How to study for exams - Evidence-based revision tips
Summary
TLDRIn this educational video, Ellie, a final year medical student at Cambridge University, debunks common yet ineffective revision techniques like rereading, highlighting, and summarizing, supported by evidence from psychological studies. Instead, she advocates for active recall, a method proven to strengthen memory connections, and offers practical strategies like using Anki flashcards, closed-book note-making, and self-posed questions to enhance study efficiency and exam performance.
Takeaways
- 🎓 Ellie, a final year medical student at Cambridge University, introduces a series on evidence-based revision tips for exams.
- 📚 Traditional study techniques like rereading, highlighting, and note-making are popular but not as effective as believed, according to research in psychology.
- 🔍 The script reviews studies that show rereading has low utility in improving retention compared to other learning techniques.
- 📝 Highlighting and underlining are also rated as having low utility, potentially even hindering performance on higher-level inference tasks.
- 🔑 Active recall, or practicing retrieval of information from memory, is highlighted as the most effective study technique with substantial evidence supporting its benefits.
- 📈 Studies cited demonstrate significant performance improvements through practice testing compared to just restudying material.
- 🚀 The act of retrieving information strengthens neural connections, making active recall a powerful learning method.
- 🤔 There's a mismatch between what students intuitively believe to be effective study techniques and what research evidence supports.
- 📱 Anki, a flashcard app, is recommended for memorizing facts and concepts through spaced repetition, a method supported by active recall.
- 📝 Making notes with the book closed is suggested as an effective way to engage in active recall, helping to better commit information to memory.
- ❓ Writing questions for oneself based on the material is an alternative to traditional note-taking that encourages active engagement with the content.
Q & A
Who is Ellie and what is her educational background according to the video script?
-Ellie is the host of the channel and a final year medical student at Cambridge University.
What is the main focus of the new series Ellie is starting in the video?
-The new series focuses on sharing evidence-based revision tips for exam preparation.
What common study techniques does Ellie claim are often ineffective according to research?
-Ellie claims that rereading, highlighting, and making notes or summarizing are common but often ineffective study techniques.
What is the concept of active recall as introduced by Ellie in the video?
-Active recall is a powerful study technique that involves testing oneself and practicing the retrieval of information from the brain, which strengthens neural connections.
What evidence does Ellie present to support the inefficiency of rereading as a study technique?
-Ellie cites a paper by Professor John Loski, which analyzed hundreds of papers and rated rereading as having low utility compared to other learning techniques.
How does Ellie describe the effectiveness of highlighting and underlining according to the available evidence?
-Ellie, referencing Professor Dan Loski's paper, states that highlighting and underlining have low utility in most situations and may not boost performance effectively.
What does the evidence suggest about the effectiveness of summarizing or making notes as a study technique?
-The evidence suggests that summarization is of low utility and can be an effective learning strategy only for learners who are already skilled at summarizing, but it requires extensive training for others.
What is the main reason Ellie recommends against using rereading, highlighting, and summarizing as primary study techniques?
-Ellie recommends against these techniques because the evidence shows they are less effective compared to other strategies like active recall and spaced repetition.
What are some practical strategies Ellie suggests to apply active recall in one's studies?
-Ellie suggests using an app like Anki for flashcards, making notes with the book closed, and writing questions for oneself as practical strategies to apply active recall.
What is the importance of cognitive effort in learning according to the script?
-Cognitive effort, such as actively retrieving information from the brain, is important in learning because it strengthens the connections between information and enhances retention and understanding.
How does Ellie suggest using Anki to improve study efficiency?
-Ellie suggests using Anki by creating flashcards and rating them based on ease of recall, which adjusts the review schedule according to the user's performance, effectively using spaced repetition.
What is the significance of the 1939 study mentioned by Ellie in the context of active recall?
-The 1939 study demonstrated that students who had a practice test performed significantly better than those who only restudied the material, highlighting the benefits of active recall in improving learning outcomes.
What is the Cornell note-taking method that Ellie briefly mentions in the script?
-The Cornell note-taking method involves writing questions for oneself based on the material, which encourages active engagement with the content and retrieval of information during revision.
How does Ellie suggest using questions to enhance the revision process?
-Ellie suggests writing questions for oneself as a way to engage in cognitive effort during revision, which helps in retrieving information from the brain and strengthening memory.
What book does Ellie recommend for further understanding of effective study techniques?
