QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
Studying is an important part of the academic experience. Many resent the idea of it, some of us get by without it. Despite the research illustrating the benefits of studying for long-term retainment and durable learning, many remain unsure on how to properly study.
The Fulcrum sat down with Joseph Kim, an associate professor at McMaster University, where he teaches introduction to psychology — with “over 2600 students per semester” this year, an unprecedented number for the university. In addition, he is the director of EdCog (McMaster’s education and cognition lab), and an expert in the science of learning. The question of discussion was, “what can students do to effectively study?” Here’s what advice he had to give:
Planning
Before hitting the books, evaluate how your schedule is organized and plan time accordingly.
“If you just think of all the things that you have to do, and [on top of] university, it just seems like this big gigantic blob of things…you could even get into this rut where ‘I just have so much to do, I don’t even know where to start, and then you kind of end up procrastinating, just because it’s so overwhelming.’”
Kim compared establishing a good diet, sleep and exercise habits to effective studying, “if you want to make things like that happen, you have to actually schedule them, you have to actually prioritize them. And the same thing comes with studying.”
He also advises students to find times in their schedules for studying and quality of life events. “Make sure you also put in room for socializing, room for exercise, room for eating, [and] life tasks that you have to get done.”
Routine self check-ins
In a method à la Eric Ries’s build-measure-learn feedback loop, Kim is a proponent of daily journaling and weekly review in tandem with a project calendar. “For the first part, one of the things that I highly recommend people do is actually keep a calendar and a daily journal.”
Kim walked me through how he uses these three tools to refine his methods, starting with his daily journal (shown below).
Designed to observe and later evaluate daily progress of his own goals, Kim explained why each question is listed. In short, each question centers around an aspect of his life that he wants to observe or improve, taking about five minutes to answer each morning (though doing it at night or throughout the day is okay as well).
For instance, Kim is a big advocate of getting a good amount of sleep and tracking it can help in identifying areas to improve come time to review the week: “actually answering that question [about sleep] really forces you to look at the data of what are you actually doing…really, once you have the data, the feedback, it can help kind of adjust.” As you find solutions to your issues, the questions will change accordingly.
The weekly journal and review (seen below) at the end of the week builds upon the data collected in the daily entries. For 30 minutes, this assessment also helps in planning for the following week, setting goals to reach.
Kim expanded upon the purpose of the weekly journal and reflection: “I’ll …read through my entire past week, read through all the journal entries and tasks, [and I’ll ask myself] did I get everything done? And I’ll give myself feedback [and assess]. Over time you can start refining this process with this feedback. You can even see interesting patterns… [and] that’s very useful information.”
Combining these with a project calendar, Kim explains that you are able to track your progress and have a frame of reference for how productive you were during the day and week.
A note on multitasking
Simply put, attention is necessary for studying to be effective. It is imperative to devote your full attention to studying, observing when you are losing focus to take effective breaks, and not to fall victim to combining scheduling blocks (i.e., studying and socializing) and multitasking.
As Kim noted many students don’t just simply study, but also combine socializing with self-rewarding, as well as studying. , “ [Students] probably end up spending way more hours doing both. What we know about multitasking is that… if you’ve got the TV on, you’re text messaging, and studying. [It could all take] three hours, [in my opinion] you’re far better off just studying maybe for an hour, [that way] you’ll get much more out of it. So I think putting in quantity of hours, while you’re doing other things, you’re really just kind of fooling yourself.”
Effective and ineffective study methods
Amongst the best methods to study, research by Dunlosky et al (2013) and subsequent articles have demonstrated the efficacy of retrieval practice (practice testing), spaced practice, and interleaved practice. Amongst the strategies with the lowest scores of retainment: rereading and highlighting.
Retrieval practice is the act of recalling information from memory. Amongst the methods of retrieval practice, practice testing led to some of the highest retention of information. This also works well with spaced practice. In his own research, Kim and colleagues saw optimized efficacy of learning objectives and subsequent improvement in retention of information when students were presented with pretests.
Spaced practice is the act of distributing a set of time to study over multiple periods. “If you take that same six hours, and you split it into two or three-hour blocks leading up to the test, you will improve your overall performance and the robustness of your memory consolidation, the same amount of time by spreading that out.”
Interleaving practice is about mixing up the material in your studying so it is studied in chunks; alternating between topics instead of studying it by unit, as students often do.
Anything that actively engages the brain to output material, as opposed to simply inputting info (via reading or highlighting), …basically, anything that you make into an active learning process is far better than a passive process.”
An effective method that combines all three forms of practice is the use of flashcards, as they can challenge immediate recall of information, can be shuffled amongst each other (so as to eliminate the tendency to study content you already understand well), and are efficient to use.
“If you use something like flashcards… make sure you… put more time into the chapters where you have more trouble, more difficulty, and then also mix them up. [On exams] things are probably going to be mixed up, right? That’s interleaving; making sure you can discriminate between different concepts.”
Try creating your own flashcards, putting the concept on one side, and your own explanation of the content on the other.
Overall, studying starts with assessment of yourself and planning accordingly. Too often, students feel too pressured or deterred to take the proper time to make their learning durable. It is important to prioritize your health, especially your sleep, and plan your days based on your examinations of it. Restorative practice is part of finding solutions to your life and study habits.
For expansion on all of these topics, please see the curated list here.
