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This is one of the most popular books to assign college students. I'm not kidding, it is #17.

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1. Spaced practice

2. Retrieval practice

3. Interleaving

4. Metacognition

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How Should I Study for the Test?

Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

https://t.co/O4ZQvTnuvG

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How Should I Study for the Test? - The Effortful Educator

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Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

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How Should I Study for the Test?

Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

https://t.co/O4ZQvTnuvG https://t.co/RxAvKji8ps

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How Should I Study for the Test?

Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"https://t.co/O4ZQvTnuvG pic.twitter.com/RxAvKji8ps
— Blake Harvard (@effortfuleduktr) October 14, 2022

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How Should I Study for the Test? - The Effortful Educator

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Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

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How Should I Study for the Test?

Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

https://t.co/O4ZQvTnuvG https://t.co/RxAvKji8ps

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
How Should I Study for the Test?

Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

https://t.co/O4ZQvTnuvG https://t.co/RxAvKji8ps

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How Should I Study for the Test?

Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

https://t.co/O4ZQvTnuvG

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How Should I Study for the Test? - The Effortful Educator

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Two strategies to introduce to students when they ask, "How should I study for the test?"

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Here is the a description of steps to the end game

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Here is the a description of steps to the end game

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Steps to mastery of a skill: 1. acquisition (I did it once) 2. fluency (I can do it consistently) 3. maintenance (I can keep doing it) 4. transfer (I can use it in new ways) (Hanson, et al., 1978) and still true.

Fluency and maintenance depend on spaced retrieval practice, interleaving and metacognition.

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But you have to practice a certain way - and it takes time and effort!

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Look at these graphs from a new paper tracking the test results of 7,000 learners across a wide variety of subjects. Each line shows the test scores of a student practicing a skill over a number of practice attempts ("opportunities"). You will notice something that even the paper's authors found surprising.

Almost all of these lines have the exact same slope! That means that every student, regardless of their starting expertise or their rank within a class, gains roughly the same amount of skill and knowledge from practicing. In fact, the average student needs to practice seven times in the average subject to achieve a "reasonable level of mastery"

. Students who start out behind can catch up by practicing more, and more advanced students need to practice less, but everyone gets almost the same benefit from practice.

The paper concludes, excitingly: "Our evidence suggests that given favorable learning conditions for deliberate practice and given the learner invests effort in sufficient learning opportunities, indeed, anyone can learn anything they want."

Note that the key words here are deliberate practice, a technique expounded on by the late Professor Anders Ericsson about how to achieve expertise. You may have encountered this concept in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule (it takes 10,000 hours to make an expert). As many people, including Ericsson, pointed out - it is not the number of hours that you spend, but the fact that you spend them in deliberate practice, that builds expertise. But these new findings go further: we know that deliberate practice seems to work equally well for everyone at the same rate, regardless of subject or ability, a fascinating development that makes this technique even more important.

Deliberate practice is powerful, but it also can be hard. In fact, it has to be. Unlike passive forms of learning, it requires a proactive and intentional approach to skill development. This process begins with breaking down a skill into its constituent parts, and building each part one step at a time. It is a gradual and systematic approach that ensures that each new skill is built upon a solid foundation of existing knowledge.

For deliberate practice to be truly effective, learners must bring their full focus and engagement to the task at hand. This can be challenging, as the work required is often difficult and demanding. Failure is common. In fact, one of the key aspects of deliberate practice is that it embraces failure as an opportunity for growth. When learners encounter obstacles or make mistakes, they are encouraged to reflect on what went wrong and what they can do differently next time. This process of continuous improvement is crucial to making lasting progress.

Like exercise, deliberate practice is designed to always be challenging, pushing learners out of their comfort zone and forcing them to stretch their abilities. This may feel difficult at first, but over time, learners develop a growth mindset and become more confident in their abilities. And deliberate practice benefits greatly from ongoing, personalized feedback from an expert instructor. This feedback helps learners identify their strengths and weaknesses, and provides actionable insights into how they can continue to improve.

