How can we encourage students to develop effective studying skills that persist beyond cramming right before an exam or when homework is due? Lolita Paff suggests, that in addition to reading and homework, providing students with activities that they use to engage with course materials. Through her recent article, Questioning the Two Hour Rule, Paff recommends that instead of focusing on time, we should encourage students to focus on concept mastery. Some ideas include problem solving, rewriting notes in their own words, creating concept maps, and responding to learning reflection prompts.
Another study strategy suggested in the book, Make it Stick (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel 2014) is the idea of ‘spaced practice.’ Spaced practice is studying in discrete sessions that are separated by time. This allows for new skills to be cognitively embedded by leaving enough time between practice sessions to “forget” a skill. The act of retrieval will be easier in successive sessions, yet taxing enough that the skill is committed to long-term memory. One study method that supports this strategy is using flashcards to quiz yourself. While a traditional flashcard or quizzing method certainly works, we recently learned of an application, Anki, that takes flashcards to a new level.
