1. Science of Learning: Practice, Practice, Practice
1.1. Welcome
1.2. Long-term Learning
1.3. Where, When, and How To Study
1.4. Learning Outcomes
1.5. Where To Study
1.6. Busy Study Environments
1.7. Task-switching
1.8. Task-switching In The Real World
1.9. Suppress Distractions
1.10. Metacognition
1.11. When To Study
1.12. Cramming
1.13. The Spacing Effect
1.14. The Spacing Effect
1.15. More Intuitive Than You Think!
1.16. Activity #2
1.17. Mind The Gap
1.18. How To Study
1.19. Methods To Avoid
1.20. Repeated Exposure
1.21. Why Is Repeated Exposure So Popular?
1.22. Practice Testing
1.23. Retrieval Practice
1.24. Active Memory Search
1.25. Practice Retrieving Information From Memory
1.26. Cover Your Notes While Retrieving
1.27. Space Out Your Retrieval Practice
1.28. Mixed Practice
1.29. Mixed Practice
1.30. Mix Up Your Retrieval Practice
1.31. Desirable Difficulties
Cramming. Most of us know it all too well—an adrenaline-fueled attempt to jam all our studying into a short time period. While this may lead to fast learning in the short-term, and maybe even a decent mark on the test, it almost always comes back to bite you. You’ll inevitably forget most of the material after a few days, having to relearn it from scratch for the next assignment, midterm, final exam, or upper-year course. This is inefficient; it will end up costing you more study time than if you had just studied the material well early on and retained it.
More importantly, you’re in university to learn things that you can actually apply in the real world long after you’re done—forgetting information right after your test is the exact opposite of this! So our true goal as students is efficient long-term learning—to study in such a way that the information sticks with us over the long-term, but using the least total amount of study time. This will be the focus of the present module.
Of course, learning can be approached from many different angles, so it’s best to state up front that this module is based on research in cognitive psychology—a field that studies learning and memory scientifically. Cognitive scientists run experiments in both controlled laboratory settings and real-world settings, studying human behaviour and mechanisms of the brain that drive learning. Here we’ll cover a handful of principles widely accepted by cognitive scientists, showing you ‘where’, ‘when, and ‘how’ to maximize the efficiency of your study time.
If you understand this module, you should be able to explain to a naive friend why:
1. Long-term learning: many popular study methods lead to short-term learning, but it is long-term learning that is critical
2. Where to study: you should be mindful of distractions that interrupt your study time and take steps to suppress them
3. When to study: it’s more efficient to distribute your studying of a topic over time, in multiple sessions
4. How to study: rereading, highlighting, and copying notes verbatim are poor study methods practice testing (i.e., retrieval practice) promotes better long-term learning during retrieval practice, it is wise to keep material out of view until you’re done retrieving during retrieval practice, it is wise to mix up topics from different segments of the course
5. Desirable difficulties: challenging study strategies that initially slow down learning are often more efficient in the long run
To begin we’ll briefly discuss where you should be studying.
Look around you right now; how many tabs are open on your internet browser? Do you have Facebook, Instagram, or other social media open? How many other devices like phones or tablets are within arm’s reach? Needless to say, every day we’re bombarded with distractions—digital or otherwise—and they all compete for our attention.
We often hear things like “I’ve been around technology all my life; I know how to handle it”, or “It’s just a matter of efficient multi-tasking”. Newsflash: despite the feeling that you’re getting a lot done in a short time span, there’s an overwhelming consensus among researchers that humans are awful multitaskers. Let’s looks as some of the ramifications of this.
In everyday language, multi-tasking refers to the simultaneous completion of two or more tasks. But researchers find our brains are definitely not wired to do two things at once, especially when it comes to mentally taxing tasks like studying. Instead, we seem to quickly switch between multiple tasks and perceive it as being more efficient, even though it almost always decreases efficiency overall..
For a simplified demo of this, grab a scrap piece of paper and a pen and draw two horizontal lines, as shown here. Take out your phone, or some other timer, and time how long it takes you to do the following: write out the top line in its entirety and then the bottom line in its entirety. Go ahead and do this now.
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Next time how long it takes you to do a similar task, but alternate between writing a letter at the top, then a number at the bottom, a letter at the top, and so on.
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The second task was probably much harder and took a lot longer. Of course this is a simplified example, but it conveys the exact idea that scientists find in a variety of other tasks: It makes it less efficient to do the exact same tasks when you’re constantly switching between them, much like a student switching between studying and texting, or a lecture and facebook.