Well-designed practice has to have all of these elements: a step-by-step approach, sustained engagement, a chance to make meaningful mistakes, continually increasing challenges, and ongoing feedback. Opportunities for deliberate practice are relatively easy to find in fields that have a lot of students: sports, math, musical instruments, and learning foreign languages, to name a few. In each case, there are many trained teachers, with good lesson plans, easy access to practice, and well-thought out approaches. But in most jobs, ranging from entrepreneurship to leadership, there are few opportunities to practice until you actually start doing things. And that can be a problem.

But here is where technology can help.

Military trainers, as well as Tom Cruise fans, have long had a powerful example of the value of games and simulations for deliberate practice. The story begins in Vietnam, where, as the Vietnam War started, American fighter pilots were feeling extremely confident, and for good reason. During the war in Korea, American pilots had performed brilliantly against North Korean, Chinese, and Russian pilots in the first all-jet dogfights in history, achieving an exchange ratio of 10 to 1. That is, for every American plane shot down, the Americans managed to destroy ten enemy planes. Vietnam, however, turned into a very different experience. Due to a combination of capable pilots, shifting tactics, and changes in aircraft, the Vietnamese were much more successful against their American foes. By 1968, the exchange ratio had fallen to 3.7 to 1.

The fall of 1968 was marked by the beginning of a three-year halt in the bombing campaign over North Vietnam, and thus began a time when American pilots did not generally fly combat missions. In that year, the Navy commissioned a report to examine the relative failures of the air war of Vietnam, which identified training as a key gap. From this report, the Naval Fighter Weapons School, better known by movie fans as Top Gun. Top Gun changed the concept of pilot training, turning it into a competitive game, a simulation with real fighter jets between trainees and instructors who flew Vietnamese planes using Vietnamese tactics. All built around the concept of deliberate practice. And, while the Navy put its pilots through Top Gun, the Air Force also reviewed their performance in Vietnam. However, they ignored the training problem, choosing instead to invest in better missiles, improved planes, and high-technology cannons.

The two different strategies acted as a natural experiment: what would win, deliberate practice or better equipment? When the air war resumed in 1972, Top Gun-trained pilots were in every Navy unit. But they were still flying the same aircraft, while the Air Force had significantly improved their planes. Despite the inferior equipment, Navy's exchange ratio went up to 13 to 1, while the Air Force's briefly plunged to an even 1 to 1 exchange. It turns out that deliberate practice in simulated sessions really does help.

This same technique can be applied to other forms of training. In fact, it needs to be. There are so many critical life skills that we do not train nearly enough. Most people work in teams, but we don't train working with teams through deliberate practice. Leadership matters in every human endeavor, but we don't train leadership through deliberate practice. Entrepreneurship can be taught, but we don't train it through deliberate practice.

But we can.

As someone who has long worked at the intersection of games and teaching, I know we can solve the deliberate practice problem at scale, because I co-founded Wharton Interactive a few years ago. We took on the mission of democratizing access to business education through simulations and games. To do that, we built a "Top Gun for business" where students run fake companies in real time using simulated tools (we built simulated versions of email, Slack, and Zoom into our games) experiencing deliberate practice. Students go through a learning loop, being taught how to do something, and then immediately deciding how to apply that skill, getting detailed feedback as a result. If players do well (say, mastering a delicate client negotiation), the next negotiation is harder, otherwise, the difficulty drops to keep the challenge level appropriate

This isn't theoretical: you can play a free game that teaches you entrepreneurial mindsets right now, or run an entire entrepreneurship-class-in-a-game We also have games that teach leadership on a doomed mission to Saturn, and ones that teach you to analyze real data in Python, among others. With tens of thousands of players, and early evidence that suggests powerful outcomes, I think these simulations hint at a future where high-quality deliberate practice is delivered at scale through dedicated gaming platforms.

But we still need to carefully build each simulation, which requires a team of game designers, programmers, experts, and others. This means that we can only create a limited number of simulations, leaving many skills without easy ways to practice.

That is where AI comes in.

Even in its current form, ChatGPT is shockingly close to being able to help anyone, anywhere learn via deliberate practice.

As an experiment, lets say I want to learn negotiation skills. I gave ChatGPT this prompt: I want to do deliberate practice about how to conduct negotiations. You will be my negotiation teacher. You will simulate a detailed scenario in which I have to engage in a negotiation. You will fill the role of one party, I will fill the role of the other. You will ask for my response to in each step of the scenario and wait until you receive it. After getting my response, you will give me details of what the other party does and says. You will grade my response and give me detailed feedback about what to do better using the science of negotiation. You will give me a harder scenario if I do well, and an easier one if I fail.

