How You Should Be Studying, Proven by Science

When was the last time you sat down to study? It may have been just hours ago. Think back to what kind of strategies you used to learn the content. Did you read through your notes again? Or did you highlight and underline the keywords to make them stand out? Maybe you created a set of flashcards to test your memory? These are only a few of the options, not even taking into account the new technologies that are now available.

Now, what do you think the best technique for studying is? You may be thinking rereading and taking notes are the most effective, like many other students, but this is where even the brightest people can go wrong. First, let’s take a look at why we even need to study.

The Forgetting Curve

Studies conducted by other scientists in the past few decades have confirmed Ebbinghaus’ self-study, showing that his findings are reliable if not completely universal. With everyone’s minds been unique, the speed of the forgetting curve can vary, but practically anyone can apply the concept to their own memory. This research on how our memories retain new knowledge is key to the strategies that we should be using to study.

Techniques You Should Avoid

You might be wondering what kinds of study strategies should you be using and which ones should you avoid, especially with the plethora that exist. In 2013, Dunlosky et al. conducted a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on effective learning techniques, evaluating their efficacy across topic areas, student characteristics, learning environments, and types of testing such as quizzes or essays. The 10 techniques they reviewed were broken into levels of utility: high, medium, and low.

Summarisation

A learning tactic that I have heard many teachers profess to as a great way to remember what a passage from an article has said, Dunlosky found summarisation to be of low utility. Summarising a text also includes taking notes, as these are a form of condensing information. The lack of efficacy in summarising is however improved when students are taught how to properly summarise information. Overall, using summarisation as a study strategy has not been proven to be effective for learning, comprehension, or retention.

Highlighting and Underlining

A common sight in any textbook or set of notes is a melange of fluorescent colours across the text. One would think that highlighting the major points and keywords would be effective in helping organise the content, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth when analysing the data. Dunlosky rated highlighting and underlining as the least effective strategy when it came to learning despite its ease of use. Across several studies, the highlighting test group did not outperform the control group that did no highlighting. Furthermore, the problem of over-highlighting the text can be counter-productive, it is even believed that highlighting could hurt higher level tasks that require inference making.

Rereading

One of the most commonly reported techniques among students, rereading passages of text or notes was also rated low utility by Dunlosky. Rereading has been theorised to work through reprocessing higher-level concepts on the later readings of a passage, allowing for greater comprehension. Although some benefits have been shown, there is a lack of generality to other topics and it requires a greater amount of time compared to using other strategies. While believed to be somewhat helpful, other strategies are much more time-effective.

Should I Stop Using These Strategies?

In my opinion, no. Continuing to take notes can be extremely useful in condensing information to reference in the future, and highlighting key words can help create hierarchy. However, keep in mind that these strategies are not very effective in the actual learning of the content. Therefore, I would suggest to still create notes, but prioritise using the following strategies rather than creating the perfect set of notes.

How You Should Be Studying

You might be wondering what those other strategies are that are more effective than rereading, highlighting, and summarising. According to a multitude of studies, the most effective strategies for studying are practice testing and distributed practice. These two techniques are often referred to as active recall and spaced repetition, respectively. What are these techniques and how can you use them as a learner?

Active Recall

Have you ever used flashcards? Or have you ever quizzed yourself using a practice test? Any form of practicing quizzing yourself falls under the category of active recall. According to over a century of research about the benefits of active recall, it is the most time-effective technique for learning, comprehension, and retention of new information.

In a study conducted by Karpicke and Bauernschmidt, students who learned a randomised set of foreign language words through repeating active recall several times scored more than twice as well as those who did active recall once. The students also performed around 40 times better as students who studied the words once. Furthermore, the students were tested one week after learning them. That means instead of getting a 30% on your test next week, you could be scoring 80-90% with a little extra practice. Incredible!

Many students, including myself, dread any form of testing. The pressure of getting a good score on that chapter test or final exam can be overwhelming, but this view overshadows the fact that testing actually improves meaningful learning. Instead of being high-stakes, the low pressure situation of practice testing helps reinforce connections in our brain between our existing and new knowledge.

