Post-secondary education is a big leap forward from high school that comes with a lot of change. You find out quickly in your first year that most of your schoolwork and studying is self-guided and done on your own time, and that you need to make sure you have lots of time to thoroughly study the material. Although that is far easier said than done, you might find that even when you make enough time for yourself to study you aren’t retaining the information as much as you’d like. It can be frustrating to put a lot of time and effort into something and not quite get the result you were hoping for, but using more efficient studying strategies can help you retain information and make better use of your time. Spaced repetition, active recall, and chunking, are all study strategies that can help you to learn better and more efficiently, and improve both the quality of your studying and your performance in classes.
Spaced repetition is a method focused on retention and understanding. Everybody has heard that cramming isn’t effective, however sometimes we might be cramming without noticing it. If you’re studying for a test and you have left yourself lots of time to go over the material, but you don’t take enough breaks, that’s still cramming, even though there isn’t a need for it. Spaced repetition involves reviewing material at increased intervals over time, which allows your brain to memorize it more strongly and to learn more efficiently.
Active recall is a different approach that involves pulling material that you’ve studied from memory, and applying it to new contexts. Although this approach differs from spaced repetition, they can be used alongside each other and can actually be quite effective together. Active recall helps to strengthen neural pathways and improve your ability to recall information.
Chunking is a method that ties all of these techniques together. Chunking involves organizing material into broader, more manageable sections, and studying key points rather than every detail of the material. This can be great for when you’re beginning to study a subject and you’re feeling overwhelmed or like you don’t know where to start, and gaining a good understanding of the basic principles of the material is a solid baseline that will help you build on it when it comes time to study specific details.
One of the biggest difficulties when it comes to studying is making enough time and finding the motivation to put in enough effort, so put your time and your effort to the best use possible. Using spaced repetition to understand and learn the material, active recall to strengthen your memory for details, and chunking to identify and study key points, will certainly improve the quality of your study sessions.