Here's what happened next:

That is a remarkably good job for a first attempt with a general AI. It successfully simulated the step-by-step approach, meaningful errors, and adaptive feedback necessary for deliberate practice. Of course, the known issues of ChatGPT and other LLMs, including its tendency to lie, make me nervous about trusting it too much, as does the fact that scenarios are not repeatable. Every time I "run" the simulation, the experience can be radically different. But both of these problems are solvable, and these early results point the way to something extraordinary.

If deliberate practice means "anyone can learn anything they want" - then a machine that can create meaningful deliberate practice, on demand, is a machine that can help humans achieve mastery. Far from being skill-destroying, AI can be skill-building at a scale that we had never thought possible.

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Look at these graphs from a new paper tracking the test results of 7,000 learners across a wide variety of subjects. Each line shows the test scores of a student practicing a skill over a number of practice attempts ("opportunities"). You will notice something that even the paper's authors found surprising.

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Change Your Life – One Tiny Step at a Time

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Change your life - one tiny step at a time. 

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Change your life - one tiny step at a time. 

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Let’s assume that you are willing to adopt some or all of the ideas on this page. Before you get too far, please take some time and watch this video. It will help!

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Change Your Life – One Tiny Step at a Time

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Productive struggle is hard. Generally students DO NOT prefer it. And yet, that is where real learning happens.

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How Productive Struggle Fires Up Learners

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These are the best resources to help students study smarter, not harder - Retrieval Practice

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Best resources for ideas on how to study smarter, not harder

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Best resources for ideas on how to study smarter, not harder

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Do you want to help your students improve their study strategies? Of course you do!

Here are the best resources for students to boost their studying and learning. Help your students study more effectively and more efficiently.

Why are these books, blogs, videos, and podcasts the best out there?

Start your students on the path to effective study habits. Unleash the science of learning and help your students become powerful students!

P.S. Use our no-prep back to school activities for even more learning in your classroom.

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These are the best resources to help students study smarter, not harder - Retrieval Practice

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Do you want to help your students improve their study strategies? Of course you do! Here are the best resources for students to boost their studying and learning. Help your students study more effectively and more efficiently. Why are these books, blogs, videos, and podcasts the best out there?

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Mindy’s ideas for what to do when taking a study break

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Mindy’s ideas for what to do when taking a study break

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These ideas are designed for different environments - at school, at home, or away from school and home.

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Don't be alarmed and don't let me scare you...you've probably been doing the studying thing all wrong. Ok, maybe not all wrong, but at least partially wrong. But, it isn't really your fault. More than likely, you weren't instructed on how to study...until now. What follows is a simple introduction into proper studying with immediately applicable tips and strategies to get the most out of your time and efforts. And, although I am a teacher, this isn't just based upon what I think or feel works. This is based upon science and experimentation and evidence of effectiveness. So, if you're looking to study more efficiently and effectively, keep reading. This is for you.

Who?

You, that's who. You should be doing the studying. You are the person who should be doing the thinking and working with the material. The person doing the thinking is doing the learning. This may seem extremely obvious, but it needs to be stated. If you are not working with the material, using the information, applying the knowledge (more on all of this in the 'how' section), you are not using your time as wisely as possible.

What?

Missed or tricky information, that's what. In general, I instruct my students to prioritize three categories of material from class for study:

1. Information you don't know. Maybe you didn't understand a particular concept during class or you answered questions on this particular term incorrectly on informal quizzes.

2. Information answered correctly via guessing during assignments or quizzes. Did you guess? I ask my students this a lot after completing an assignment. Whether correct or incorrect, a guessed answer isn't a known answer. You can easily indicate a guessed answer during an assignment simply with an asterisk or you can even apply a confidence scale of, say, one to five for every question attempted. Those on the low end of the confidence scale should indicate the need to have another look at that material.

3. Confusing information. I know in my class, there are similar terms and concepts that are easily and commonly confused for each other. I attempt to indicate this material to my students as subject matter that needs a special focus during later study attempts. Notate what appears confusing to you during class and prioritize that material for study later.

*More on these three categories at this link.