Let’s examine the costs of task-switching in a more real-world scenario. In one experiment, three groups of people were put in a driving simulator under different conditions: driving normally, driving drunk, or driving while talking on a cell phone (either handheld or hands-free). It turns out that talking on a cell phone led to many risky driving behaviours relative to the normal drivers, much like the drunk drivers. Further, handheld and hands-off devices led to similar impairments, suggesting it was the conversation, and not necessarily holding the phone, that led to the risky driving.
The researchers suggested that “impairments associated with using a cell phone while driving can be as profound as those associated with driving with a blood alcohol level at 0.08%.” This is a powerful reminder that switching between any two tasks—even relatively automatic ones like driving and conversation—can drastically reduce task efficiency.
The bottom line is that unpredictable distractions will almost always throw you off your game. Find a quiet location where people are unlikely to disrupt you; keep snacks handy so you’re not tempted to procrastinate by getting food; set phones and other devices to silent and place them out of sight; if there are particularly tempting websites you like to visit, use special software to block them for a specified period of time. In short, be more mindful of the distractions that interrupt your study time, and take calculated measures to suppress them.
As for breaks: If you’re going to take a break, take a break; if you’re going to work, work. Don’t do both at once. Breaks are great because they help you recharge and can be strategically placed, but when used improperly, they quickly become distractions in and of themselves.
For those of you looking for something more specific, try out the “Pomodoro technique”. Set a timer for somewhere around 25 minutes. For these 25 minutes, your goal is to completely “unplug”; to block out all distractions and focus entirely on the task at hand. Then, when the timer is up, treat yourself to a 5 break—text your friends, go on facebook, watch a video—whatever you want. But then afterwards go back to another 25 minutes of focus. After you’ve repeated this cycle four times, instead of a 5 min break, take a longer 30 min break.
Of course the specific timings can be altered based on your preference—just remember that the real goal is simply to go decently long periods of time without task switching, and without burning yourself out.
Next we’ll examine an often-overlooked question: When should you be studying?
Imagine you have these two tests scheduled alongside your other coursework and assignments (cue “test” images). We’ll assume you only have three afternoons available to study for each, and a coloured star represents an afternoon set aside for studying. Most students cram just before each test, as depicted here. We’re often told this is a bad idea simply because if we get stuck on something we don’t understand, we have little time to to restudy the material, or to ask for help. But have you ever wondered if there are other, more direct problems with cramming?
Hermann Ebbinghaus—a pioneer of memory research—asked himself this same question in 1885. As an experiment using himself as a subject, he tried to memorize random lists of 12 nonsense syllables (e.g., zif, tol, dal) by listing as many as he could remember and then restudying the list. When he crammed all of his studying into one day, it took about 68 restudy attempts on average to recite the full list a day later. However, when he distributed his studying over 3 days, he only required about 38 restudy attempts on average.
So simply by distributing learning across time, he was actually learning the same amount of information in less total study time. This is a robust finding in psychology called the ‘spacing effect’. Amazingly, over a century after Ebbinghaus’ original experiments, the spacing effect is still a hot topic today, shown both in humans and other animals with a wide variety of learning tasks.
Because Ebbinghaus used artificial learning materials, and only himself as a subject, let’s discuss a more recent and compelling demonstration of the spacing effect. Undergraduate students were asked to study a stack of flashcards. On the front of each card was a rare word
—for example, “abrogate”—and on the back was a synonym that served as a sort of one-word definition—in this case, “abolish”.
In the Cramming condition, a stack of flashcards was studied 8 times in one day, whereas in the Spacing condition a stack of flashcards was studied twice per day spread out across 4 days. Note that in both conditions, each stack of flashcards was studied 8 times, so total study time was the same in both conditions.
A final test was completed approximately 24 hours after the final session. The results are impressive: Spacers retained roughly 20% more of the definitions than Crammers, even though Crammers spent all of their time studying just the day before.
By now you might be thinking you’re surprised you’ve never heard of the spacing effect before, but the truth is you probably have a more intuitive understanding of it than you think.
Put it this way: What’s one of your favourite hobbies? Maybe it’s a sport, playing an instrument, or learning a new language. If you were to map onto a calendar all the hours you’ve spent on it, what would it look like? Chances are it would be spread out in relatively thin timeslots over weeks and months. This distributed approach to practising harnesses the spacing effect, and allows for more learning per unit time, much like a student spacing out their study sessions.
Taking advantage of the spacing effect means planning ahead. Think back to your most recent big test or exam. How did you study for it? Could it have been made more efficient by spacing out your studying?
For example, let’s say you have a final exam one month from today. One approach could be to put aside an hour or two after each new lecture to condense your notes. Then, starting two weeks before the exam, set aside two afternoons each week to study that are spaced out by at least a few days. Again, this may seem like a lot of work to plan out, but you’ll actually save yourself study time in the long run, and you’ll thank yourself when exam time rolls around!
