Study Skills
Study Skills
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #23
Hello all! As I’ve been promising for a few weeks now, it’s time to move on to study skills.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is one of the areas I get asked about the most. And its a high priority at this time of year. So let’s get straight to it.
What do we mean by study skills?
As a term, ‘study skills’ is a little vague, but to most of us it refers to techniques that students select when working open-ended tasks such as reviewing a topic, or revising for a test. The skills of self-directed learning (in the classroom or elsewhere).
Of course, cramming for tests is not what I would advocate. One of my most popular blog posts talks about the broader goals of education:
Blog post: What Is the Point of Education? (Medium)
However, I'd suggest that study skills – or we could also say ‘learning skills’ – apply lifelong, and have relevance well outside of preparing for exams.
How effective are popular techniques?
There is a lot of research on the efficacy of specific techniques. As with any research it has flaws, but it does point to some things that might be good bets.
I have previously discussed the work of John Dunlosky, Katherine Rawson and colleagues, which ranked certain techniques as high or low utility:
Re-reading and highlighting were ranked as low utility, and tend to be dismissed as not working well. And it’s true that they are often rather passive, with a limited impact in terms of memory and learning. They also have an unfortunate side effect in making learners overconfident. However, they can be made more effective.
Flashcards are another popular technique, and as with so many things, it depends how you do it. It’s clear that self-testing and spacing out practice are high utility, and these are what I have been recommending to students for years. Therefore, making flashcards is good, but students need to test themselves with those flashcards rather than just re-reading them, and should practise again after a delay.
Mind mapping is another technique that is very widely used. I see study skills booklets recommending this all the time! And I suppose it could be justified on the basis of dual coding – the idea that combining visuals with text can help. However, I am dubious that students illustrate their maps well enough for this to make a difference.
In fact, I have felt for some time that when teachers ask students to make revision mind maps, this often amounts to low-impact ‘busy work’, taking up class time for little impact. And recent research has confirmed that not only are mind maps/concept maps less effective than retrieval practice, they can even be counterproductive!
O’Day and Karpicke (2020) - Comparing and Combining Retrieval Practice and Concept Mapping
O’Day and Karpicke’s study asked students to study using concept maps, retrieval practice, or both. A concept map is basically like a mind map, but less decorative; it shows how ideas link together.
The study found that while doing a concept map gave a short-term boost to performance, this completely disappeared on a test one week later. At that point, having done both techniques (concept mapping + retrieval) did not lead to any improvement at at all compared to retrieval practice alone… and adding the concept mapping stage also took 20 minutes longer! This applied to both facts and inference questions on the final test.
Granted, concept mapping was still better than a re-reading control condition. But retrieval practice performed much better overall.
Mind maps and concept maps may still have their place in education. The initial boost hints that elements of the technique might play a role in developing understanding in the classroom. However, they don’t appear to be a good bet as a study technique, either in terms of lasting learning, or the time invested.
General recommendations
For the most part, things that work well in the classroom also work well in private study. The emphasis should be on active learning, meaning and understanding, and retrieval practice. When it comes to retrieval practice, this could involve students closing their notes/textbooks, and doing a brain dump.
Spacing and interleaving can also work well, but there is a risk of asking students to do these – they probably won’t do it well. I’d suggest keeping it simple. Ask students to build in short delays between reading/studying and testing themselves. For example, they could study, take a coffee break, and then self test. They could also be advised to tackle a topic across more than one day.
Interleaved tasks can be done too, but are probably best designed by the teacher, as students won’t know how to set these up effectively. Fortunately, many exam papers already feature interleaved practice.
Finally, it’s important to warn students against myths and misconceptions about studying. They should avoid magical thinking (e.g. ‘if I just write in purple pen, it will stick in my brain!’). And they should ignore advice that tells them to categorise themselves as visual learners, right-brained learners, and other such ideas.
Because the reality is that effective study is pretty similar for everyone.
That’s it for today. Want to know more? As I mentioned last time, I am running a Zoom session on study skills in the New Year:
Study skills essentials – 6 Feb 2023.
It can be found on our university website here, and costs twenty pounds to join (which goes to the university, and helps to fund new research). The sessions take place in the late afternoon UK time, 16:00–17:30.
All the best,
Jonathan
Last week: Metacognitive Monitoring
Next week: Study skills and magical thinking
Website: www.jonathanfirth.co.uk
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