Study Hacks

A reader recently asked me about multiple choice tests. He was interested in study advice for those large, 100-question, scantron, “fill in the bubble with a number two pencil” style beasts used, mainly, in intro life science courses.

These tests pose a problem for us as they seem to fall through the cracks of the Straight-A method. The information is not in the form of big ideas that can be captured in question/evidence/conclusion clusters. At the same time, it’s also not in the form of discrete sample problems with clear-cut steps toward a solution. (In Psych 101, for example, you might get a lecture full of facts about the brain, as revealed by different experiments.)

To make things worse, the number of facts presented in lecture can be so voluminous that tackling them, one by one, using the Quiz-and-Recall method, could take days. This is no good. What we need is a strategy streamlined for this particular type of test:

The Focused Question Cluster Strategy

Here is a technique that served me well during the occasional multiple choice (MC) test-centric courses I took at Dartmouth. The goal of this system is to: (1) enhance recall on the individual facts that pop up on the MC tests; and (2) make sure you understand the underlying ideas so you can tackle new questions with ease.

It works as follows:

1. Reduce your notes to rapid-fire questions — short, specific questions that can be answered in a few words, or, at most, a sentence. For example:
   1. “School of thought justified in Skinner rat maze…”
   2. “Five parts of the auditory system…”
2. Make sure your rapid-fire questions for each lecture cover all of the information presented. Significant compression is possible here if you choose your questions carefully. One short question that asks for you to list five things, for example, might cover a page full of notes.
3. Arrange the rapid-fire questions into focused clusters such that all of the questions in a cluster cover the same topic. (e.g., “Early behaviorism experiments”). Have one page for each cluster. Put the questions in list format at the top of the page. Put the answers in list format, in the same order, at the bottom of the page.
4. Add to each focused cluster one or two background questions
   that ask for some general explanation of the topic. (e.g., “What were the other movements around when behaviorism came along. What made it different?”)
5. When you study, do quiz-and-recall on the cluster scale. For each cluster, shoot quickly through the rapid-fire questions (literally should take only a minute). Then lecture, out-loud, in the traditional quiz-and-recall style, on the background question(s). If you have trouble with anything in the cluster, mark it and return to the entire cluster during your next round.

Why This Works

This approach ensures you still memorize the little facts that serve as the bulk of the content on any multiple choice test. Because the questions are in rapid-fire format and arranged in lists, you can do quiz-and-recall on this great volume of information quickly.

The background questions, however, ground this memorized knowledge. Not unlike the technical explanation questions used in studying for technical courses, the background questions put the rapid-fire answers you just rattled off into a larger context — helping to cement the critical understanding that will allow you to tackle new questions that might pop up on the test.

A Final Tip

From experience, I know that it can take a long time to transform your notes into the focused question clusters. This follows directly from the volume of rapid-fire questions you end up having to record. To keep things painless, it’s highly recommended that you consider transforming your notes into these clusters every week as you proceed through the term. This will keeps the studying itself a reasonable chore.

Timing is crucial. Nowhere is this more true than in the pursuit of low-stress test preparation. The question is common. You have a serious exam looming on your calendar: When should you start studying?

Here’s my short answer: one week in advance.

This scares students, and for good reason. When I say “study,” most undergrads conjure images of long sessions in the library. The thought of starting this brutality a full week in advance sounds like something only a pre-med would do. So allow me to clarify.

I don’t want you to really “study” at all. I never want you to spend more than 2 – 3 hours doing test perpetration on any single day leading up to the exam. I want you to transform studying from a tough task that happens the day before to harmless short blocks of work spread throughout your daily schedule. Let’s get specific:

Deconstructing Your Study Schedule

Assuming you subscribe to the Straight-A Method, here are the typical steps you need to perform to prepare for a medium to large-sized exam in a standard non-technical course:

1. Construct quiz-and-recall study guides from your lecture notes and reading notes.
2. Identify gaps in your knowledge. (e.g., gaps in your notes where you didn’t understand the idea being presented, missed lectures, missed reading assignments).
3. Locate the necessary information to fill in these gaps. Update your study guides accordingly.
4. Master the study guides using quiz-and-recall.