-Ellie recommends the book 'Make It Stick' for further insights into evidence-based study techniques, including active recall and spaced repetition.
Outlines
📚 Introduction to Evidence-Based Revision Tips
Ellie, a final year medical student at Cambridge University, introduces a new series on evidence-based revision tips. She aims to provide advice on exam preparation supported by psychological research from the past century. Ellie points out that traditional study techniques, which students often find intuitive, are not always the most effective according to research. The video will cover three popular but less effective revision techniques, introduce the concept of active recall as a powerful study method, and provide practical tips for applying active recall in studies.
🔍 Debunking Common Yet Ineffective Revision Techniques
Ellie discusses three widely used but scientifically unsupported revision techniques: rereading, highlighting, and summarizing. She cites research, including a comprehensive analysis by Professor John Loski, which shows these methods have low utility. Rereading is considered time-inefficient and less effective compared to other techniques. Highlighting, while popular, does little to improve performance and can even hinder it. Summarizing, though it can be helpful for some, is not as effective as other strategies when it comes to learning and retention.
🧠 The Power of Active Recall in Learning
The video shifts focus to active recall, a study technique supported by substantial evidence for its high effectiveness. Active recall involves testing oneself and retrieving information from memory, which strengthens neural connections. Studies dating back to 1939 are referenced, showing significant performance improvements in students who used practice testing. Ellie emphasizes the importance of this method over traditional techniques and provides evidence from various research papers that highlight the benefits of active recall.
📝 Practical Strategies for Implementing Active Recall
Ellie offers practical strategies for applying active recall in one's study routine. She recommends using the flashcard app Anki, which employs spaced repetition to aid memory retention. Ellie also suggests making notes with the book closed to force recall and writing questions for oneself as a form of active engagement with the material. These methods are aimed at enhancing cognitive effort and retrieval practice, which the evidence suggests are key to effective learning.
🌟 Conclusion: Embracing Active Recall for Effective Revision
In conclusion, Ellie summarizes the ineffectiveness of common revision techniques and the superiority of active recall and spaced repetition. She encourages viewers to integrate these strategies into their study habits and provides additional resources, including the book 'Make It Stick' and podcast episodes, for further understanding. Ellie hopes the video's content aids viewers in improving their revision techniques and wishes them success in their exams.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Evidence-based
💡Revision Techniques
💡Active Recall
💡Psychology
💡Spaced Repetition
💡Anki
💡Highlighting
💡Summarizing
💡Inference Making
💡Study Efficiency
💡Interleaved Practice
Highlights
Ellie introduces a new series on evidence-based revision tips for exams.
Traditional study techniques like rereading, highlighting, and summarizing may not be as effective as believed.
Active recall is identified as a highly effective study technique supported by extensive research.
The act of retrieving information strengthens neural connections, enhancing learning.
Studies show that rereading has low utility compared to other learning techniques.
Highlighting and underlining are rated as having low utility in most situations according to research.
Summarization, while potentially effective for skilled summarizers, is not the most efficient strategy.
Practice testing is recommended as it has high utility and can be implemented with minimal training.
Evidence from a 1939 study shows that practice testing significantly improves retention.
A 2010 study found that practice testing improved exam performance by 30% compared to restudying.
The 2011 study revealed that active recall outperformed rereading, even when rereading was done four times.
Students often misjudge the effectiveness of study techniques, underestimating active recall.
Anki, a flashcard app, is recommended for memorizing facts and concepts using spaced repetition.
Making notes with the book closed is an effective method for active recall, enhancing understanding.
Writing questions for oneself is an alternative to note-taking that promotes active learning.
The video concludes with a summary of why certain traditional techniques are inefficient and the benefits of active recall.
