Studying

Prepare before studying

Studying works best when you are ready for it. This includes:

• Identifying what your course and instructor expect you to know and be able to do.
• Understanding requirements for formatting, timing, and handing in work.
• Reviewing the process you need to follow (many topics and subjects require you to learn a methodology- a sequence of steps you need to follow).
• Choosing a location to study that works for you, is comfortable, and supports focus and attention.
• Gathering your study materials, including outlines, readings, diagrams, notes, and other sources.

Once you’ve prepared, you can decide on the strategy you want to use.

Strategies to focus your study time

If you consider how memory works, you’ll understand how these 3 broad categories of strategies can help you to integrate and deepen your knowledge in any topic area.

Our broad categories are repetition, interleaving, and spacing.  You can use these with traditional strategies like reviews, notecards, and quizzing.

Repetition

Choosing ways to activate your knowledge repeatedly can help your brain build connections and strengthen your ability to retrieve information stored in your memory. These can include:

• Testing
• Flashcards
• Explaining to others
• Rewriting notes in a new format (for example, creating a study guide or quiz questions)
• Creating outlines and concept maps

Repetition improves the chances of knowledge and experiences being encoded and stored in long-term memory. The more you revisit a topic over time, the stronger the pathway for recall or retrieval, leading to a better ability to have the right memory when you need it.

Interleaving

Mixing concepts together, instead of studying one topic at a time, can strengthen your overall understanding, create connections, and improve your ability to retrieve information from memory in new situations. Examples of interleaving activities include:

• Mixing words from different topics together when learning vocabulary
• Having flashcards with different formulas that are not related in math, chemistry, or physics
• Mixing up events from different time periods or countries in history
• Combining topics from different classes when you test yourself

To set up interleaving:

• Decide what you want to interleave by choosing materials that make sense and have some relation but are not the same. Remember, as powerful as interleaving is, it needs to make sense, and sometimes, studying one subject is the right choice.
• Determine how you’ll use interleaving by deciding if you want to interleave material randomly (no pattern) or systematically in a specific order (and if so, what order)
• Allow enough time for this type of studying, as interleaving takes more time to set up and can feel unproductive in the beginning. Over time, though, this practice benefits memory recall and deepens understanding.

Mixing concepts and information in one session makes you more likely to retain information by forming memories and connecting what you are reviewing to what you already know. Moving through multiple concepts in a session gives your brain practice in retrieving information, forgetting it, and then retrieving it again.

Spacing

While it’s tempting to cram your study time into a small time frame (it does feel like a better way to manage time), spacing your study activities out over time makes a much bigger difference with what you know and how you can use that knowledge. Spacing means spending less time in each session but having more study sessions over a longer time frame. Spacing your study time out means:

• Reviewing your materials using repetition or interleaving activities
• Taking breaks to do something else to allow your brain to process what you’ve read, reviewed, or done
• Sleeping so that your brain has the chance to integrate what you read, experienced, heard, or saw and create connections as it stores your new memories and strengthens pathways for retrieval
• Spacing is a critical part of studying because it allows your new understanding and materials to become part of your long-term memory with the ability to retrieve and recall easily

Spacing out your study session and moving between active studying, rest, and sleep will help your brain encode, store, and retrieve/recall information in a more effective way.

Other things to consider

Setting time for studying will help you stay on track, and the more you integrate study time into your week, the more you will gain from studying

Working with others can improve your study outcomes by reinforcing your knowledge and the activities you choose for studying. Plus, working with others is satisfying and fun, leading to discussion, debate, and competition that depends on your engagement.

Being intentional about your study sessions will help you make choices that support learning

Being aware of your needs and including self-care activities can help you stay focused and feel well. This includes eating well, monitoring your need for movement and activity, and ensuring you are getting enough sleep.

When studying, avoid cramming, multitasking with your phone or other entertainment, and procrastinating.

What to remember: studying is an active process that requires you to engage with the material and take steps to work with it. Reading and re-reading are not studying; they are review, and while review can be helpful, it only helps your brain encode, store, or retrieve information if you include activities that allow you to reflect, connect, and engage with the material.