It’s Friday. Your exam is next Friday. When do you accomplish this work? The habit used by the least stressed straight-A students is to divide the study process into little chunks and drizzle these over the week preceding the exam. To guide this process, keep the following tips in mind:

5 Tips for Scheduling Your Studying

1. Load the bigger chunks of work toward the front of the schedule.
2. On the very first day of studying, however, use an ice-breaker: a task that takes only 30 minutes and is mindless, but, nevertheless, gets the ball rolling on the process.
3. Never prepare (organize notes, track down missed assignments) on the same day that you study.
4. Schedule any steps that involve filling in gaps in your knowledge early on in the process. This always takes more time than you expect.
5. Do very little work on the day of the exam. Use it only to make confidence-building reviews of the toughest material from your study guides.

For our sample scenario, this approach might lead to the following schedule:

• Saturday: Create a folder on your computer for the exam. Copy in all of the files containing lecture or reading notes notes that are fair game for the exam. (half an hour)
• Sunday: Transform notes into study guides. If you took notes in the question/evidence/conclusion format, this should really only involve copying questions from your notes documents to your study guide document. Keep a running list of gaps in your knowledge that need to be filled. Print out your study guides. (2-3 hours)
• Monday: Gap day. Bother friends for missed notes or to help explain ideas you didn’t follow. Strategically skim missed readings. Assuming you actually attend class and do readings this shouldn’t take all day. (2 – 3 hours).
• Tuesday: Quiz-and-Recall. (2 hours)
• Wednesday: Quiz-and-Recall. (2 hours)
• Thursday: Final Quiz-and-Recall (1 – 2 hours)
• Friday (Morning): Do quiz-and-recall on a handful of the hardest ideas to boost confidence. (half hour).

If you do the work described above you will be prepared to kick your exam in the balls and take home a top-in-the-class grade. Think, however, about what would happen if you waited until the day before. There is no way you could accomplish everything listed above. Gaps would remain unfilled. Material uncovered. Confidence un-boosted. By drizzling the work over many days you are able to fit in more preparation (not because you spend more hours, but because the hours are separated, making them more focused and thus more productive). More importantly, you are able to avoid any painful cram sessions.

This is a whole different approach to academic preparation. By eliminating the dreaded long study session, you eliminate a lot of the stress and discomfort of the college experience.

One of the most surprising traits I observed about top students is how little they actually study. Though we cover the specifics of their habits in great detail on this blog, I find it useful to occasionally step back and review some of the big picture ideas:

1. Smart students don’t study in long, unbroken stretches. You are more likely to find them studying in the morning and afternoon; often in small chunks, squeezed in between classes and other activities. Students have more energy early in the day, and by breaking up the work it’s easier to avoid mental fatigue — meaning that work gets done in less total hours.
2. Smart students don’t study in groups, dorms, or public areas. You will often find them, instead, in the most isolated possible library on campus — probably buried in a cubicle high up in the stacks. It’s easier to focus in isolation. When you focus, work gets done better, and, crucially, it gets done quicker.
   
3. Smart students don’t spend a lot of time studying. The bulk of time most students spend studying is dedicated to catching up on missed reading assignments, gathering notes from missed lectures, and trying to make sense of what they managed to jot down from the classes they did attend. Smart students try to get this work done as they go along. Among other things, this means they always attend class and do the most important reading assignments. They don’t just record information, but also, during the heat of the moment, try to process the information into the ideas they support. In other words, they do this thinking during class not the night before the test. They ask questions when unclear and often go to office hours to further clarify the professor’s thinking. It’s not unusual to find them remaining in the classroom for 5 minutes after the bell to clean-up their notes. The result: a lot less work to do come test time.

