Learning New Material
Studying
Technically, everything covered on these pages so far has been about studying skills: understanding your learning habits and assumptions; managing your time, your space, and your resources; reading actively; and taking useful notes all help you learn more effectively. However, there are times you need to review the material you’ve learned already to prepare for an exam, and that’s what this section covers.
In addition to the general strategies for learning new material covered earlier, there are three key principles for effective studying:
Test Yourself (Retrieval Practice)
Retrieval practice involves testing your ability to recreate the information you’re learning without looking at your notes, textbook, or other resources (to retrieve it from memory, in other words). It’s a highly effective–and woefully underused–study strategy.
Many, if not most, students primarily study by rereading their textbook or notes or rewatching lectures, which is a very ineffective way to study for several reasons:
It’s passive, so you can potentially read your textbook several times without actually understanding what it’s saying
Repetitive strategies like these can deceive you into thinking you know the material when you’re actually just familiar with it as it is presented
Your instructors are testing for understanding, not familiarity, so these strategies can leave you unprepared for exams
While rereading and rewatching feels easier, it takes more time to get to the same level of knowledge as more active strategies like retrieval practice
Putting Principles for Learning into Practice
Video - Dr. Stephen Chew / Samford UniversityPart 4 of the series first shared earlier
Overcoming Illusions of Competence
Video - Dr. Elizabeth Bjork / LastingLearning.com Self-testing
Video - UTSchoolUGS (University of Texas at AustinStudy Smart: Get More Bang for Your Buck
Video - Dr. Katherine Rawson / LastingLearning.com Testing Effect (Test-Enhanced Learning) in Learning Theory
Video - OsmosisHow to Test Yourself
If you're not sure how to test yourself, or engage in retrieval practice, there are a few things you can consider:
Start early
Use practice exams and/or flashcards
Explain or teach the material to someone else
Make your own questions
[expand for more details]
Start Early
Those who do self-testing often want to wait until right before an exam, when they feel most ready, to do it. They assume that self-testing is most effective when they have studied enough to get correct answers.
In reality, struggling to answer questions about new material–and even getting them wrong–improves understanding and the likelihood that you will remember that information later. To return to a point made on a previous page, difficulty makes for more efficient learning.
Practice Exams
If your textbooks have review questions, do them. If you can access practice tests online, do them. If your instructor provides practice problems, do them. Do all of them. And try to do them without looking at other sources.
Flashcards
If your course is heavy on terminology that you need to define, you can use flashcards to test yourself. It’s important to avoid passively flipping through them, though.
Explain or Teach It to Someone Else
If you really understand a topic, you should be able to explain it to someone else. Tell your friends, parents, or dog about what you’re learning to identify where you need to review. Or simply write down everything you can recall to see where your gaps are. Once you’ve done it once, go back and try to simplify your explanation or translate it into a new medium, like a diagram.
Make Your Own Questions
If your textbooks don’t have review questions, or you’ve simply gone through all of them already, you can create your own self-tests. It’s a good idea to do this ahead of time so that you don’t remember your own answers, or to use them in a study group.
How to Study Effectively with Flash Cards
Video - Thomas FrankHow to Study Way More Effectively | The Feynman Technique
Video - Freedom in ThoughtMore on Making Your Own Questions
The key to creating your own questions for self-testing is matching the difficulty level of your questions to the level of understanding your instructor expects (this is far more important than matching the format of the question, in fact). To do this, you could think of your course material in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy [expand for more].
What your instructor expects from you is not going to align perfectly with one level of the taxonomy, so a variety of question types can help you study. If you’re not sure which levels to prioritize, look at any questions or assignments that your instructor has given you already, and try to identify where they fit on the taxonomy. If you’re still not sure, a general rule of thumb is that university instructors almost never test remembering (the lowest level), and the more advanced a course is, the more emphasis there will be on the top levels of the taxonomy.
Because your instructor's expectations fit with multiple levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, another helpful strategy is to choose a topic or concept you need to learn and create questions for each level. That way, you can develop a deeper understanding of the complexity of your course material and practice breaking it down into simpler terms (which is helpful if you want to explain it to someone else, as discussed above).
Bloom's Taxonomy
Video - LSU Center for Academic Success
Handout - Iowa State University Academic Success Center
Provides sample question stems and recommends appropriate individual and group study strategies for each level of the taxonomy.
Handout - Dalhousie University Studying for Success
Lists skills and study strategies associated with each level of the taxonomy.
Mix It Up (Interleaving)
Given the value of being organized when it comes to your space and your time, it seems reasonable to study topics in an orderly fashion, too. We tend to assume that blocked practice–studying one concept or chapter at a time, and only moving on when we feel we’ve mastered it–is the most effective way to study. Adding some disorder to your studying by mixing up your topics or concepts (also known as interleaving) is far more effective for several reasons [expand for details]:
The exams you write will not be blocked, so interleaving what you study is a more accurate depiction of how you will be tested.
If you have to study several related concepts (which is almost always the case), interleaving can make it easier for you to understand the similarities and differences between them.
Interleaving is also a great way to stay sharp on older material (the stuff that you’re not covering now, but will still be on the final) because you can mix it in with newer material.
The Benefits of Interleaved Practice
Video - Dr. Doug Rohrer / LastingLearning.comInterleaving: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning
Video - UC San Diego Psychology Psyc YoutubeInterleaved Learning (Brain Hack)
Video - CENTURY Tech iDEA Courses 
Article - Anne-Laure Le Cunff / Ness Labs
Let It Sit (Spaced Repetition)
Spaced repetition involves spreading your study sessions out enough that you partially forget the material between them. The reason it's effective is because struggling to remember things you learned in the past actually makes it easier for you to remember them later on.
In order to spread your study sessions out, you need to start studying further ahead of time than you might typically plan. This might seem like creating more work for yourself, but that's not the case [expand for more information]:
Each time you partially forget and then re-remember the material, you forget less overall and therefore need less time to review. Moreover, each time you review material, you can wait longer until your next review session. The total amount of time you spend doing spaced repetition is therefore far lower than the amount of time you would need to spend if you started studying a day or two before your exam.
Starting further ahead of time therefore saves you time. You just need to plan a bit more (and you should be planning your study sessions anyway).
The Power of Forgetting
Video - Dr. Robert Bjork / LastingLearning.comHow long should you wait between sessions?
How you space your sessions will depend on your overall timeline (i.e., how far away your test is). If you're so inclined, there's an algorithm that you can use to calculate the ideal timing for your study sessions. If you are not so inclined, you can follow what Benedict Carey recommends in How We Learn.
Typically, the gap between sessions gets longer each time, so the time between the second and third study sessions would be slightly longer than those shown in the table. Some researchers argue that students who plan their study sessions at regular intervals do just as well on exams, though, so if you want your study sessions to be equally spaced that's fine too. Just make sure you choose a gap that's long enough for you to partially forget the material.
A table outlining the time you should wait between your first and second study sessions based on when you will write your exam. Calculated by Benedict Carey in How We Learn.