Transcripts
hey guys welcome back to the channel if
you're new here my name is Ellie I'm a
final year medical student at Cambridge
University and today we're kicking off a
new series where I'm gonna be sharing
with you evidenced-based
revision tips so I'm gonna be giving you
advice on how you can prepare for your
exams but hopefully I'll be backing up
everything I say with evidence from
studies that have been done in the field
of psychology one students like you and
me over the last hundred years no one
ever really teaches us how to study we
tend to just go with what feels
intuitively right and as we'll see the
research is shown that actually the
techniques that students think are the
most intuitive often tend not to be the
ones that are actually the most
effective so if you've got exams coming
up then hopefully by the end of this
video you'll pick up some techniques
that you can apply to your own studies
to make everything a little bit more
efficient and enjoyable so let's jump
into it this is gonna be the structure
of the video firstly I'm gonna be
talking about the three very popular
revision techniques that are shown to be
less effective in the literature namely
rereading highlighting and making notes
are summarizing those are by far the
most popular techniques but they're also
not very effective if you look at the
evidence behind them secondly I'm gonna
be introducing the concept of active
recall which is by far the most powerful
effective study technique and that
involves like testing yourself and
practicing retrieving information from
your brain because the very act of
retrieving information actually
strengthens connections in the brain and
there's like a load of evidence behind
this and finally in part 3 of the video
I'll be giving you some specific tips on
how you can actually apply this active
recall thing to your own study so
hopefully by the end of the video you'll
have some practical strategies that you
can apply if you feel like it as always
everything is gonna be time stamped down
below so if you want to skip to its own
bit of the video feel free but now let's
jump into it and let's talk about the
three common but not very effective
revision technique that students love to
use
let's start with rereading over here is
gonna be a list of some of the various
studies that have been done that showed
that students really love rereading as
like a really common revision technique
and if you you know look at what you've
done for your own exams and ask your
friends you probably find out that
rereading plays a big part of most
people's exam preparation strategy the
question is is rereading effective as a
study technique there have been lots of
studies done about this I will link some
of them in the description below but I'm
not gonna go into each of them in depth
instead I'm gonna be quoting from a
paper written by Professor John Loski
which was written in 2013 where he and
his colleagues analyzed like hundreds of
papers looking at all the research
behind 10 different ruin techniques and
this is what he had to say on the topic
of rereading he said based on the
available evidence we rate rereading as
having low utility
although rereading is relatively
economical with respect to time demands
when compared with other learning
techniques rereading is also typically
much less effective the relative
disadvantage of rereading to other
techniques is the largest strike against
it and it's the fact of the weighted
most heavily in our decision to assign
it a rating of low futility so this
professor who's a psychology professor
and he and his colleagues have looked at
hundreds of research papers looking at
evidence based revision techniques
regards rereading your notes or
rereading your textbooks as having low
utility he's saying that yeah there's
some limited evidence that rereading
does work it does improve retention
somewhat but especially if you compare
it to other techniques that you could be
doing rereading is pretty much a waste
of time here's another quote from a 2016
paper that again looked at the evidence
behind lots of study techniques and this
is what they had to say about rereading
they said a wealth of research has shown
that passive repetitive reading produces
little or no benefit for learning yet
not only was repetitive reading the most
frequently listed strategy it was also
the strategy most often listed at
students number-one choice by a large
margin so that's what I'm gonna say
about rereading for the time being I'm
very happy to discuss all the evidence
against rereading and against these
other techniques if you guys want to
hear about that just leave a comment
down below and I'll do it but I want to
focus on stuff you can do rather than
kind of just hopping on the stuff that
you shouldn't be doing so we'll close
that for now rereading generally
according to the evidence is pretty
ineffective it does sort of work but you
know compared to other things you could
be doing it's it's it's by no means the
most efficient study tactic secondly
let's talk about highlighting and either
we highlight ourselves or we know
friends who'd like to highlight their
textbooks and the notes in pretty colors
here is a list of studies that show that
highlighting is a very popular erosion
strategy and I'll link these
in the description below see if you
really want to read them you can but
let's go back to Professor Dan loskis
paper where again he looked at all the
evidence around these and this is what
he had to say about highlighting and
underlining he said on the basis of
available evidence we rate highlighting
and underlining as having low utility in
most situations that have been examined
and with most participants highlighting
does little to boost performance
it may help when students have the
knowledge needed to highlight more
effectively or when the texts are
difficult but it may actually hurt
performance on higher level tasks that
require inference making you know
especially without subjective GCSE and
most subject to a level and definitely
everything at undergrad all of these
subjects require inference making so
