How to Choose the Right Way to Study for You: Advice for Students

By Althea Need Kaminske

There are a plethora of apps, games, and study tips for students ranging from well meaning advice from other students to flashy games from tech companies. How can you tell what is and is not worth your time? There are no hard and fast rules, but I do have some advice for students who want to take control of their learning and use the right study tools for them.

What works is not always obvious.

We like to trick ourselves into thinking that we know ourselves pretty well. That there will be some magic feeling that comes over us when something “just works”. However, relying on our feelings and intuitions about our learning can sometimes get us into trouble. For example, one of the most common study strategies used by students is to re-read, despite the fact that re-reading has been repeatedly found to be one of the least effective learning strategies (1, 2, 3). Why do students do it then? One reason is because it feels like we are learning. Reading a passage the second or third time in a row is generally easier than the first time. We read it faster and it feels more familiar. Both of these cues make us feel like we have learned something. However, unless your ability to read a passage quickly and efficiently is what you’re supposed to be learning, this usually doesn’t do us much good come test test time. 

By contrast, several of the most effective strategies can look and feel worse at the beginning. Retrieval practice, interleaving, and spacing are all challenging initially. However, when compared to their counterparts or controls (typically re-reading, blocked practice, and massed practice) they all have much greater long-term benefits.

Retrieval practice, for example, can feel downright miserable at first. By definition if you are trying to learn something it means you don’t know it very well. So trying to bring something to mind that you have trouble bringing to mind can be incredibly frustrating. It makes sense that students might avoid taking practice tests, quizzing themselves, using flash cards, or engaging in any of the range of ways in which you can use retrieval practice. Why would you continue to do something that makes you feel bad about yourself? Without knowing about the long-term benefits of retrieval practice, or understanding that the initial failure is part of the process for everyone, students might abandon this highly effective study tool and claim it doesn’t work for them.

This is not to say that all effective learning strategies are frustrating. Activities that involve elaboration, dual coding, and concrete examples typically don’t have the same sort of frustrations associated with them. Furthermore, once students start to see the benefits of the more challenging strategies - or the initial challenge is viewed as more fun than frustrating - these learning strategies can be easy to stick with.

Learning should be challenging - but not impossible

While it’s true that your intuitions about your learning may not always be accurate, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to tell if something isn’t working. If you have been sticking with a difficult study strategy all term and have not seen any benefits then clearly something is off. Ideally, it would be good to know well before then if what you’re doing is working.

It is very difficult to give a hard and fast rule about how long you should stick with a new study program, game, or app. As discussed above, it can sometimes take awhile to see the benefits of a more challenging learning strategy. That said, some sort of improvement should happen within a few weeks (if not sooner), depending on the strategy being used. Unless under the direct guidance of a teacher, tutor, or educational professional, it is probably best to cut your losses after a few weeks. 

Image from Pixabay

On the other hand, something that does not offer any challenge at all is also not worth your time. If you practice a study technique and find that you are 100% accurate 100% of the time then you should start to get suspicious. You may need to increase the difficulty level, add in new material, or simply abandon the study technique all together. If you’re not getting anything wrong - ever - then you’re not learning! Of course, you might have a good day where you happen to do very well. Great! Celebrate the accomplishment and set the next goal. However, if there’s very little challenge then that’s a sign that the technique you’re using is either not effective or not appropriate for the material you are trying to learn.

There are several names for this phenomena in education and cognitive psychology (the “zone of proximal development” and “desirable difficulties” both describe a similar concept) but I like to think of this as the 3 Bears approach to learning. It shouldn’t be too hard or too easy, but somewhere in the middle that’s just right. 

Note that what is too easy or too hard can and should change as you learn more! You will need to periodically reevaluate what is and is not working for you.

Know what success looks like

An important question to ask when determining whether or not a strategy has been working is: what does success look like? Depending on the nature of what you’re studying success can look very different. For terms and definitions it can be fairly straightforward: the proper terms and definitions come to mind much more quickly and easily. You might score higher on a practice quiz or game or complete a timed run more quickly. Other learning tasks may not be as straightforward. Improving your understanding and analysis of a text for a literature class may involve some more nuanced feedback from your instructor to know if your study strategy has been working. Practicing a creative skill like drawing or acting might also require some practice or skill to even be able to evaluate what improvements you have made.

Often what success looks like depends on how you will be assessed or how you expect your newfound knowledge will be used. A common type of assessment is a unit exam or an end of term cumulative test. In some subjects the assessment may be more hands on like a lab practical or a final performance. At the end of these assessments (whether they are given by an instructor or they are simply a goal you have set for yourself) you will have some kind of information about whether you have learned something or achieved your goal. However, the way you should prepare for each of these can be very different. You would not prepare for a clarinet recital by only making flashcards of the musical scale. That might be beneficial at first, if you have no previous knowledge of how to read sheet music, but you would expect to move on to actually playing the clarinet and producing the appropriate sounds. Maybe eventually you will produce something that someone else would call music. Similarly, if you have a final lab practicum in a science class then practice recalling terms and definitions might be useful at first, but you will need to move on to actually practicing the laboratory techniques that you will be tested on. 

Generally, the more your practice/study technique/app/game looks like your final assessment or goal, the more beneficial it will be. As noted above, you may need to work up to that format depending on your level of background knowledge and experience, but as the quiz/test/recital/practicum approaches you should be doing something that resembles your goal. Be wary of any study technique that looks radically different or unrelated to how you will be assessed. Sometimes it might be a necessary step on the road towards your learning goal, and sometimes it can be a distraction from your goal. The only way to really know is to reevaluate periodically and, when possible, ask for feedback from your instructor.

References

(1) Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2007). The promise and perils of self-regulated study. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 219-224.

(2) Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17, 471-479.

(3) Hartwig, M. K., & Dunlosky, J. (2012). Study strategies of college students: Are self-testing and scheduling related to achievement? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19, 126-134.