As practice, pick one of your big projects or exams that takes place near the end of the semester, and try to schedule your time in your calendar right now. Seriously -- give it a shot now!
We can now confidently state that the cramming strategy is not just indirectly harmful because it leaves little time to clarify weak spots, or to seek out help—it is also directly harmful because you would have learned a lot more if you had simply spaced out your studying.
So, remember to mind the gap. When you distribute your study sessions for a particular topic over time, you’ll be learning more efficiently, and will remember more of the information than if you had spent that same amount of time studying in only one or two sessions. Same time commitment, more learning.
So far we’ve discussed where and when to study. But aside from suppressing distractions and spacing out your study time, what study methods actually work best? In other words, how should you be studying?
First things first—let’s talk about strategies that don’t work well. But before we begin, take a few seconds to answer this question: When studying for most tests, what’s your number one go-to strategy?
*Poll1:
A) Persistently rewriting textbook chapters or lecture notes, word-for-word.
B) Explaining the material out loud to myself as if I’m teaching someone else.
C) Using flashcards, practice questions, or study groups to test my knowledge.
D) Highlighting/underlining lecture notes or textbook chapters, then rereading them later.
It is obvious that sleep deprivation can impair learning, whether it be through inattention or mood. But on the flip side there is reason to believe that sleep directly benefits learning. Over the past two decades there has been a dramatic surge in research suggesting that sleep is critical for the strengthening of memories. It is beyond the scope of this module to exhaustively cover research in this area, so instead we will summarize two studies: one showing that sleep strengthens memories, and one that sleep promotes problem-solving.
Despite its ineffectiveness, repeated exposure is still a popular study strategy among students. For example, in a study conducted at large university in the US, 84% of sampled undergrads listed “rereading notes or textbook” as a study method they used regularly. Of those, 55% rated it as their #1 go-to study method. This begs the question: Why are these repeated exposure methods so popular if they’re so ineffective?
First, repeated exposure leads to rapid learning in the short-term, and so can help students pull off a good grade if they cram the night before, and the test involves relatively low-level memorization.
Second, it’s an intuitive way to study. Most high school students are not formally trained on study methods, and are probably led to believe it’s a good strategy if it gets them decent marks, if they hear other students using it, or if they hear their teachers endorse it.
Third, it makes us feel like we’re learning. By continually exposing ourselves to the information, we’re essentially fooled into thinking, “this material is all so familiar when I read over it—there’s no way I’ll forget it”. This is what researchers call fluency, and it’s harmful because it seduces us into thinking we have a solid grasp of material when really we don’t.
That said, let’s talk about some output-focused methods are better than repeated exposure.
Arguably the most promising study method to date is practice testing. Let’s look at a study on medical residents who were training to become doctors. As part of their program, the residents were lectured on two medical topics—for example, one of the topics was the treatment of epileptic seizures. Afterward, depending on the resident, one topic was studied simply by reading over a review sheet with all the information, and the other topic was studied by taking a practice short-answer test for about 10 minutes and then comparing answers with an answer sheet. This test or restudy process repeated for the same topics twice more at two weeks intervals.
Residents then completed a final test on both topics roughly 6 months later. Understandably they forgot a lot of the material over the 6 months, but they did remember approximately 15% more for topics they were tested on compared to the topics they simply restudied—hypothetically enough to jump from a B to an A!
This is a reliable finding that researchers call the retrieval practice effect. Similar to the spacing effect, the retrieval practice effect has be studied for over a century, and is still a hot topic in cognitive psychology today. It describes how studying some information, attempting to retrieve it from memory, and then restudying it, leads to better long-term memory than the equivalent amount of time simply studying it. Note that this process entails a combination of output—that is, retrieval of the information from memory—in addition to input, whereas the repeated exposure approach mostly involves input.
Researchers believe that the key to retrieval practice is an active search through memory. Think of these circles as neurons in the brain; memories are thought to be stored in the connections between them. When you first study some information, the idea is that you’re strengthening these connections to some extent, but they are quickly prone to fading—i.e., being forgotten—over time.
On the other hand, when you’re forced to retrieve information from memory—let’s say the correct answer to a test question—the idea is that your brain has to execute a search through memory. This search is thought to activate that correct answer in memory, but also other, related bits of knowledge. This presumably strengthens connections between the new bits of knowledge and the correct answer, creating a more coherent network in memory that’s less vulnerable to forgetting, and that’s more likely to produce the correct answer if a similar question is posed again. Albeit simplified, this analogy captures the basic logic behind retrieval practice.