highlighting presidentís key staying is
probably not a very good tactic he
continues he says future research should
be aimed at teaching students how to
highlight effectively given that
students are likely to continue to use
this popular technique despite its
relative and effectiveness
so he's conceding in his paper that
although you know the evidence shows
that highlighting is not very good to be
honest students are probably going to
continue using it and little later on in
the paper he describes highlighting as a
safety blanket that's just that students
like to have I've experienced as I'm
sure you've experienced this as well if
it feels productive doesn't it like you
know going through a book and
highlighting one thing in blue and one
thing in yellow one thing in orange I
used to do it all the time but you know
the evidence says it's not very good you
know we could be doing more efficient
things finally let's talk about
summarizing or making notes again a
really really popular technique that I
have been using pretty much all my life
and still used to this day but I'm
trying to face it up because the
evidence around summarizing and making
notes is you know a bit equivocal there
are some studies that show that students
that do summarizing well perform
slightly better on exams but it's really
quite hard to test this because as you
can imagine the quality of notes varies
massively between students and so that
makes it quite hard to actually test a
proper rigorous scientific study about
it in any case professor Dan Loski again
he and his colleagues tried they looked
at all the evidence around summarizing
and making notes and this is what they
said on the basis of the available
evidence we rate summarization as low
utility it can be an effective learning
strategy for learners who ought who are
already skilled at summarizing however
many learners including children high
school students and even some
undergraduates will require extensive
training which makes the strategy less
feasible what they're saying is that if
you already know how to effectively
summarize and make notes which you might
well do although it tends not to be
taught in schools or anything if you
already know that then ok summarization
is probably
help you but even if that's the case
even if you already quite pro at
summarizing it still Falls about the
middle of the pack when compared to
other more effective revision techniques
but I think in general the conclusion we
should draw from this is that we are
sort of wasting our time probably by
making notes now that's not to say that
if you enjoy making notes that you
shouldn't do it you know I enjoy making
notes like having pretty colors I like
you know doing trying to do a bit of you
know calligraphy on them you know taking
photos for the Instagram my friends
comment on like oh you know it's so
pretty but to be honest I wouldn't want
to make notes thinking it's an effective
revision strategy and I know looking
back on the school days a lot of my
friends who were really into their notes
you know that have these massive blue
folders for chemistry and have
absolutely beautiful notes those were
the students that would spend hours and
hours on a single topic and then kind of
complained sometimes about why stuff
wasn't going in so yeah making notes
summarizing sort of works probably
doesn't evidence is a bit iffy about it
I think we should be avoiding it
personally based on based on the results
of these review papers all right just to
sum up what we talked about so far we've
said that rereading highlighting
underlining and summarizing are probably
not very effective revision strategies
based on the evidence so yeah if we want
to make a revision more efficient we
probably shouldn't be doing these three
things that we will we all like to do we
had a lecture about this in our second
year of medicine and it was towards the
end of the year when we had exams coming
up and my mind was completely blown when
I found out that highlighting and making
notes was not very efficient and talking
to a lot of my friends we were all we
were all absolutely aghast that like you
know how could we have survived these 22
years of our life without knowing you
know effective study techniques and that
we felt that a lot of our own success
and exams had been in spite of our
revision techniques rather than because
of them so you know hopefully at this
point you're you're thinking that okay
maybe we should be spending a little bit
a little bit less time doing rereading
highlighting and making notes let's now
talk about active recall an active
recall is by far the most important
technique that you can and should be
using in order to make your studies more
efficient actually recall or active
retrieval or practice testing whatever
you want to call it basically involves
retrieving facts from your brain
retrieving stuff from your brain because
the very act of retrieving stuff from
your brain actually strengthens the
connections between the stuff in your
brain and this this was quite
counterintuitive to me like for me
anyway I'd always kind of assumed
learning was this sort of process
whereby you put stuff into your brain
and the only purpose of getting stuff
out of your brain was to you know ace
that exam or get that aced or whatever
in fact
cannot be further from the truth and
over a hundred years of research has
shown that we learn far better by
retrieving practicing retrieving stuff
from our brains then by trying to you
know put stuff back into our brain so
what's the evidence behind this let's go
back to Professor Don loskis review
paper you know the one where he looked
at hundreds of studies and you know
decided that rereading highlighting and
summarizing weren't very good this is
what these guys had to say about
practice recall active recall practice
testing they said on the basis of the
evidence described above we rate
practice testing as having high utility
practice testing is not particularly
time intensive relative to other
techniques and it can be implemented
with minimal training finally several
