Learning

This time of the year many students have either taken their first unit test or about to take their first unit test.  With that in mind I thought I would go over a couple of study strategies that might make you more successful in preparing for exams.

The first one is one that I think students know about but resist which is the spacing effect.  It would be planning about twenty minutes a day to study.  It is more effective to do twenty minutes a day for six days than 120 minutes for one day.  Each day when you get home spend twenty minutes going over the main ideas in class, make sure that you also review main points of previous classes to keep those points fresh in your mind.  This is a technique that proved very successful for me during my college years.

The second is retrieval practice.  This would be writing down everything you can remember from a chapter you read for the class or from the notes you took from the class.  Then going back to look over the notes and to see what you were missing.  One of the things that I do is provide my students with a practice assessment anytime they are going to get a real assessment.  This allows them to practice retrieval and to see which areas they might not understand.  Now you can also make up your own exam if you are not provided one. 

The third is elaboration which makes you more active in your learning.  In the study of economics some textbooks state that incentives work.  Elaboration would be questioning that concept.   Do they work in school or the workplace?  Why might they not work?  What are examples of incentives?  It is also helpful if you take some new knowledge and connect it to prior knowledge in the same class or other classes.  If you are interested in more strategies check out this videohttp://www.learningscientists.org/videos/

These are three different strategies that research shows are successful.  Notice I did not tell you to reread your text or notes.  Often when you reread the text you get the feeling that you know the material because you have read it before.  This study method sometimes leads to overconfidence.  While all of these might take more time upfront they relieve you of the stress of cramming.   My challenge to you is to take one of these strategies and try implementing for the next assessment that you are given.

As always your thoughts and feedback are welcome