Gideon over at Scholastici.us just posted a study guide he generated to help prepare for a German test (pdf available here). I’m blown away by how slick this thing looks. By using Curio and Apple Numbers he was able to cram a lot of key information into an intuitive format. (For Windows users, he says One Note or Word would do the trick).

A good example of leveraging technology to make a basic concept (e.g., a concise study guide) more effective.

If you’re interested in the guest post I wrote for Gideon’s blog, click here to read it. It concerns how the word “study” is dangerous because it’s so scary and ambiguous — leading to more procrastination and less focused work.

This article was written for Study Hacks by Gideon from Scholastici.us. It’s part of a post swap that our two blogs are conducting this week. Expect more guest authors during this fall season — I’m a big believer in introducing diverse voices to our conversation.

Technology is a tricky thing, especially in this day in age, where it seems to hinder as much as it helps. Productivity, in particular, suffers from this particular problem more than most. It is in the bones of our culture to look at technology to solve our problems for us, so as we try to make sense of the innumerable events and responsibilities that befall us we look to technology to make it easier.

I won’t deny that I believe this to be, in general, a good way of looking at the problem. Technology is, itself, so much of the problem but it can also be part of the solution. Technology has us tethered in ways that previous generations could not even dream of, and the reach of our work and duties extend far beyond the eight hour day for many of us. Our goal, then, must be to use technology not to further tether us, but to free us from those fetters as much as possible.

While many areas of our lives may be enhanced by the sensible use of technology, some of our work remains directly in the area of elbow grease, and shows no sign of changing anytime soon. Studying and homework are very much in these categories. You can use tools to help with some of this, sure, but essentially you must still read the books and write the papers. So, let us discuss some ways in which we can help do that.

Go to the Library or some other quiet, comfortable place. I know, parking is a pain and if you live off campus, it’s a particular hassle, but go anyway. Plan to be there a couple of hours at least. If you’re at school daily, just build this into your daily schedule and make it easier on yourself.

Reading

I certainly advise students to have a laptop, but if this is a reading assignment, keep it in your bag. Don’t even open it or take it out. Also, turn your phone off if this is at all a possibility for you. Stick that in your bag, too. Take out a paper and a pen and the book in question, and get to work. Try to study in 45-50 minute periods, taking a 10-15 minute break every hour or so. You may want to put on some very light classical music on your ipod, just to drown out external distractions.

The trick here is not to let yourself become distracted. There are a lot of tips I can offer in reading and taking notes, but no webapp is going to read it for you and your Facebook addiction isn’t helping things either.

Writing and Research

Now, if you’re doing something like research or writing a paper there are a few things in a Luddite vein I can offer.

• Do not turn on your IM program or email.
• Do not go to any time-waster websites (Facebook, Myspace, Fark, YouTube, etc.) Just don’t go. If the urge is too powerful, use something Leechblock for your browser.
• If you do not need a web-browser open, don’t even use one. And if you have a hard time controlling your urges or being distracted, make use of a full screen text editor such as WriteRoom on a Mac or JDarkRoom on a PC.

Studying

I’ll let you in on my biggest secret for tests: create your own review sheet. Simple, fancy, whatever you need to put as much information in the smallest amount of space. Think about how the information is connected, and reflect those connections in your review sheets. Create charts, graphs, lists. Grab information from Wikipedia or what-have-you and include it (though just the facts, as the man says, you want this info to be concise!) You going over thirty pages of notes for a semester isn’t going to help – get what you need, leave the rest.

Combined with this, work out some way to test yourself on it. The easiest way is flash cards of some sort, but you could also create some tests for yourself. One of the benefits of creating these sorts of documents is you are working with the information even as you do this – a form of studying!
Now, print these out and take them to the library. Bring whatever other essential study aids you need – the book, laptop, etc. But keep them put away – use your study guide unless you realize you need more details or forgot to add something (and try to put that ON the study guide). You want everything you need in one place.