studies have provided evidence for the
efficacy of practice testing in
representative educational context so
this review paper that's looked at loads
of studies again they've said practice
testing has very high utility and in
fact if you read the paper in their
conclusions they recommend that everyone
you know start testing themselves more
if they're not doing it enough already
now because this is really really
important I'm gonna be sharing with you
three different studies that actually
show this properly if you're already
convinced by active recall at this point
you can skip to this time stamp and then
at this time sample but we'll just be
talking about the specific strategies
that you can use to implement active
recall in your studies but if you're
interested in the evidence then continue
watching this video and I'll explain
some of the studies that have been done
that convincingly show that active
recall is by far a better revision
strategy than pretty much anything else
you can do so let's start with this
study from 1939 the start of World War
two you know this sort of research has
been going back literally decades and
decades what they did is that they got
groups of students and they made them
learn a topic and then gave them a test
either a week later or a day later now
half of these students just kind of
studied the material as they normally
would and these are their results so you
can see they were the results were about
50% for the high achievers and around
sort of 30% for the bottom third of the
group has decided by some other outcome
measure so that was half of the group
they just studied the subjects as they
normally would have done and they got a
test either a day later or a week later
now the other half of the class study
the content in exactly the same way
however they had a practice test at the
end of it and these are their results so
as you can see the guys that had the
practice test did far better you know
it's an increase of like 15% for the
high achievers an increase of like 10 to
15% for the for the bottom third of the
class just having a practice test at the
end of their study session in
prove to their performance by 10 to 15%
and I don't know about you but if I
could improve my exam performance for a
man abide by 10 to 15% just by you know
practice testing myself a bit at the end
of each study session I would certainly
take that but that's just one study
let's talk about another study a more
recent one
this one's from 2010 and again they
split students up into two groups one
group we're gonna have a practice test
and the other group we're just gonna
restart the material using whatever
method they wanted most likely rereading
highlighting and summarizing which as
we've seen from other studies of the
most popular revision techniques of
students and this study was interesting
because it tested students on both the
facts and concepts here is the group
that just re studied the material
normally and these are their results so
you know hovering between kind of thirty
and forty percent because they just tell
you the material once and then you know
had it had a test a week later and here
is the group that study the material had
a little practice test at the end of it
and then had the same test a week later
and these are their results and as you
can see you know they're performing
significantly better for some it's even
an increase of like 30 percent for the
first group a difference between 30% and
60% and again I don't know about you but
if I if I could get a 30% improvement in
my exam score by practicing testing
myself I would certainly take it and I
would yeah be doubling down on that stir
on that strategy as much as I possibly
could finally this is one my favorite
studies this is done from 2011 and what
they did was they split students into
four different groups they had to learn
some material and then had a test at the
end like a week later or something
without the first group was just
supposed to study the text the chapter
once the second group was supposed to
study at four times a third group read
the text once and then made a mind map
and the fourth group read the text once
and then just tried to recall as much of
the contents of the text as they
possibly could so we've got these four
groups here are the results so on
verbatim questions are you know
questions specifically from the text
about factual things mentioned in the
text the group that studied the ones
performed the worst as you can see the
active recall group performs
significantly better than the group
that's that re studied at four times
this kind of tells me that you know if I
just practice testing myself once that's
probably more effective than rereading
the chapter four times and rereading a
chapter four times is such a common
strategy that you know it's pretty
pretty insane that you can get better
results by just testing yourself once
but just reading it once and there's
trying to recall as much of it as you
can okay so that was verbatim questions
let's take these same groups of people
and ask them inference questions the
questions that require you to kind of
understand the text a bit more not just
retrieve isolated facts from it and here
are their results as you can see the
group that studied it once performed the
worst as you'd expect because the only
study at once the active recall group
performs the best
and you know the other groups perform
perform all right again active recall
practicing just writing down as much as
they could remember from the text
improve their results significantly more
than the students that have read the
text four times so I think there's a
pretty solid evidence that print that
active recall is a really really useful
strategy but these guys being clever
psychologists they had a third phase of
the study and what they did was they
like before doing any of this they asked
the students what they think the results
of the study would be so they asked the
students to kind of have a guess at you
know which of these techniques would be
the most effective and these are the
results of that so as you can see the