During class, I instruct my students to write down information in the margin of their notes to study later. They may write a particular person's name or theory down because I've said something like, "this is really important to know" or "make sure you understand this person's contributions" or even "this will surely be on the test". When reviewing before or after class with informal quizzes, I ask my students to focus on what they've gotten wrong and to make sure they prioritize that information for study. It may seem obvious, but it takes conscious effort to really examine your performance on a quiz and apply that feedback to what you should study later.
When?
Whenever, that's when. In reality, there is no bad time to study. Any instance where you have the time to focus and practice accessing your knowledge is a good time to study. Studying for as little as five or ten minutes can make a big difference in whether you may have access to that material when needed later. Don't think you have to block out hours of time to effectively study. A really important aspect of knowing when to study is understanding that multiple attempts at accessing material across days or even weeks (known as spaced or distributed practice) has shown more evidence of retention than cramming the night before an assessment. In other words, you are better off planning on studying material for twenty minutes a night a few nights in a row prior to an assessment than preparing via studying one hour the night before the assessment. Try and consider how many separate instances you have retrieved and used material. For the most part, the more you have successfully recalled a term or concept across an extended period of time, the more likely you will be able to correctly use it on an assessment and beyond.
Where?
Wherever you can focus, that's where. An important aspect of getting the most out of studying is being able to really give your attention to the task at hand. You should create an environment absent stimuli that may steal attention from your studying. I know, for myself, this means I need to put my cell phone out of reach, turn off netflix, close out extra tabs/browsers on my computer, and be alone. If I study with someone, I will find a reason to start a conversation. If I have my cell phone next to me, I will constantly check my notifications. These may seem like small disturbances, but they do impact the efficiency and effectiveness of studying. Even if you believe you are good at multitasking, you really aren't. Sorry. You cannot cognitively focus on two stimuli at once. You are either giving your attention to the video on youtube or the material you are studying. You can even set up a little reinforcement schedule for yourself. Set a timer on your watch/phone for 15-20 minutes and really focus on studying. Then, when the timer goes off, reward yourself with a few minutes of social media. This is a great example of how you can work to create healthy study habits.
Why?
To retain more information, that's why. Studying via retrieval practice has been shown to reduce forgetting versus simple restudy of material (more on just exactly how to do this in the 'how' section) ( 1) ( 2). And isn't one of the main goals of studying and education to remember things? You can't use information in meaningful ways if you don't remember it. Now, certainly, the end goal shouldn't just be to learn facts and figures for an assessment. You should be much more interested in using the material you've learned to assist with learning more similar material or to apply creatively in novel situations. Learning about a particular subject builds on itself. The more you know about one area of study, the easier it will be to learn even more about that specific topic.
How?
Retrieval practice, that's how. There are many ways to study. One of the most popular methods of study is rereading your notes. This is actually quite ineffective. You aren't really active with the material as you read information. You aren't made to use the material or apply it in differing situations. With retrieval practice, you are tasked with recognizing or recalling the information and, perhaps, using it in some way. This can be as simple as answering a question, filling in a blank, applying the material in a scenario, or completing an essay (more on this in the 'how' section). The big point, however, is that you must retrieve the material from your brain without any assistance (notes or peer) and use it correctly. When you simply reread your notes, you aren't really doing any of this cognitive work. You're just reading over the words.

And this retrieval practice doesn't have to be difficult to do at all. It may be as simple as a brain dump. Sit down with a piece of paper and a pen/pencil and write as much as you can about a topic.; anything at all that pertains to the concept, no matter how trivial you may believe it is. Those trivial points may act as retrieval cues for other, more important, material. If you can't write down or recall some information, you definitely shouldn't assume that you know it well. Studying effectively can also be as simple as answering questions on a topic. If you have a study guide or document that quizzes you and asks you to fill in the blank, recognize the correct answer, explain a concept or theory, et cetera, you're using retrieval practice. There are also many digital options for using retrieval practice. Quizlet, for example, is great for interacting with material. It forces you to recall information and makes it quite evident when you don't know something. I also appreciate apps that recycle missed questions back into rotation to be asked again.

