lack. This book is particularly well-suited because: it meets students where they are (Part I directly addresses the myths they arrive with), it is immediately applicable (every technique can be tried within the first week), and it provides a sustained conceptual framework rather than a list of tips.
Key pedagogical challenge: Students in these courses often do not believe they need them. Chapters 1 and 6 are the critical first engagements — use them to surface resistance and make it discussable.
2. Study Skills Course for Academically At-Risk Students
For students who have already struggled, the book's tone is important: it does not frame previous failure as a character defect but as a consequence of using ineffective strategies with full commitment. The emphasis on evidence — not opinion, not inspiration — can be genuinely liberating for students who have been told by well-meaning advisors that they just need to "try harder."
Key adaptation: Reduce reading volume; increase the proportion of in-class retrieval practice and discussion. These students often need to experience the techniques working before they will invest in the theory behind them. Start with technique (Chapters 7 and 8), then circle back to foundation (Chapters 1–6).
3. Teacher Education and Pedagogy Course
For pre-service teachers and educators in professional development, the book offers both personal application (improving their own learning) and professional application (designing instruction for students). Chapters 6 (metacognition), 19 (feedback), 20 (transfer), 21 (mental models), 34 (designing learning experiences), and 36 (the learning society) are the most directly applicable to classroom practice.
Key assignment: Ask students to design a retrieval-practice-based lesson plan for their discipline and teach a 15-minute version of it to the class. The combination of teaching and receiving feedback on the teaching is a powerful integration of the book's concepts.
4. Corporate L&D Training Program
Corporate learning and development contexts require adaptations: the timeline is compressed, the learners are adults with established professional identities, and the stakes are different from academic settings. Chapters 17–22 (expertise) and 27 (professional skills) are the core; Chapters 29 and 30 (system design and environment) provide immediate practical application.
The biggest challenge in corporate contexts is the same as in academic ones: learners believe their current practice is adequate. The reframing from "study skills" to "performance optimization" often reduces resistance. Use the Dunlosky et al. (2013) findings to establish credibility — the evidence-base argument lands well in professional contexts.
5. Athletic and Performance Coaching Supplement
Coaches and athletes often have the most genuine openness to deliberate practice concepts (Chapter 18) because competitive pressure makes inefficiency costly in ways that are immediately visible. Chapters 24 (physical skills), 19 (feedback), 20 (transfer), and 12 (desirable difficulties) are the core for this context.
The most productive reframing: "Practice doesn't make perfect — specific, targeted, feedback-rich practice makes perfect." This challenges the dominant but wrong assumption that high-volume training is inherently productive.
6. Self-Study with the Progressive Project as Structure
For learners using this book without a course structure, the Progressive Project — a cumulative learning project developed alongside the book's concepts — provides accountability and structure. See the self-paced guide for recommendations.
How to Use This Guide
This guide is organized as follows:
- Syllabi (15-week, 10-week, self-paced): Week-by-week schedules with readings, activities, and assessments calibrated to each format.
- Common Student Struggles: The predictable resistance points and how to address them.
- Chapter Notes: Teaching notes for each of the 38 chapters, including learning objectives, emphasis points, common misconceptions, and in-class activities.
- Discussion Guides: Facilitation notes for each chapter, with 5–7 discussion questions.
- Assessments: Midterm exam, final exam, and rubrics for the major projects.
You do not need to use all of this material. It is organized so that you can access what you need without reading it cover to cover. If this is your first time teaching with this book, start with the 15-week syllabus, the chapter notes for the chapters you are covering in your first week, and the common struggles section.
Assessment Philosophy for a Learning Science Course
There is an irony at the heart of this course that you should name explicitly on the first day: you are teaching students about the most effective learning and assessment strategies known to science, and then you are going to use those strategies to assess whether they have learned them. Students should not just read about retrieval practice — they should experience it as the primary assessment mechanism in this course.
What this means practically:
Use frequent low-stakes quizzes rather than high-stakes exams. The research unambiguously supports this. More frequent testing produces more learning; the stakes attached to each test are less important for learning than the frequency. A course with weekly 10-question quizzes will produce better retention than a course with two major exams, even if the material covered is identical.
Delay feedback slightly. Immediate feedback is usually better than no feedback, but slightly delayed feedback (returning quizzes at the beginning of the next session rather than immediately) can produce better learning by requiring students to maintain uncertainty for longer. This is itself a desirable difficulty.
Make cumulative testing the norm. Exams should cover all prior material, not just the current unit. This creates the distributed review that the spacing effect predicts will produce better long-term retention.
Assess application, not recall. The midterm and final exam in this guide include scenario-based application questions and essays because the goal is transfer of the learning science concepts to new situations, not reproduction of definitions. Students who have genuinely learned the material should be able to diagnose a struggling learner's problems, design a better practice schedule, and identify the research basis for their recommendations.
Use the Progressive Project as a longitudinal assessment. The most valid measure of whether this course has worked is whether students are actually using its techniques, consistently, in their other courses. The Progressive Project — a learning journal and applied project that students develop across the semester — provides this evidence. Its rubric is in the Additional Assessments section.
Integration with Other Courses
One of the most powerful applications of this book is as a supplement to another course — not a dedicated learning-science course, but any course that involves learning challenging material. When students use retrieval practice, spaced repetition, and elaboration in a biology or economics or history course that is simultaneously using the book, the application becomes concrete in ways that abstract study cannot match.
If you are using this book as a supplement rather than a primary text, the highest-priority chapters are: 7 (retrieval practice), 8 (spaced repetition), 6 (metacognition), 15 (focus), and 29 (designing a study system). These five chapters, together with the Learning Audit in Appendix C, can be covered in 4–5 sessions and will provide the most immediate practical value.
A good integration structure: Have students complete the Learning Audit at the start of the course (before they have read anything else). Assign one chapter per week. Ask students to apply the chapter's technique to the primary course material for that week and report back on what worked and what didn't. This turns the primary course into the laboratory for the learning science.