students rated repeated study as being
the most useful technique and they rated
active recall as being probably the
least effective one so this kind of goes
to show that our own intuitive idea of
what makes a good study technique does
not match up with the evidence at all we
think that you know reading something
over and over again of course that's
gonna you know increase our
understanding increase our retention of
it but actually just reading it once and
then just practicing testing yourself
it's just so much more efficient that is
it's insane that this isn't taught in
schools more often and there's a really
good book called make it stick which
I'll link down in the description below
and which will pop up over here that you
can read more about these sorts of
techniques if you want and they go into
more in depth about the exact evidence
behind these techniques but even then
you know they say that the two most
important things are active recall which
we're talking about in this video and
spaced repetition which we'll be talking
about in the next video hopefully I've
convinced you that rereading
highlighting and summarizing / making
notes are not very effective revision
strategies as just by the evidence again
links in the description to that if you
want to read it for yourself and
hopefully I've convinced you that active
recall or practice testing is a really
really useful technique and it's far
more efficient than these are the
techniques that students enjoy using now
we're going to be talking about specific
strategies that you can use to apply
active recall or practice testing in
your own studies and the first thing to
say is that this is not really rocket
science pretty much anything you do that
requires you to use cognitive effort
like use brain power to retrieve
information that you have learnt once
already pretty much anything is going to
be really really efficient for you but
having said that I know a lot of you
guys benefit from specific strategies so
here are three that I find useful
firstly number one is an app called Anki
and Anki is a flashcard app that you
might have heard of like loads of
medical students use it the idea behind
that is that you make a flat like an
online flashcard and then it comes up
and in your like
to session but the special thing about
hanky is that once well once the
flashcard comes up you can mark it as
being easy medium or hot and depending
on what rating you gave it
it comes up later on depending on what
that rating was so if you found a fact
really easy to recall maybe they'd ask
you again in a day if you found it hard
to recall that I'll see you again in 10
minutes if you found it impossible to
recall that ask you again in one minute
and this kind of learns from your
behavior it kind of changes over time so
as you progress through your studies as
you progress through your revision some
facts that are really easy you might see
them in two months time because the
whole algorithm changes and it really
uses this whole space repetition thing
to great effect I think I think hankies
really good for two things firstly I
think it's really good for memorizing
particular facts so I used it a lot for
Anatomy back in the day where is that
you know what's the nerve supply for
particular muscles things like that and
used it a lot for pharmacology so
learning the names of drugs and what
they do and what the mechanism of action
is in my third year when I was doing
psychology as a subject I also use danke
I like a lot to memorize particular
paragraphs for two likes talking to my
essays on one side of the flashcard I
would have copy key and blunt to 2011
and on the other side of the flashcard I
would describe the study that they did
and the evidence behind it and what I
was going to say about it so therefore
in the essay in the exam when I wanted
to recall the copic in blunts tally I
would have kind of the information about
it already memorized it so I used it to
memorize chunks that I could then drag
and drop into my essays effectively one
of my friends is a Cambridge medic he
it's got like first class every year he
uses Anki for pretty much everything and
he said that he can't imagine getting
through Cambridge without having used
Anki and instead of making notes and
lectures what he started doing now is
just going directly to making the
flashcard though yeah if you're
interested please do check out Anke it's
free I think you can pay a few pounds
for the iOS version but even if you
don't want to pay you can use the web
version completely free of charge I'll
link it here and in the description
below secondly something that I like
doing because like because I still can't
quite break the habit that you know I
enjoy making notes is that making notes
with the book closed so not like having
the textbook open and making notes and
making all pretty and copy from the
textbook like I used to do but I
actually like learning a topic and then
closing the book and then thinking okay
how would I explain this topic how would
I kind of make my own notes on it so
then I write down as much as I can
remember about the topic in a nice
fashion with like pretty colors because
that makes me feel good and then
afterwards I open the book and see the
bits that I missed and actually when I
was preparing for my third year exams in
in third year I did psychology I ended
up that was by far my best performance
like ever
in my life on any exams and I think the
reason behind that was that because I
very aggressively used these two
techniques of spaced repetition and
active recall so what I did I made about
50 different si plans initially earlier
on in the year and then in order to
commit this to memory I just drew spider
diagrams with with the book closed so I
would have a spider diagram for each si
plan and I just as drought as much of it
as I could possibly remember and then
afterwards when I was done with it I'd
look at my actual asset plan and fill
out the bits that were missing and I
repeated this over over the course of
like two months leading up to the exams
and by the end of it by the by the time