However you assess your knowledge during studying, an important point to remember is to only use your brain. If you have to use notes or an instructional video or a textbook to correctly answer a question, you don't know the material well enough. If you did know it sufficiently, you wouldn't have needed to use an aid. I know studying in this manner isn't as easy as simply rereading your notes, but it is much more effective and efficient for retaining information. I also understand that it isn't really all that fun to highlight and focus what you don't know during studying, but you'd rather find out during studying that you don't know a piece of information than on the summative assessment. Most of the time, if you're finding out on the test that you don't know something, it's too late to remedy this hole in your learning. Do the harder studying up front so assessment day can be easier and more rewarding.

There you have it. Some (hopefully) helpful hints and tips. A few simple adjustments can assist you with more efficient and effective study habits that apply across most subjects and class levels. Good studying is good studying, no matter the type of information or grade level.

1. Roediger, Henry & Butler, Andrew. (2010). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in cognitive sciences. 15. 20-7. 10.1016/j.tics.2010.09.003.

2. Roediger, Henry & Karpicke, Jeffrey. (2006). Test-Enhanced Learning Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological science. 17. 249-55. 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x.

Feature image by Kyle Gregory Devaras on Unsplash.

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Don't be alarmed and don't let me scare you...you've probably been doing the studying thing all wrong. Ok, maybe not all wrong, but at least partially wrong. But, it isn't really your fault. More than likely, you weren't instructed on how to study...until now.

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Do you use study guides in your classroom, where students are presented with key information in outline form and students fill in the blanks during a lesson?

A quick tip from Powerful Teaching co-author, Patrice Bain: turn study guides into Retrieval Guides. No prep and no grading with our free Retrieval Guide Template . Just powerful retrieval practice for successful long-term learning.

P.S. Listen and learn about more strategies from Powerful Teaching at the Cult of Pedagogy .

Typically, "study guides" are outlines of key concepts created by the teacher and handed out to students to fill in during a lesson or while reading for class. But with a simple twist, turn study guides into powerful Retrieval Guides.

Here's how: In Patrice Bain's classroom, veteran K-12 teacher and co-author of Powerful Teaching , students read from a social studies textbook aloud. Critically, during the read aloud, all pencils are down. After reading a few paragraphs, Patrice pauses her lesson and gives students time to retrieve, filling in the blanks from what they just learned. This is followed by a brief pause or discussion for feedback, and the class moves on.

By switching the timing from filling in a study guide during the read aloud to retrieving after the read aloud, Patrice offers students a no-stakes opportunity and models retrieval practice - without any additional prep or grading. Download our free Retrieval Guide template and comment below to share how it's going in your classroom.

Featuring Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S.

If you're familiar with the IES Practice Guide , Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning, then you already know veteran K-12 teacher Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S. Patrice was the only classroom teacher on the panel that created the IES Practice Guide. For more than 15 years, she has been actively sharing the science of learning with educators and also sharing her powerful teaching strategies with researchers.

Patrice co-authored Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning and she speaks with educators, students, and parents around the world . In Powerful Teaching, Patrice shares her research-based strategies including Retrieval Guides, Four Steps of Metacognition, and Power Tickets .

As a finalist for Illinois Teacher of the Year and a Fulbright Scholar in Russia, Patrice has been featured in podcasts and popular press, including NOVA and Scientific American. Watch how Patrice sets up her students for success , read how she leads conversations about learning with her students , and follow her on Twitter @PatriceBain1 .

At a recent workshop at Carl Sandburg High School near Chicago, Illinois, Patrice modeled Retrieval Guides for teachers. Attendees received a printed Retrieval Guide with blanks and throughout the workshop, Patrice paused, provided question prompts, and gave teachers the opportunity to reflect and retrieve. That's Powerful Teaching!

Join our Powerful Teaching Facebook Group ! More than 600 educators from around the world are sharing their strategies, insights, and questions about the science of learning on Facebook. Download free templates directly from our Facebook group (including Retrieval Guides) and get exclusive access to announcements about Powerful Teaching.

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Forget about study guides. Use Retrieval Guides instead. - Retrieval Practice

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Do you use study guides in your classroom, where key information is in outline form and students fill in the blanks during a lesson? Turn your study guides into Retrieval Guides without additional prep, grading, or class time! Download our Retrieval Guide Template for successful long-term learning.

