I'm not going to lie when I say that it took me a full 3 semesters to figure out my study groove. I guess I just ended up being the "late bloomer"......
Anyway, what's super cool is this semester I was fortunate enough to be able to take a class on Human Memory. Of course one of the lectures happened to be about fool-proof study habits that help you retain the things you study longer, and more efficiently. This wasn't just a cheesy "study every day, create your own study guide" type lecture either. These tactics were tested by researchers several times over, with relatively large subject groups.
In one research study, there were 10 study strategies tested, and only 3 were found to actually be effective (which I will elaborate on later in the post):
1) Elaborative Interrogation- generating possible explanations for a given fact you are trying to remember.
2) Self Explanation- generating explanations for how new information you are learning is related to information you already know.
3) The Testing Effect- actually being tested on the material
The first method, Elaborative Interrogation, is essentially asking yourself "why?" when learning a particular fact. Then generating an answer as to why that fact may be true. For example, let's say I find out that the campus has decided to extend the hours of all the food-serving places another two hours into the night. I might ask "why is this the case?". An explanation could be to get more business, to cater to students staying up late to study, etc. According to the study, generating explanations such as these could really help with long-term memory retention.
The second method, Self Explanation, sounds very similar to the first method, but is different in that you are more so reasoning the fact given information you already know. To go along with the previous example, I would ask the same "why" question, and then think "well that makes sense because *insert restaurant here* was open at 10 last night when it usually closes at 9".
Funny enough, the third method, The Testing Effect, was found to be BY FAR the most effective when it came to retaining information in the long term. This probably explains that, despite the fact that we get terrible testing anxiety and feel that tests produce unnecessary stress, schools and universities still insist on giving us midterms and finals. It turns out that when you "test" yourself, that is, make yourself generate answers to pre-asked questions, you retain that information for much longer and more accurately than if you simply just went the Self Explanation route.
This method was tested in different settings as well, with a group of students being tested on material immediately after learning it, and another group of students who just re-studied the material and were tested later on. The two groups were each tested 3 times with increasing time spans between each test. It turns out that the students who simply re-studied the material did better in the short term (on the first test), but by the third test, which was over a week later, they did much more poorly than the students that were tested as a form of studying. Moral of the story? Test yourselves!
Ok, so we've covered a few decent methods of studying, but there are yet another few tactics that can help those that aren't inclined towards the above ones suggested.
The next study method up is known as the SQ3R method. It is also another scientifically studied and sound approach to your schoolwork. This method works best when reading through a textbook.
S = Survey
Q = Question
3 R = Read, Recite, and Review
Each of these activities are performed in the order they are presented.
Survey - Before reading the chapter, read the chapter summaries first.
Question - Generate questions based on these summaries that you think the chapter may answer(elaborative interrogation, anyone?). This part may be difficult, but it's the extra step that helps with true memory retention.
Read - Read the chapter, and as you go, try to find the answers to the questions you asked earlier.
Recite - Try to remember key ideas from the chapter, by taking notes or making flashcards, or explaining the concepts to someone.
Review - Combine the key ideas, and connect them together. It also helps to try and explain them in this way to someone as well. This can also apply to trying to connect the ideas from other chapters.
This is a nice and structured way to go about studying for classes in the moment, but what about studying throughout the semester? There's a strategy for that too. It's called The Spacing Effect. Whether it's intentional or not, you'll often see your classes work this way. It's kind of where the concept of quizzes come from. This technique has also withstood intense scientific experimentation.
So the Spacing Effect is basically spacing out your study time in periodic amounts. It's all dependent on how long you need to retain the material. The general rule seems to be that the "inter study interval" between study sessions should be about 10 to 20 percent of the retention interval.
For example, if you want to retain memory for something for one week, you need to space out the time between your initial study period and review study period for one day.
This tactic is extremely useful for laying out a strategy for finals. Since we are in the spring semester, the optimal time for the review study period would be right around now, if your finals are in May, like mine.
Oh but Kristin, you might say, I always get better scores when I cram! I don't need to actually restudy this stuff so soon. I have time, don't worry.
According to some experiments, that feeling of knowing the material really well is very misleading. You may feel like you know it now, because you just spent 8 hours productively studying, but 3 months from now? You'll test much worse than the students that were using The Spacing Effect in their studying. Apparently college students make this mistake all the time. The short term success they have in cramming gives them a false sense of self-confidence, which then makes them feel like they're done studying for that topic for the semester.
Don't be those students.
Here's a visual representation of how the Spacing Effect would work:
Based on this, here's what I recommend: when you learn a new chapter, test yourself on that chapter exactly one week after you've studied it. Then, 1-2 months later, review that material, and maybe test yourself again. By the time you get to finals, studying will be a breeze. This does take a good amount of planning, but if you plan it out at the beginning of the semester using the syllabi, you'll be golden. For now though, I recommend you guys start studying the last half of the semester's material already. Now's the prime time to, and I can assure you that you'll thank me when finals come around and you're not having to pull all-nighters to cram all that material.
This is a recommendation for studying that a professor of mine put up for us as well. Ya'll might find it useful!
I sincerely hope this might enlighten at least a few of you, and I hope I put this up with just enough time to study for the third wave of midterms. Good luck to all of you hobbits, we got this!
No comments:
Post a Comment