Study Prof

The Cliff’s Notes website has a very extensive list of online study aids for students in high school and college.

Did you know that reading over your notes repeatedly is one of the LEAST effective ways to study?  Psychology research has demonstrated repeatedly that you remember much more effectively when you work with information rather than just reviewing information.

Solution: Teach your study materials to a partner.  Look briefly at a main heading in the notes, then try to teach the rest of that section (from memory) to your friend.  Go slowly.  Explain carefully.  Devise illustrations and examples to help make your point.  This method is much more effective than just rereading your notes!

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(this is an updated version of a post from January 2008)

I’ve posted quite a bit on how and when to study in order to maximize recall, but putting it all together may be a bit daunting.  Follow this step-by-step guide and you’ll be well on your way to the top of the class!  These may seem deceptively simple, but every one of these steps is supported by research.  Start following these steps NOW to boost your grades and recall.

Best Study Schedule

1. Study every day rather than studying for long periods on one or two days a week
2. As far as it is possible, establish a regular daily study schedule
3. Study early in the day as much as possible.  Most (but certainly not all) brains function better earlier in the day.
4. Study between classes during time that would normally be wasted
5. Study in short sessions, from twenty to forty-five minutes each
6. Take frequent breaks from two to fifteen minutes long between each session and do something completely unrelated
7. Review at the beginning an end of each study session
8. Study new material within fifteen minutes of learning it, and again within twelve hours.  Aim for 100% mastery
9. Study the cumulative class notes at least once per week
10. Don’t study at night or on the weekends when it can be avoided.  Rest is just as important as study!  Exception: A brief review right before bed can cement information in.  For example, if I spent two hours going over new notes during the day, I might take ten minutes right before I close my eyes to mentally rehearse the material.

What could be more normal than drinking a tall glass of ice tea on a hot day?  Ice tea was sold for the first time on a hot day in 1904, at the World’s Fair.  Tea concessionaire Richard Blechynden was trying to boost sagging sales, and his new-fangled iced tea was a hit with thirsty fair-goers.

Up until that time, hot was the only way most people drank their tea.  Now, in the U.S. at least, cold tea is the norm for much of the year.

Similarly, learning new habits can seem awkward at first.  They seem unnatural.  After awhile, though, they become so normal you can’t imagine doing without them.

Keep that in mind as you work on forming new academic habits, like reviewing your notes as you walk across campus.  Persist and the ungainly new habit will become as natural as drinking a tall glass of ice tea on a hot day.

Oops! Turns out that this chart–while it may make sense and even hold some truth–is not based on any real research. Thanks to alert reader, Ian, who let me know.

Take a careful look at this graphic (click on it for a higher resolution view), and use the power of the pyramid to beef up your studies. You can see that 24 hours after a lecture students recall only about 5% of what they heard, but by teaching others what you are learning you will recall an average of 90% of the material! Gee. Seems like I talked about teaching to learn in a previous post.

It stinks that most college classes are mainly lecture, but you can push that recall further down the pyramid by taking effective notes and reacting to the information instead of just passively capturing it.

Don’t sell this information short; this is golden!  Think; if you normally study by reading your notes, according to this graph, you’ll recall approximately 10 percent of the material 24 hours later.  Teach that same material to someone else and you will recall nine times as much 24 hours later!  Imagine how much time and effort that will save you.

Start studying this way today.  Look here for more information on using this method.

The point of taking notes is to get the information down before it is lost.  Don’t make the mistake of trying to write down every word, or even every letter, when taking notes in class.  Here are several tips to help you capture all the important information.

1. Continually ask yourself, “Is this important enough to write down?” and “How will I be tested on this?”  You’ll find that in many classes you’ll only need to take notes on less than half the lecture, either because you already know the information, or because it’s something irrelevant to the exam.  WARNING: When in doubt, write it down.
2. Skip non-essential words.  Instead of writing, “The bones of the human cranium include the vomer, sphenoid, zygomatic, occipital, parietal…” write “cranium bones > vomer – sphenoid – zygomatic – occipital – parietal …”
3. Skip non-essential letters (usually vowels), abbreviate, and use symbols.  Instead of “Napoleon and Wellington were the commanders of the French and English forces at the Battle of Waterloo,” you can write “Napoleon (Fr) & Wellington (Eng) > cmmndrs @ Waterloo.”
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Use this online .pdf generator
Here’s a sweet little online app that will allow you to preprint note pages already divided into the Cornell notetaking style. There’s also a place to fill in your name, class, etc. You can even print it as lined or graphed paper.