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Witnessing all of this informal study made the heart of this teacher glad-except for the fact that I saw so many students engaged in two unhelpful learning activities: highlighting and re-reading. It might surprise you to learn that these two beloved study activities, ones in which students almost universally engage, have very little effect on your long-term learning. Worse still, highlighting course material and then re-reading it later gives you the illusion that you know your stuff, without any of the actual learning.

In 2013, a team of psychologists who study human learning published an overview of ten study techniques in which students commonly engage. They examined the bodies of research behind each of these strategies, and rated them from low utility (or not very useful at all) to high utility (very useful). Their findings, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, will likely come as unwelcome news to most students.

Both highlighting (or underlining) and rereading were rated as having very low utility. Summarizing a large body of research on highlighting, the authors conclude: "In most situation that have been examined and with most participants, highlighting does little to boost performance" on quizzes or exams. The findings on re-reading are almost exactly the same. In other words, across a wide range of experiments on learning, in different disciplines and with students of different ages, these two strategies simply did not produce effective, long-term learning.

You might object that you have been highlighting and re-reading course materials for your entire school career, and you've done just fine. You probably have this impression for two reasons. First, highlighting and re-reading can be effective for very short-term learning. If your only goal is to survive a test you have on Monday morning at 9:00 pm, and it's 11:00 pm on Sunday night, re-reading highlighted passages might help you get through that exam. But whatever you "learned" during that re-reading cram session will fade from your mind very quickly. Your learning will be shallow and short-lived.

You also might believe that highlighting and-rereading work because you have no ability to make a scientific comparison between highlighting or re-reading and other, more effective learning strategies. If you could clone yourself and the universe, you could study for your history exam using highlighting, and your clone could study for the exact same exam using a different strategy. Afterward, you could compare your scores, and see who received the better exam score, you or your clone. Without the ability to conduct that kind of experiment, you have no easy way to understand how other strategies might prove even more effective than the ones you are already using.

If you are currently earning all A's without much effort, you should probably keep doing whatever you are doing, and can stop reading right now. But if you'd like to understand how to study in ways that will increase your long-term learning, three study strategies-all of which have been proven effective by mounds of research-will help you become a much more effective and efficient student.

1) Practice Testing. Memory researchers have learned in recent decades that our brains have enormous storage capacity. The challenge for our memories is not so much cramming stuff in there; it's being able to retrieve information or ideas from our memories when we need them (i.e., when you're sitting down in front of a test). It turns out that the more times you practice retrieving something from your memory, the better you get at it. Highlighting and re-reading do not require you to use your memory at all; practice testing does. So if you want your memory to go to work for you in the exam, give it lots of practice when you study. Close your book and test yourself. You can use flashcards; you can take practice quizzes online; or you can even just practice writing and re-writing the key ideas or information that you want to remember.

2) Spaced Study. You probably know this one already, so I won't belabor it. But the evidence for it is irrefutable. You will have a much greater long-term grasp of your learning if you space out your study over multiple sessions instead of cramming it all into one. In one very simple experiment that demonstrated this, students who studied foreign language vocabulary for ten minutes three days in a row outperformed their peers who studied the same vocabulary words in a single thirty-minute session. Your parents and all of your previous teachers were right: spacing out your study sessions over time beats cramming-by a lot.

3) Making Connections. When we learn something deeply, we relate it to other aspects of our lives and our existing knowledge. We have thick networks of connections between what we know already-or what we experience outside of school-and what we are learning. As you are studying, try to make connections between what you are learning and other things you have learned or experienced. Ask yourself connection-making questions: Have I ever encountered this before? Have I learned anything similar in another course? In what real-world contexts would this concept or skill operate? Why is it significant? This strategy will work best if you write these ideas down; fill out your notebook or your texts with new connections, rather than with highlighting or underlining.

All three of these strategies require more work than highlighting or re-reading. Learning isn't always easy. In fact, some learning researchers suggest that struggle in learning is beneficial. When we grasp things easily and quickly, we also forget them easily and quickly.

The real problem with highlighting and re-reading arises when they represent your only study strategies. They are easy and comfortable strategies for many students-which also means that they are largely ineffective. They can, however, provide good starting points for your study, if you combine them with these other, more effective strategies.

If you really love it, then, you can hang onto your highlighter, and start your studying with it. Just make sure that eventually you put it down, pick up your pen, and use study strategies that actually work.

