One of the most effective strategies to retain information is for learners (you the student) to “practice retrieving new learning from memory” or quizzing oneself:
“When you read a text or study lecture notes, pause periodically to ask yourself questions like these, without looking in the text:
Generating questions for yourself and writing down the answers is also a good way to study…When you quiz yourself, check your answers to make sure that your judgements of what you know and don’t know are accurate” (202).1
Simple Step: Rather than just re-reading the text or your notes, take the time to self-quiz / self-test yourself. This will help identify the concepts you do / do not understand.
Many students re-read their notes, expecting to know and understand the material. Looking at words on a page—that they’ve already seen before—is their idea of studying. Change the time investment of re-reading to self-quizzing to help improve learning. Re-reading ≠ studying.
Taken from a book on learning:
“Rereading has three strikes against it. It is time consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting, self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery of the content” (p. 10).1
As you hopefully form the habit of self-quizzing, it’s essential for you to space out the practice to allow time for forgetting (??) to set in. When retrieval is difficult, it reinforces the work, shifting it from short-term recall to long-term learning. Researchers have shown how ineffective it is to cram the night before a Final Exam (or any exam).
Simple Step: One of the simple strategies to practice spaced retrieval is to use flashcards or generating your own problem and waiting to answer it until the next day.
Many of us have used flashcards in the past with success. It is important that you:
“DON’T ASSUME THAT YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG IF THE LEARNING FEELS HARD.”
Learning is hard, because in order to really learn and understand something, you need to work hard at it. Think of how much time and effort you put initially into driving: check mirrors, look at cars around you, push the gas / brake pedal at the correct pressure, turn smoothly, signal with car turning signals, and it can go on.
However, by putting the effort it, is has become something you know so well, you do not need to even think about it. Or think about learning a language: vocabulary, verbs, sentence structure, pronunciation, etc. Once you have mastered it, you do not even think of it. That is the goal for this chemistry course or any other course you take: mastery. A few things to remember:
Next to self-quizzing and spacing out one’s study, you should also make an effort to interleave the study of two or more topics, alternating between them.
For example, in the “real world,” will you:
- OR -
Simple Step: As you prepare to mix in (interleave) different topics in your study time, remember to utilize the first two Best Practices. You can do this in a variety of ways, but below are a few suggestions.
The tips listed above are not the only ways to study, but they are supported by educational / psychological research as good methods for learning new skills or concepts. Some other techniques are shown below. My recommendation: never stop adapting the way you learn, as you never stop learning.
* Adapted from material from Make it Stick1 and ericaleebeaton.com.