Effective Student Studying for Learning
Are your students using their studying time most effectively? Are you designing assignments to reinforce effective studying?
Learning includes three steps1:
Encode information in short term memory
Consolidate information by building connections, reorganizing ideas and thus moving information to long-term memory
Retrieve information to reinforce and update the memory by using it.
Thus, students who study by primarily rereading notes or rewatching videos are only practicing step 1 and this isn’t efficient, effective studying. They need to be coaxed to take all three steps as part of assignments and exam preparation. Active learning brings these steps into lecture. Assignments can lead to, and reinforce, students taking these steps.
Ideas for Lectures
A traditional, pure lecture approach provides information to encode, but moves too fast for students to consolidate the information or retrieve related ideas. Here are some simple ideas that can encourage students to use more of the learning steps of encode, consolidate, retrieve.
- Periodically pause after what might have been a rhetorical question so that students have time to think (retrieve or attempt to retrieve)
- Connect new material to earlier material
- Start or end with a review question leading students to build connections across the material
- Give students a minute to think or discuss an example before solving it
- After an example walk back through the logic to consolidate ideas
- Part way through a proof ask students what has been proved and what is still needed
Most active learning strategies you might already be using inherently help students consolidate and retrieve information and often re-encodes pieces as well.
Ideas for writing assignments
Write the assignment so students are led to work on all three steps as part of the assignment. Ask questions such that consolidation of information and retrieval of earlier information is included in what students need to do for the assignment.
- Pick a few points that students have to explain why they did something or made a particular choice
- Ask a compare/contrast question connecting new knowledge with an earlier skill or information
- Ask students to comment code or problem solutions in a way that highlights the structure of the solution
Share Effective Studying Ideas with Students, Especially Before Exams
Students frequently will ask about the exam and/or for study material or pointers. Point them towards effective studying effort at least a week before the exam. When they ask how to do better after a poor exam performance, point them towards more effective studying.
Ineffective, but common, student approaches to studying
- Rereading notes , textbooks (or rewatching videos)
- Cramming the reading or rereading (or watching) the week before an exam
- Studying a topic once intensively and then moving on
- Copying an answer from anywhere
More effective practices
These strategies help students learn the material and be able to use it in new situations (exams, real world jobs).
- Review material in short batches but do so repeatedly across time
- Try to solve something yourself before looking at an answer
- Explain the underlying principles in your own words to yourself or someone else
- Use the material in different applications
- Explain the steps of a solution in your own words
- Test yourself with the material which practices retrieving the information
- Re-solve earlier problems without looking at the solution
- Read the learning outcomes and explain what you know about them
- Ask yourself questions connecting, comparing and contrasting material across the course
If you provide study materials
- Guide students by asking practice questions that stretch across material, that need thought and explanations
- Ask students compare and contrast or “when would you use” type questions
- Mix up the order of questions so they don’t match the order covered in class
- Ask students to solve and then explain their solution
- Remind students to use practice materials in an exam-like setting with only the resources permitted in the actual exam
- Make it stick – The Science of Successful Learning, Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A McDaniel, Harvard University Press, ©2014, pp100-101