For a less academic but equally research-supported overview of effective learning strategies for students, check out the essay Strengthening the Student Toolbox.

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Want Good Grades? Ditch that Highlighter | James M. Lang

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A quick and easy essay, designed to be shared with students, about research-supported study strategies that work-and the ones that don't work.

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INTRODUCTION
The skill of learning things fast and well is phenomenally valuable. It serves as a force multiplier on almost everything you’ll do later in life, and I think it is worth invest a ton of…

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This video is by a student. Samuel explains very well the difference between memorizing and learning.

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OWN YOUR LEARNING (ft. iPad Pro Note Taking - GoodNotes)

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How to Choose the Right Way to Study for You: Advice for Students — The Learning Scientists

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There are a plethora of apps, games, and study tips for students ranging from well meaning advice from other students to flashy games from tech companies. How can you tell what is and is not worth your time? There are no hard and fast rules, but I do have some advice for students who want to take co

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These are great ideas for ways to change your study regimen (on the margin).

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A note to students from a fellow student Everyone belongs in Economics. There are enough seats for everyone to come to the table, although many students don't feel that way in the classroom. We know from the data that our field has failed at bringing people in, but there is a growing force of people...

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How to study to maximize performance | Elizabeth Bjork & Robert Bjork | TEDxManhattanBeach

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There are five videos in the series. Each video lasts 7-8 minutes.

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The emphasis at Samford University is on excellence in undergraduate liberal arts education, and the videos are meant to help accomplish that. As a cognitive psychologist and teacher, I have long conducted research on cognitive basis of effective teaching and learning. My goal has been to help teachers improve instruction and to help students learn more effectively. In 2006, Dana Basinger, then Director of freshmen, asked me to make a presentation to the entire freshmen class on how to study effectively. The presentation was a big hit with both students and faculty. I've given the presentation every fall since then. In 2008, Heather Mitchell asked me to do a more hands-on follow-up workshop for students who wanted extra help. I've done that workshop every year since then.

Although the feedback from the presentations was very positive, I wanted to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the impact on student thinking and study behavior. In 2008, I conducted an assessment of the presentation with the help of instructors in Samford's Foundations course. I found that the presentation had a significantly positive impact on student study behavior, but the effect diminished over time. As students forgot the presentation and came under the stresses of the semester, they tended to revert to their old bad study habits. The findings led directly to my desire to create these videos, which will help remind students of the principles of effective study or supply information they might have missed. Students can view the videos whenever and as many times as they want.

I created a script based on the presentation and the workshop. I chose to break the information into five short videos so that students could focus on the specific points they wanted, and watching any particular video would not take too much time. I handed the script over to Nathan Troost, Samford's videographer, and I give him all the credit for making the videos visually appealing and interesting. We recruited the help of several students who happened to be taking summer classes, and I am grateful for their participation; especially to Rebecca, who did a great job with her role and provided her own note cards, and to Tyler, who, as a chemistry major, is not bad at math.

The videos represent both the latest in cognitive research on how people learn and my many years of experience teaching undergraduates. My approach is different from the popular collections of tips, gimmicks and folk wisdom one sees in most books and videos on studying. I present basic principles of how people learn and I try to correct counterproductive misconceptions so that students can improve their learning by devising their own effective study strategies. These videos should help students identify effective and ineffective study strategies so they understand that, although there is no magic bullet, they can learn to get maximal learning out of their study time. Although the videos are aimed at students, I believe they are a valuable resource for teachers as well. My hope is that teachers will use them to work with students to improve their learning.

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This video series on how to study represents the latest in cognitive research on how people learn and Samford University professor Stephen Chew's many years of experience teaching undergraduates.

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A short book that captures what we know about best learning practices. Highly recommended.

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A handout that has fantastic ideas for improving learning and memory.

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This is a long video, but there are gems about student learning practices embedded within it.

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There are five videos here on what constitutes good teaching.

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The Cognitive Principles of Effective Teaching

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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How Should Students Take Notes? — The Learning Scientists

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Summary: Taking notes by hand seems to be better than taking notes using a laptop because it requires students to put the notes into their own words. ​​However, the research is nuanced! It is important to remember, too, that if laptops are creating distractions learning will suffer. …