What is the Best Way to Study for Exams in this Course?

  1. Ideally, you will begin this process at least 1 week before the exam so that you can work through it without feeling rushed. If you are trying this for the first time, starting 2 weeks before the exam might be better so you don’t feel rushed.
  1. Find the exam study sheet on the course web site and look it over.
  2. Terms on the study sheet are grouped by lecture topic. Select a topic (e.g., topic 1) and begin studying only the terms for that topic. Study so that you know the what (what is it), where (where does this concept fit into the course), when (when does/did this concept happen), why (why does/did this happen), and how come (how come I need to know this? what is the application? what else makes this term important?) for each term.

Note: Sleep matters. Without proper sleep, we struggle to learn and remember information. 17-22 year-olds typically need 8-10 hours of sleep regularly. If you are sleep deprived, studying smaller amounts of information and studying more often works best. If you are sleep deprived, you can use the process below, but break each topic in half and treat each half as its own group.

  1. When you have studied a section well enough that each term becomes a concept that you know extremely well, stop studying and take a 45-60 min break (or longer). Please don’t cheat the break. This will help you learn what information made it into long-term memory and what did not.Lots of information makes it into short-term memory (which retains information for seconds or maybe minutes), but not all of it makes it into long-term memory (which is more permanent) on the first (or second) try.
  2. After the break, and without looking at your notes, try to teach someone about each term – what it is, where or when it is important, and why it matters. Make sure you also explain a good example. The act of teaching someone else is really important. If you can’t find someone else to teach, the next best thing is to teach to something – your reflection in a mirror, your desk, whatever, and record yourself talking. Many computers come with recording programs – search your directory for “sound recorder.”Talking out loud helps you realize 1) that you do not know some things as well as you thought you did (which is great! better to realize this now than on the exam), and 2) that you forgot some things. Make notes as you go so that you can come back to the concepts you need to re-study (no one gets everything right the first time). If you are teaching someone else, ask them not to interrupt you until you are done. Then, check to see what you misunderstood or forgot.

If you really don’t like talking out loud/teaching a friend, you can write/type things out as if you were answering essay questions about each term instead, and then go back and check your work.

  1. Re-study the things you forgot or misunderstood.
  2. Take a break.
  3. Repeat this process, but this time study the terms for a different topic (e.g., topic 2). When you teach the information to someone else (or record yourself teaching, or write out essays), include the information you just studied (e.g., for topic 2) AND the older information you studied (e.g., for topic 1), but do not go over the older stuff first. Now, you will really see what you’ve remembered/forgotten. When you are done, re-study the things you forgot or misunderstood.
  4. Continue by studying and teaching new information (e.g., for topic 3), and by re-teaching the older information (e.g., for topics 1 and 2). Correct mistakes you make/re-learn information you forget as you go.

Older information will accumulate as cycle through the process. At some point, you’ll teach the last set of new information (e.g., for topic 5) and re-teach the other information (e.g., for topics 1-4). After that, re-teach all of the older information (e.g., for topics 1-5) to make sure you have mastered all of the terms (concepts) on the study sheet. Please see the table below.

Study Session / New material learned/taught / Older material re-taught
1 / Topic 1 / -
2 / Topic 2 / Topic 1
3 / Topic 3 / Topics 1 & 2
4 / Topics 4 / Topics 1-3
5 / Topic 5 (the last one) / Topics 1-4
6 / - / Topics 1-5

Why Does This Work?

This process is based on the “for an A, DO” strategy. The A stands for Active Processing or Active Learning. Reading the same information over and over is passive, not active. To be active, you need to do something to connect the information you are learning to things you already know. Teaching the information to someone else requires you to put information into your own words and paragraphs well enough that you can explain it to someone else. This helps you to make sure that you understand concepts and how they fit together. The D stands for Distribute, or spread out your studying. Weightlifters fatigue as they go, so they can’t lift as much after they have been lifting for a while. Similarly, you don’t learn as much after you have been studying for a while. Taking breaks throughout this process will keep you fresh, helping you learn more efficiently (don’t cheat the breaks!). The O stands for Overlearning. By talking or writing about previously studied information again and again, you increase the likelihood that you will remember and recall the information.

Many studentsstruggle with something called storage failure. This happens when students read or review information over and over again, without doing much more. The information makes it into short-term memory, but much of it fades away within the hour. Consequently, students can recognize that 2 or 3 of the multiple-choice answers are incorrect, but can’t remember enough to determine which answer is the correct one. Sometimes this can frustrate dedicated students who spend considerable time studying and don’t feel like much information “has stuck.”

Some students also struggle with encoding failure (which happens when you forget to study some critical information), or retrieval failure (when you know that you know something, but you can’t remember the information you need).

This process helps minimize these memory failures. Teaching require you to actively process information and understand how details fit together (which combats encoding and storage failures), and to retrieve the information competently (which combats retrieval failure). If you don’t have all of the necessary details (because of encoding failure), can’t bring details you know to mind easily (retrieval failure), or can’t remember information you studied before (storage failure), then you should realize this during this process. By fixing your mistakes and by bringing the information to mind over and over again (to teach it again and again), you convert each term into a mini-story and maximize the likelihood that you will remember and recall the information you learned.

Learning a new study strategy is similar to developing a new skill. It takes a little time to figure it out, but you will get better with practice. :)