Have you ever done hours of studying, but still didn’t do well on the test? How you study is just as important as how much you study – maybe more.
The best study methods all involve active learning — strengthening memory and understanding through specific mental activity like analyzing, explaining, and recalling. Click the links below to learn more about active your learning. Then scroll down to explore some of the best know strategies for making it happen.
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Making Notes
Making notes is much more than simply recording information to re-read later. It’s a key learning activity. Making notes can help you to understand concepts, decide what information is important, organize ideas as you memorize them and quiz yourself and practice recalling what they are about.
Explore these links to learn about several methods for getting the most learning from making notes in class and when you study.
Retrieval Practice
Exams challenge you to successfully retrieve what you’ve learned and use it — to answer questions, explain concepts, or solve problems. Retrieval practice (considered by experts to be the best study strategy) strengthens your brain’s ability to do this!
Explore these links to learn why retrieval practice works so well, and how to do it when you study.
Explaining as a Way of Learning
Explaining (sometimes called the Feynman Technique) is a powerful learning strategy. When you try to explain something (to yourself, a classmate, your mom…even your dog!) your brain focuses and works harder to recall details, connect, and understand ideas. Explaining also helps you identify what you still don’t know, so you can make corrections and get it right.
Explore these links to learn why explaining works so well, and how to do it when you study.
Elaboration
Elaboration (or elaborative interrogation) is a memory-building strategy in which you ask and answers questions about a concept, rather than trying to memorize it. By exploring how or why something works, thinking about real-life examples, or comparing it to other things, you connect the target concept to more of what you already know, making it easier to understand and remember.
Explore these links to learn why elaboration works so well, and how to do it when you study.
Summarization
When you summarize, you think about the details in order to capture the most important parts. This helps you more clearly about what concepts mean and how they relate. Later, when you recall the big ideas, the detailed ideas are also easier to remember. Written Summaries are also great for practice testing later — you can read a summary you’ve written, and practice recalling the details.
Explore these links to learn why summarizing works so well, and how to do it when you study.
Spaced Repetition
Studying is like strength training for your brain. It’s true: the pathways in your brain respond to exercise just like the fibers in your muscles. Now, no one strengthen muscles by going to the gym once or twice and lifting weights for 5 hours at a time, right? We do it in small sessions, repeated over many days. Well, Spaced repetition works for learning, too! Studying in small sessions spread over time instead of large ones all at once greatly improves memory.
Explore these links to learn why Spaced Repetition works so well, and how to do it when you study.
Two to avoid: Re-reading and Highlighting
Yes, that’s right: The two most common study techniques students use are also two of the least productive! Highlighting is not a good memory-building activity – it can be useful to organize things visually, but doesn’t get you to think, like note-making does. Re-reading may be the most common study strategy of all, but again it’s possible to read something without really thinking much about it — and it’s the thinking that causes the learning to happen. Re-reading can also trick you into thinking that recognizing something is the same as recalling it from memory!
Explore these links to learn why re-reading and highlighting don’t work well, and what you can do instead.