How You Can Implement Active Recall in Your Studying

Using active recall can be as simple as creating a deck of paper flashcards or using practice questions from the textbook. There are also other options that I really like, such as using flashcard apps like Quizlet or Anki, or finding practice tests online from previous years.

The Cornell note taking system, using one column for keywords or questions and the other column for notes, can be used for active recall as well. Hiding the notes section and trying to remember the answer for a question can work just like flashcards, but is built into your notes.

One other app that I started using recently and found particularly useful was Notion. Although Notion is primarily a note-taking and management app, the toggle feature in it allows you to create extensive question-and-answer banks to quiz yourself that also acts as a set of notes. By hiding the information, you can test your knowledge, then have all of it right there.

Let me know in the comments if and how you might integrate active recall into your study routine.

Spaced Repetition

The second technique identified by researchers as being most effective for learning is spaced repetition. I think any student can relate to the incredibly stressful, night-before-the-test cramming session. Although this is better than not studying at all, research shows that spreading out your studying over multiple sessions across days and weeks before a test is much better for retention.

This is where Ebbinghaus and the forgetting curve really comes into play. After learning a new concept in class, the amount of information you retain decreases very quickly over the next couple days. However, each time spent studying resets the forgetting curve and helps you retain a little more information for longer.

Research has shown that longer gaps between learning and each study session improves long term memory, and some theories have been developed to explain this phenomenon. Leaving more time between learning the content and the next study session makes it more difficult to remember content. This difficulty can enhance the connection-making that happens in the brain, reinforcing the information better than if studying the next day. However, some studies have shown that having a shorter gap between learning and the first time studying can more beneficial in the short term.

In summary, spaced repetition improves your memory retention much better than cramming or massing all of your study into one day. Some research has shown that leaving shorter gaps between sessions can help with short-term memory, while longer gaps can improve long-term memory.

How You Can Implement Spaced Repetition in Your Studying

Although you can try to generally space out your studying, I would highly recommend keeping some sort of schedule for your studying to keep track of it. Each time you learn a new topic, you can record when you learned it, then space out your studying accordingly. The spacing system I use is 1 day after learning, one week after the first revision, and then one month after the second revision. After that, I would go back over it occasionally and remind myself of anything I forgot.

To keep track of all of these subjects, you could use a notebook or planner, but I would recommend using a digital set up as it can be easier and faster to implement. Personally, I again use Notion to keep everything in one location. Within the app, I create a table where I can enter in topics, link my active recall questions to it, then enter in the date for each session to keep track of it.

One thing to keep in my mind is that these spacing gaps do not have to be exact. Staying on top of a busy schedule can be difficult, so revising can be done at any time. I would personally avoid entering in dates ahead of time so that you can be more flexible with your study schedule. Instead, only enter dates after you study so that you know when it’s time to study again.

Disclaimer: I was not paid by Notion to write this article, I love the app and find it to be an incredibly in helping students, like myself, learn and organise their lives.

Conclusion

In summary, the research suggests that you shouldn’t be using the following strategies for learning:

1. Summarising and note-taking
2. Highlighting and underlining
3. Rereading

Alternatively, try to integrate the following strategies:

1. Active recall
2. Spaced repetition

The body of research conducted over the last century has concluded that for most people, active recall and spaced repetition are the most effective ways to study. However, everyone is unique. I would still strongly recommend you give them a try, but if you know you learn differently from others, keep achieving!

For me, learning about what study techniques are effective has shaped how I revise. Although I had occasionally used Quizlet and flashcards in the past, I am definitely going to be using more active recall to be more effective in studying so that I can spend more time experiencing life. Certainly, I will try my best not to cram for my tests the night before, spreading out my studying over more sessions. I hope you can do the same, too.

Let me know in the comments how this article has changed how you study or if you want to know anything more about how to improve your study habits.