How to study effectively
Paul Pennis a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of East London. He is the author of The Psychology of Effective Studying: How to Succeed in Your Degree (2019) and the winner of the 2021 UK Higher Education Psychology Teacher of the Year award. Forget cramming, ditch the highlighter and stop passively rereading
Need to know
Research from psychology indicates that our ability to accurately monitor and evaluate our level of knowledge or skill (referred to as metacognitive ability) is often flawed
- This leads to an inflated perception of our knowledge and understanding, encouraging us to persevere with ineffective methods of studying that quietly, but persistently, undermine our efforts to learn.
- Consider some preferred study practices and consider the misconceptions about learning that they reflect
Learn more
Effective studying is more a question of how you study than how much of your life you devote to it.
- The fruits of effective studying might be a little harder-won than you would have liked, but don’t think this means that they invariably take much longer to obtain.
Links & Books
Find out more about how research from psychology can help you learn effectively
- The Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles has an extensive list of downloadable publications on the application of cognitive psychology to learning
- Educators interested in finding out how they can use principles from cognitive psychology in the design of their online courses might like to take a look at the book Active Learning Online: Five Principles That Make Online Courses Come Alive
What to do
Space out your study sessions
- It’s better to distribute the time you have available to study over a greater number of shorter sessions than cramming your studying into a single marathon session
- Alternate between studying similar topics
- Blocking: allocate a period of time for one topic, and to conclude a review of it before moving on to the next one
- Interleaving: alternating between different topics can be more effective especially for topics that are similar in nature and might otherwise be easily conflated
- Focus on constructing your own understanding of a topic, not reproducing someone else’s
- Answer your own questions
Key points
How to study effectively
- Systematic engagement with the meaning of your source material is the key to successful studying
- It is much more effective to distribute the time you have available for studying over a larger number of shorter sessions
- When you are studying similar topics that might be easily confused, it’s a good idea to interleave your studying – to alternate between the topics during your study sessions
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