HOW TO BE MORE ACTIVE WHEN STUDYING Student Academic Support Services & Inclusion (SASSI) Nikki Dyer After class, reviewing your lecture notes or reading a book chapter is helpful but to really enhance your learning and increase retention you want to do something that will add even more value to your study time. You want to be as active as possible when you are studying to reap maximum benefit from the time that you are investing. There is a little formula that I created that I think is useful in helping students get more from their review process.

1 HOUR OF STUDY 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break Let’s consider one study hour. Instead of just reviewing or reading for one hour you may want to consider adding some additional elements to your study as well. Let’s talk about them briefly.

1 HOUR OF STUDY 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break The first 40 minutes of your study hour can be spent in review. This could be going on the lecture notes or doing some reading.

1 HOUR OF STUDY 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break At the end of the 40 minutes, close your notes or whatever you are reading and do a recap of what you just went over. I suggest that you do the recap verbally or written but chose one. For students who tell me that they learn a lot from writing but no longer have the time to rewrite notes, I say here is an opportunity to make your writing count. Use these 5 minutes to write out the most important ideas that you covered. Or, if you are an auditory learner or things really stick when you can explain them to someone else, use these 5 minutes to do a verbal summarization of what you just reviewed. I have even seen some students’ record themselves doing these mini-summaries so that they can go back and listen or watch them later. These little summaries can come in handy as a review tool right before the exam or as a mid-week refresher of things that you have learned earlier in the week. Another reason that I think these summaries are helpful is because I have noticed that at this level it is not uncommon for students to engage in what I call marathon studying. This is sitting for hours on end reading a book or going over lecture notes only to have difficulty explaining or remembering what they have been reviewing. I would rather see you study for 40 minutes and have more immediate feedback on if what you are doing is working, than to spend hours and realize nothing is sticking. If you notice that after the 40 minute mark it is difficult to do a recap, you may want to stop and take inventory of what may be happening and take action as necessary. For instance, are you tired? Sleepy? Bored? Do you need to take a break? Get a snack? Change your study location? Change to another subject?

You may recall from Bloom’s taxonomy on learning and critical thinking there are levels of thinking which range from lower to higher. In this theory, remembering and understanding are lower level cognitive actions and do not engage higher order critical thinking. So although you spent 40 minutes recalling or remembering what you reviewed, it is important to make your learning more active by moving up the pyramid. Which brings us to the next step in the formula, practice questions.

1 HOUR OF STUDY 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break After you recall what you have reviewed, you can spend another 5 minutes doing related practice questions. In that time, you may only get through a couple of questions but even a little practice applying the information can really accelerate and enhance your learning. It may be good to identify relevant questions before your begin your study time. There is one caveat that I would like to add here about doing practice questions especially if timing and pacing has been a concern for you on tests in the past. I recommend that you spend no more time on these practice questions than what you will have per question on your actual tests in class. So if you get 60 seconds per question on your class exams I would recommend spending no more than 60 seconds per practice question.

1 HOUR OF STUDY 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break After you complete the practice questions, you can spend another 5 minutes analyzing what you missed and why? I suggest keeping a question log for the questions that you missed. The question log can consist of a couple of sentences or key words that helps you distinguish why the correct answer was more correct than the answer that you selected. I usually encourage students to write the piece that had they known they could have reasoned their way to the correct answer.

1 HOUR OF STUDY 40 minutes- review notes/material 5 minutes- recap (verbal or written) 5 minutes- practice questions 5 minutes- review the questions 5 minutes- break The last step in the formula is to take a 5 minute break. This is a good time to stretch, get something to eat or drink, or change study locations before moving on to the next study hour. As we end this video I would like to add that the times outlined in this approach are flexible. You can do certain pieces longer or shorter but I think adding the different pieces to your study is what is most important.

CONTACTING SASSI SASSI, GEB, BB9 www.uthsc.edu/sassi (email) sassi@uthsc.edu (online) 901.448.7745 (phone) If you would like to meet with an educational specialist to discuss this or other concerns please feel free to set up an appointment. You can set up an appointment in person, online (www.uthsc.edu/sassi), via email (sassi@uthsc.edu), or phone (901.448.5056). Thank you and look forward to meeting with you soon.