Before you go anywhere, you’ll need to know about the two hidden gems in the book of study techniques: active recall and spaced repetition. For some, it may sound new, but others might be using a technique they didn’t know already existed.
Nevertheless, the most predominant study technique used by students is re-reading, compared to active recall and spaced repetition, which are overlooked in our education system.
As much as they go unnoticed, they are life-savers when it comes to absorbing any type of information be it long or short, academic or non-academic. Let’s delve into what these strategies are and how we can implement them into our study routine
How active recall works
All this time, our teachers have emphasised on getting the information into our brains, to read the text and highlight as we go, then make notes on it which we re-read again. Uhhhh…the thought of it makes my brain hurt. With the aim to make a change, many researchers were able to conclude from their experiments that passing information out of the brain is far more effective, otherwise known as active recall.
A lot of the time, we feel that we fully understand a topic when we’ve learnt it in class, but when we come round to exam day our hopes go downhill. However, active recall involves trying to recall as much information about a topic without peeking at your book. Active recall is about stimulating your memory as you’re learning a topic, rather than after you’re done with it- saves you from blanking over the question in the exam. The more you repeat the same information, the more it will stick in your long-term memory. Although this testing is more rigorous, it is undoubtedly a more efficient and faster way of committing even small details to memory. Over time, it becomes easier to identify the links between parts of a topic and the entire topic becomes more understandable.
How spaced repetition works
Many students make the mistake of shoving as much information into their brains and calling it a day. Over the next few days, the piles of information turn out to be scraps of words floating around in the brain. So when asked to answer a retrieval question, they hold their head in their hands struggling to make sense of it all (sounds like you?)
Behold spaced repetition! Essentially, spaced repetition (also known as spaced rehearsal, expanding rehearsal, repetition spacing and many more) is when information is revised at increasingly longer intervals. For instance, you learn a topic today (day 1), then you review it on day 3, day 5, day 7 and so on until you thoroughly understand and can explain the topic. However, spaced repetition can also base the length of intervals on the performance of a student. The concepts that are often grappled with are repeated the most, as opposed to those that are easier. This speeds up and solidifies the learning process, so you don’t have to worry about information slipping your mind again.
How I use Notion to slay those textbooks
So, you’re starting to see the link between active recall and spaced repetition? Active recall relies on spaced repetition to increase the performance of students. No, all we have to do is merge the two. To do that, I find Notion to be the best tool. Of course, the same strategy may not work for everyone, but it’s worth trying this especially if you don’t know where to start with active recall and spaced repetition. Now, feel free to use different note-taking software (don’t be mistaken- we’re still doing active recall), but for me, Notion is great, because it fulfils all my needs and I particularly love the toggle feature.
Here’s how I do it:
- I create a page for each of my subjects and following the specification, list all the topics within that subject. By using the specification for guidance it not only becomes a breeze when assembling the topics but also when it comes round to spaced repetition. Listing the topics is part of this process, but also extremely crucial to get a clear overview of the chapter/subject (even before you’ve studied it).
- After I’ve learnt a topic, I’d use all the resources and knowledge I have related to the topic (including concepts covered in class, interesting practice questions and basic facts) to produce a series of questions. Make sure that you have fully understood and actively recalled the topic before you can trust yourself to make these questions, you know just to make sure you’re not cutting corners and to save revision time. As part of my spaced repetition, I will test myself on these questions.
- As I am actively recalling the topic, in other words, going through the questions, I colour-code each of them based on my strength of understanding. I also put the date beside the name of the topic. Both the date (can also be colour-coded to mark my strength on the topic overall) and colour-coded questions are to indicate how long I pause (to forget the information) before I test myself on it again.
The colour-coding is simple: green marks the strongest level of understanding, yellow means a delay in response/slight confusion and red marks the weakest. Often, the overall colour coding for a topic can be the same as others, as it is discretely categorised, so I look at the date to determine whether I should recall it today or tomorrow.
Here is a screenshot as an example of a topic that I actively recalled yesterday. As you can see, each question is toggled, which will reveal the answer below when clicked on. (I always have the temptation of peeking at the answer :P)
Recommendations on using active recall and spaced repetition
If the process shown above is not your thing, there are many more options out there for you to try. Here are just some of them:
Anki
The chances of you getting a ‘yes’ when you ask someone if they know Anki is highly likely. What’s more, this is favoured a lot by most students.
Star features
- There are many readily-available decks to download
- After revealing the answer, you can let Anki know how confident you were on the question and mark it as: easy, good or again-based on this the cards that were found difficult will be repeated more often than those that were easy.
- You can import media onto your cards to make them more attractive and play with ways of making information stick.
Compatibility
Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Browser
Price
It’s free across all devices except iOS devices (luckily, the browser option is still available!)
Brainscape
This is another great spaced repetition app plus its interface is much more attractive than Anki’s.
Star features
- It’s easier to categorise your decks allowing for a more smooth experience. The app uses classes (no confusing terminology here-it’s the subject you’re learning) in which you can save decks on specific topics/chapters.
- Images and sounds can be added to cards to make information more memorable. (Pro version)
- There is a large variety of classes created by the Brainscape community for you to use and edit.
- Brainscape uses a larger scale of confidence from 1 (if you got it wrong) up to 5 (if you got it right).
- After completing a deck, a ‘Mastery’ percentage score is allocated to help you track your progress until you’ve got a score of 100%.
Compatibility
Android, iOS, Browser
Price
It’s free, but to unlock more features the Premium version is needed.
I know that not all students prefer to use technical methods, so there are of course ways to make your own flashcards by simply using paper/card. These are better than readily-made cards in that you can customise them however you want and you save yourself time when recalling information because making them is part of the process that helps ingrain information.
For active-recall, you can simply write questions on one side of a card and answers on the other, mix them up with pictures, use mnemonics or fill in the blanks. Spaced repetition steps in every time you revise your flashcards to help enhance your long-term memory. Perhaps write the date in the corner of each set so you know when it’s time to come back to them.
Why not call it ‘spaced recall’?
Sounds like a fancy name doesn’t it? But before we think about generating our own word, let’s master spaced repetition and active recall. By using these consistently, we’ll be prepared long before an exam and won’t need to cram at all. Now that’s what I call smart studying!
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