Come one! Come all! Step right up! Gather around and attempt to suspend your skepticism and disbelief! I have great mysteries of the world to reveal to you! You won't want to believe it, it goes against everything you know! Who is brave enough to step through beyond your own knowledge and embrace the new?
Dear First-Year Students,
You may have been trained in ways of studying such as reading, highlighting, rereading, note taking and organizing notes, writing notes by hand versus typing them into your computer. I am here to introduce you to new, mysterious methods that may seem strange and unfamiliar, yet have been shown through empirical research to be more effective than the methods you know. Are you interested?
You are brave. Here are some new things to try (although not so new, they've been around for ages but for some reason have remained locked away in a secret vault accessible only to PhDs)
Quizzing:
Ugh, pop quizzes, amiright? Well, this isn't that. It turns out that quizzing yourself either through flashcards you create or quizzes or apps that will quiz you on your topic of choice, is a really effective way to learn material and retain the knowledge to access later and use. But wait! There's more! Don't be tempted to only learn the things you don't know, although that's an important thing to do, there's a thing called "overlearning" in which you keep practicing the knowledge that's easy for you to call to mind. So, quiz yourself repeatedly until you know it so well that you could...
Teaching:
...teach it to someone else. Taking the knowledge that you have and other knowledge you are trying to learn and trying to teach it to others helps your brain organize and store the information for easier recall later.
Spacing:
No, not spacing out, which is so easy that we don't even realize we are doing it. Spacing is spending time, like an hour or so, on one topic and then moving on and studying something else. This helps your brain by giving it time to consolidate the information in your long-term memory. So, this means that cramming one subject for hours is not doing you any good. You are far better off spacing different information, and then going back to it and quizzing yourself about it.
Interleaving:
This is spacing's best friend. When you are spacing it is best, as I mentioned, to go to different subject matter and spend time using the same techniques on that topic.
I don't want to overwhelm you with too much. Here is the good news: If you apply these techniques and practice them well, you will win a prize!
The prize is a better understanding of the material, better retention of the information, and probably better grades. No more teflon brain for you my friends!
Yeah, not a pony, but far less expensive and much less messy in the long run.
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