In the first study, researchers were interested in whether learning is more effective immediately following exercise. Participants spent 15 minutes either relaxing, or engaging in two high-intensity sprints. They were then asked 15 minutes later to study a set of foreign language translations. This graph shows how many correct translations participants identified over the course of the learning task depending on what condition they were in. Most interestingly, learning was roughly 20% faster for people who previously exercised than people who previously relaxed.
The first tip relates to you covering up your notes. If you’re attempting to retrieve information from memory, but are exposed to it prematurely—maybe you’re tempted to see the correct answer to a practice test question before thinking deeply about it—the active search through memory will likely be cut short.
This is why it’s wise to keep the material out of sight during the actual retrieval attempt, and only review it after you’ve tried your best to recall it yourself. Likewise, if you’re undergoing retrieval practice in a group, each individual group member should try to retrieve the information alone before somebody takes a stab at the correct answer.
The second tip relates closely to the spacing effect. The main idea is that you can easily combine the retrieval practice and spacing effects simply by spacing out your retrieval practice sessions over time.
For something more prescriptive, consider a study where researchers had introductory psychology students learn course content using retrieval practice. Their goal was to try to find a schedule that led to the most learning in the least total amount of study time. They came to the following suggestion regarding a “3x3” rule of thumb:
When initially studying material, don’t stop until you can successfully retrieve the information at least three separate times within the same study session. Afterward, practice retrieving the same material three more times with each session spaced approximately one week apart. This scheduling was found to be highly efficient; it struck a good balance between spending the least amount of time studying, and yet retaining the information in the long-term.
The third and final tip is probably the most counterintuitive. It describes how mixing up topics while studying—that is, mixed practice—enhances learning.
Consider a study done with first-year medical students learning electrocardiogram, or ECG—a tool that doctors use to measure electrical activity in the heart. Students were assigned to one of two tutorial sessions. In one tutorial, the instructor explained one type of diagnosis with reference to ECG, then gave four problems to work on, explained the next diagnosis, then gave another 4 problems to work on, and so forth. We’ll call this the “Blocked practice” condition. In the other tutorial, the same instructor explained all the types of diagnoses up front, then gave students the 12 problems in a random order mixed across all the diagnoses, asking them to compare and contrast. We’ll call this the “Mixed practice” condition.
As a final measure of learning, students saw 6 new ECG problems and tried to diagnose them by pointing out key features. The results here show that the Mixed practice condition outperformed the Massed condition by about 17%, suggesting that students learned more from the examples when they were mixed up than when they were presented in a blocked fashion.
These cases of mixed practice leading to better learning may seem strange. After all, if you open a textbook, chances are the questions are organized so that all the questions from one chapter appear together, encouraging students to practice all questions for one topic in a blocked fashion.
One popular view is that mixed practice enhances the ability to apply information learned in one context to new contexts. Think of it this way: with the ECG study, it would be pretty easy to complete all practice problems for one of the diagnoses in the blocked condition—after figuring out what key features are important for the first example, you simply repeat the process for the other three. However, in the mixed practice group, each example will likely involve a different diagnosis than the one you just previously saw, and so for each one you have to pay closer attention to the key features that are changing between the different diagnoses, effectively ignoring the other differences that arise by chance.
In later stages of retrieval practice when you know the material relatively well, use cumulative testing and mix up topics by unit. For instance, if you’re studying for a final exam and have 25 practice questions for each unit of the course, don’t do all the questions from one unit consecutively and then move on to the next. Instead, mix them all up in a random fashion. You’ll notice that half the battle is identifying the key features of a question to determine which unit it belongs to. And in slowly piecing together these key features in your head, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the topics and the contexts they should be applied in.
As we wrap up this module, you may be thinking to yourself, “Won’t most of these suggestions just make my studying harder?”. And the answer is yes! The principles discussed in this module may make your studying more efficient, but they’re no walk in the park—they require more effort than study strategies typically used by students. In fact, researchers have a special name for methods that slow down learning at first, but ultimately improve understanding and long-term memory: they call them “desirable difficulties”.
We can think back to the old adage of the tortoise and the hare. Some of your peers, the hares, may get by in university with strategies like cramming that only work in the short-term. This may make you feel stupid for spending so much time learning the material. But rest assured that the principles we discussed here will help you, the tortoise, tackle those desirable difficulties and study more efficiently for the long run, whether it be for upper-year courses or your future career.
So this one goes out to you, oh tired-and-stressed-out student studying for hours on end, feeling like it’ll take you years to understand that last textbook chapter. More challenging study conditions may be discouraging at first, but the challenges are an integral part of learning. For making your studying challenging in the right ways, your future self will thank you.