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Learning Commons
Learning Commons
Learning Commons
Studying is an important skill to master. Developing good study skills will not only help you do better on exams, but once you have mastered these skills and found what works for you, studying will become easier. This will make you a more confident learner, which will make school less stressful.
This page briefly explains four studying techniques. These techniques can be used independently of the others, however, you may find that they work best when combined.
For example, Spaced Repetition is a great technique for determining how often to study, while Active Recall is a technique that ensures you engage deeply with course material. The Feynman Technique is a popular method of applying Active Recall and Interleaving ensures that you don't focus only on one topic, which helps the brain retain information and become more agile.This means that you can Interleave, while using the Feynman Technique, all while using Spaced Repetition to schedule your study sessions.
In Spaced Repetition, studying is conducted at pre-determined intervals based on how challenging the information is to recall.
Starting with an initial review, you will read over and study all of your course material.
On a subsequent review, you will decide what information is more challenging to remember, and categorize that information to be studied more frequently, while easier information to remember is to be studied less frequently. This may be easier to manage with flashcards. While reviewing flashcards, place any card that you struggled to answer correctly into one pile, and any cards you found easier to answer in another pile.
You may decide that you will study the challenging material every two or three days, while you may only study easier material once per week. It is recommended that you expand the intervals between sessions as you become more familiar and comfortable with the material.
Active Recall is a technique where you study material through active engagement where you deeply interact with the material. This can include testing yourself on the material, instead of a more passive activity like reading.
Some examples of Active Recall include:
The Feynman Technique is a very popular Active Recall strategy. It helps you learn by both simplifying concepts by teaching those concepts, which helps to reinforce your own understanding.
To use this technique, you:
Interleaving is a study technique where you study multiple topics in a single study session. The opposite technique is known as "blocking", where you study only one topic in a study session. Interleaving is shown to be a more effective strategy than blocking and helps you develop a deeper understanding of concepts.
When using Interleaving, you will need to decide on what topics you want to study and how you will alternate between those topics. Find a pattern that works for you and follow it. Try not to choose too many topics for one study sessions.
Ways to use interleaving:
You may need to try a few different combinations of patterns and study tools to see what works best for you.
Student Success
This book offers study skills and practices for college and university students to help them make a positive transition to post-secondary education, learn how to be a successful student, and make the most of their learning experience. This textbook was created to provide a resource for the ABE provincial level course, Student Success, and it provides resources to meet all the required and optional learning outcomes. The course can be used an elective course towards the BC Adult Graduation Diploma. Students don’t need to be taking a Student Success course to benefit from this text. Post-secondary students can use this material to help them become better, more successful students. Faculty can use any parts of it to give to their students in any of their courses as applicable. Others (anyone) can use applicable life skills chapters. The book is written so each chapter stands on its own as an independent topic and doesn’t require knowledge of previous chapters, so students and instructors can use only the sections they need.
