Studying 101: Study Smarter Not Harder
Do you ever feel like your study habits simply aren’t cutting it? Do you wonder what you could be doing to perform better in class and on exams? Many students realize that their high school study habits aren’t very effective in college. This is understandable, as college is quite different from high school. The professors are less personally involved, classes are bigger, exams are worth more, reading is more intense, and classes are much more rigorous. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you; it just means you need to learn some more effective study skills. Fortunately, there are many active, effective study strategies that are shown to be effective in college classes.
This handout offers several tips on effective studying. Implementing these tips into your regular study routine will help you to efficiently and effectively learn course material. Experiment with them and find some that work for you.
Educators and Parents, Sign Up for The Cheat Sheet
These conditions can distract from your lessons. Plus, students are likely to have to do more without a teacher or parent looking over their shoulders. They will have to manage their time and study more on their own. Yet many students never learned those skills. To them, Sana says, it may be like telling students to learn to swim by “just swimming.”
For more than 100 years, psychologists have done research on which study habits work best. Some tips help for almost every subject. For example, don’t just cram! And test yourself, instead of just rereading the material. Other tactics work best for certain types of classes. This includes things like using graphs or mixing up what you study. Here are 10 tips to tweak your study habits.
1. Space out your studying
Nate Kornell “definitely did cram” before big tests when he was a student. He’s a psychologist at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. He still thinks it’s a good idea to study the day before a big test. But research shows it’s a bad idea to cram all your studying into that day. Instead, space out those study sessions.
Cramming before a big test can leave you exhausted. But you’ll learn and remember material better if you space your study sessions over the course of several days. South_agency/E+/Getty Images Plus
In one 2009 experiment, college students studied vocabulary words with flash cards. Some students studied all the words in spaced-apart sessions throughout four days. Others studied smaller batches of the words in crammed, or massed, sessions, each over a single day. Both groups spent the same amount of time overall. But testing showed that the first group learned the words better.
Kornell compares our memory to water in a bucket that has a small leak. Try to refill the bucket while it’s still full, and you can’t add much more water. Allow time between study sessions, and some of the material may drip out of your memory. But then you’ll be able to relearn it and learn more in your next study session. And you’ll remember it better, next time, he notes.
2. Practice, practice, practice!
“If you want to be able to remember information, the best thing you can do is practice,” says Katherine Rawson. She’s a psychologist at Kent State University in Ohio. In one 2013 study, students took practice tests over several weeks. On the final test, they scored more than a full letter grade better, on average, than did students who studied the way they normally had.
In a study done a few years earlier, college students read material and then took recall tests. Some took just one test. Others took several tests with short breaks of several minutes in between. The second group recalled the material better a week later.
3. Don’t just reread books and notes
As a teen, Cynthia Nebel studied by reading her textbooks, worksheets and notebooks. “Over and over and over again,” recalls this psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Now, she adds, “we know that’s one of the most common bad study skills that students have.”
In one 2009 study, some college students read a text twice. Others read a text just once. Both groups took a test right after the reading. Test results differed little between these groups, Aimee Callender and Mark McDaniel found. She is now at Wheaton College in Illinois. He works at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
Too often, when students reread material, it’s superficial, says McDaniel, who also co-wrote the 2014 book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Rereading is like looking at the answer to a puzzle, rather than doing it yourself, he says. It looks like it makes sense. But until you try it yourself, you don’t really know if you understand it.
One of McDaniel’s coauthors of Make it Stick is Henry Roediger. He, too, works at Washington University. In one 2010 study, Roediger and two other colleagues compared test results of students who reread material to two other groups. One group wrote questions about the material. The other group answered questions from someone else. Those who answered the questions did best. Those who just reread the material did worst.
4. Test yourself
That 2010 study backs up one of Nebel’s preferred study habits. Before big tests, her mom quizzed her on the material. “Now I know that was retrieval practice,” she says. “It’s one of the best ways you can study.” As Nebel got older, she quizzed herself. For example, she might cover up the definitions in her notebook. Then she tried to recall what each term meant.
Balance
- Sleep on it: Hitting an REM cycle not only helps you rest and reset, it may also help with high-level problem solving. Researchers at University of California, San Diego noticed that getting some rest and dreaming allowed creative thinkers to work through some of their toughest problems.
- Take a break: Sometimes, in order to change your physical or mental perspective and lighten the invisible stress that can sometimes occur when you sit in one place too long, it helps to take a 5-15 minute break every hour during study sessions. Studies show this is more beneficial than non-stop study, as it gives your mind time to relax and absorb information.
- Take a hike: Changing your perspective (and surroundings) often relieves tension, thus freeing your creative mind. Taking a short walk around the neighborhood may help you liberate those latent learning skills.
- Change your focus: Sometimes you just don’t have enough time to take a long break, however you can always just change subject focus. Try alternating between technical and non-technical subjects, for example.
ONE MINUTE TEACHING TIPS
Interested in an additional resource about using trainee feedback to improve your teaching? Check out the Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions article “The COVID-19 Online Learning Transition and the Plus/Delta Debriefing Model” by Kristina Dzara, PhD, MMSc, Ayres Heller, EdM, and Jennifer Kesselheim, MD, EdM.
Interested in an additional resource about encouraging learners to critically think about clinical experiences? Check out the MedEdPORTAL article “Questioning Aid for Rich, Real-Time Discussion (QARRD): A Tool to Improve Critical Thinking in Clinical Settings” by Russell W. Farmer, MD, Staci Saner, Med, Laura A. Weingartner, PhD, MS, and Gerard Rabalais, MD, MHA.
Interested in an additional resource about ensuring your trainees are receptive to formative feedback in the clinical setting? Check out the Medical Teacher article “Twelve Tips for Developing Feedback Literacy in Health Professions Learners” by Nicolas Tripodi, MS, Jack Feehan, PhD, Rebecca Wospil, DO, and Brett Vaughan, PhD.
Interested in an additional resource about employing the flipped classroom in graduate medical education? Check out the Journal of Graduate Medical Education article “Flipping Out: Does the Flipped Classroom Learning Model Work for GME?” by Avraham Z. Cooper, MD, Grace Hsieh, MD, Joshua E. Kiss, MD, and Grace C. Huang, MD.
Interested in an additional resource about having fun in the classroom? Check out the Academic Psychology article “Comics as an Educational Tool on a Clinical Clerkship” by Aditya Joshi, MD, Jolene Hillwig-Garcia, MD, Monika Joshi, MD, Erik Lehman, MS, Asfand Khan, MD, Antolin Llorente, PhD, & Paul Haidet, MD, MPH.
Resources:
https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/studying-101-study-smarter-not-harder/
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/top-10-tips-study-smarter-not-longer-study-skills
https://oedb.org/ilibrarian/hacking-knowledge/
https://bei.brighamandwomens.org/teachingtips