the exam came around I had these fifty
really really good essays in my head
that had like 10 references each and was
able to just kind of vomit them onto the
paper in the actual exam so I would
fully endorse this whole making notes
making spider diagrams with the book
closed as being a really effective
method of active recall and and and
there is actually some evidence behind
this again it's in the book make it
stick it's also in Professor Dan loskis
paper you can read it down below finally
I want to talk about a third strategy
and that's an alternative to making
notes I know that this whole making
notes thing it's really hard to not make
any notes these days if I'm in a lecture
or if I want to learn something instead
of making notes from the lecture or from
the textbook what I instead do is that I
write questions for myself and I think
this is called like the Cornell
note-taking method I came across that
earlier today when when we when
researching stuff for this video the
idea is that you've write questions for
yourself based on the material such that
when you revise the material you look at
your questions and you try and actively
answer them in your head or on paper or
out loud or whatever the point is that
instead of passively rereading or
highlighting the information like we are
tempted to do we have to engage in
cognitive effort to retrieve this
information from our brains and that
strengthens the connections between the
information it makes us more likely to
remember it and to understand it so I
actually gave a talk about this
evidence-based revision thing like three
years ago when I was when when I was a
third year and a friend of mine who was
a first year medical time after this
talk he had about two months left until
the exams and he decided that the only
technique he was going to use was to
just write questions for himself so for
the entire Cambridge first year medical
syllabus he wrote himself like a list of
100 and something questions and each
night before bed he would just kind of
go through them and his revision
technique was pretty much just answering
these questions and he ended up coming
second in the air out of like the whole
cohort he's very intelligent in itself
but I thought but I talking him
afterwards he he put a lot of faith in
this method of writing questions for
yourself because writing questions for
yourself makes you engage in cognitive
effort and kind of the more the more
brainpower it takes to recall a fact the
strengthen that connection seems to get
according to the evidence at least so
yeah instead of kind of writing notes
from the textbook or from the erosion
guard from the lecture notes maybe try
this method where you're writing
questions for yourself and then when
you're revising the topic using
hopefully spaced repetition which we'll
talk about in the next video when you're
when you're revising the topic then you
can just answer the questions in your
head and I find this to be a really
really effective strategy for getting
lots of information into your head very
quickly and hopefully you can find it
useful as well so that brings us to the
end of this video I really hope you
found some of this useful just to
summarize we've talked about why
rereading highlighting underlining and
summarizing / making notes are probably
not very efficient revision techniques
if you're using them I'm not saying
you're doing it wrong I'm just saying
that you know if you're using these
techniques which most of us do and you
think in yourself that you're revision
is not very effective or you're not
really getting the results that you want
then maybe it's time to rethink some of
these strategies feel free to continue
using them but you know what I would say
is that use them but alongside do
practice testing test yourself more and
then use spaced repetition and
interleaved practice those are the three
things we were talking about in future
videos as well so yeah hopefully you
found this video useful we talked about
why those three particular strategies
are not very effective we talked about
some of the evidence behind active
recall I quoted three studies at U and
I've given you lots of links in the
description below if you want to read
more about this the book make it stick
is really good as well and there's also
a few podcast episodes that I've been
listening to recently in preparation for
this video that are linked below so you
can find loads and loads of people
around the world who looked at all the
evidence or saying exactly the same
thing they're saying that most revision
techniques that students like to use
like rereading haunt aligning and making
notes are not very effective and they're
saying that by far the most effective
techniques are active recall and spaced
repetition so hopefully you can apply
those to your to your own revision and
I've given you three possible ways to do
it but to be honest pretty much anything
that you do that requires you to
retrieve information from your brain is
going to be an effective revision
strategy so yeah I really hope you like
this video thank you very much for
watching if you liked the video if you
found it useful please give a thumbs up
or leave a comment down below that would
be really nice if you have any questions
at all again leave a comment down below
and I'll try and be as evidence-based as
I can in my answers to you guys so yeah
thanks very much for watching please
subscribe to the channel if you are not
already subscribed and I will see you in
the next video and all the best with
your revision I really hope you smash it
bye bye
関連動画をさらに表示
Why I NEVER Made Notes at Medical School | My Secret to Staying on Top of Work
How I Memorise Everything WITHOUT Flashcards/Revision Cards | Active Recall & Spaced Repetition
How my friend ranked 1st at Medical School - The Active Recall Framework
9 Study Techniques that got me through Cambridge Medical School *science-backed*
How to Study for Exams - Spaced Repetition | Evidence-based revision tips
How I Ranked 1st at Medical School - Anki Flashcards Tutorial
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)