The Most Powerful Methods of Studying for Students

Opening the hood of learning:

  Before we look into specific techniques, I would like to lay the groundwork by providing an understanding of what is actually happening when we learn new material. Learning involves many different sensory inputs which include visual and auditory stimuli. It is easy to activate these stimuli, but is often hard for us to encode and remember what comes from this stimuli. So what is going on behind the scenes, and how can we better encode what we learn?

  When we first start learning we take information from our sensory inputs into a temporary storage system called the working memory where it is actively processed. We are only able to hold an analyze a specific amount of information though, so if we don't take any action we will begin to forget this info.

  For long-term learning to occur, we must transfer this information to our long term memory, which essentially acts as our bank of information. This process is called encoding. Information can stay here for hours to months, and in order to utilize this information, we must go through a retrieval process.

What is meta-cognition and why is it so important?

Meta-cognition is when a person reflects on their own studies and pinpoints and recognizes potential areas of weakness and strength. This viewpoint will help you optimize your studying to fit your needs best.

Principles for a Good Study System

Principle One: Active Recall

• Active recall requires deliberate and effortful retrieval information from memory in order to strengthen the neural pathways that lead to long-term learning.
  • 6 Steps to success
    1. Pretest
    2. Engaging Notes
    3. After-class Review
    4. Feynman Technique
    5. Blurting Method
    6. Practice Questions
• Looking to learn how to apply this? Visit: Active Recall

Principle Two: Spaced Repetition

• The Forgetting Curve: without reviewing newly learned information, you could lose up to 70% of retention during the day you learned it.
• To combat this: implement spaced repetition of the material in order to flatten out the curve and gain better long-term retention.

Principle Three: Interleaved Practice

• Interleaved practice: breaking up your practice into multiple topics at once helps you better understand the relationship of all the material, veering away from pattern recognition, and only understanding how perform only when you are instructed how.

Principle 4: Optimizing Rest

• Rest is a large part of learning, and overwhelming your brain can lead to poor cognition of the material.

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