Conclusion

These three things are really the cornerstones of your education, and these low-tech ways of doing it are really pretty much the best way to do it. Technology is excellent at helping you manage your time, doing specific tasks, and just generally helping your life be a bit easier – but the vast majority of what you do in college is all about hard work, work you have to do yourself and most technology will serve only to be a distraction. Heck, a lot of the things that will impact your day to day life in college are rather simple things – like your choice in backpacks or what you carry around with you each day.

Some other articles I’ve written that may help you out:

• Scholastici.us Booknotes Sheet
• Flash Cards
• Backpack To Go
• The 5 Unusual Things That Will Make Your College Life Easier

[Sorry for the one-day delay in this week's Monday Master Class. I was down in New York City for the holiday weekend. Those of you students who regularly tune into WABC on Sunday mornings (e.g., none of you), may have seen me pitching some back-to-school advice.]

Most students who take technical courses figure out, rather quickly, that reviewing their weekly problem sets is crucial when preparing for a test. In How to Become a Straight-A Student, I take this one step further by discussing how to construct Mega Problem Sets (MPS), which include, in addition to your weekly homework, selected examples from your lecture notes. If you can answer the problems in every MPS, then you are more than prepared for your upcoming test.

Right?

Rewind to the summer of 2005, the period in which I wrote the bulk of the manuscript for Straight-A. I was chatting with a high school student about her A.P. chem class. She was having trouble. Having recently worked on the MPS chapter, I gave her the above advice.

“I tried that,” she said. “It didn’t work!”

After a little more explanation, the issue became clear. She had practiced and practiced until she could answer every single problem set problem without hesitation. But when the test came, and she was faced with new problems, she was stumped. As it turned out, in her zeal, she had simply memorized the steps of her specific sample problems. Without understanding the underlying concepts, this did little to prepare her to tackle new problems on a test.

From this experience was born…

The Technical Explanation Question

When constructing a MPS, you should add, in addition to the sample problems from problem sets and lecture, questions that ask you to explain the major concepts. When studying, you should lecture these answers out loud as if you’re teaching a class. If possible, get a private study room with a whiteboard.

Here are some types of technical explanation questions (TEQs) you might consider adding:

1. Explaining a general step-by-step process that is repeated in many sample problems. For example, in a calculus class you might have several examples of taking derivatives using the chain rule. Add a TEQ that asks you to explain how the chain-rule works.
2. Defining specific rules. Following our calculus example, we all remember that many well-known functions have specific derivatives that must be learned. A good TEQ might have you list each from memory (e.g., “List six common functions and their derivatives.”)
3. Annotating a complicated example. Given a complicated example of a certain type of problem, a good TEQ might have you provide detailed annotation on each step; explaining the logic behind each.
4. Reviewing rules for use. In many technical courses, a big part of the challenge is figuring out which technique to apply to a given problem. A good TEQ might have you discuss the criteria for choosing from a set of different techniques for a certain type of problem.

Adding TEQs seems like it will extend your study time. But, in the final accounting, they probably will help you learn the other sample problems faster, making up for the addition. More important, they provide the foundation for consistent high performance in challenging technical courses.

The August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science contains an interesting article titled: Increasing Retention Without Increasing Study Time (available free). It’s written by psychologists Doug Rohrer and Harold Pashler.

Here are some interesting observations from the study:

1. “[We found] a single session devoted to the study of some material should continue long enough to ensure that mastery is achieved but that immediate further study of the same material is an inefficient use of time.”
2. “In essence, overlearning simply provides very little bang for the buck, as each additional unit of uninterrupted study time provides an ever smaller return on the investment of study time…There are, however, situations in which overlearning is desirable. For instance, overlearning appears to be effective in the short term and therefore might be a fine choice for learners who do not seek long-term retention.”
3. “The benefit of distributing a fixed amount of study time across two study sessions—the spacing effect—depends jointly on the interval between study sessions and the interval between study and test.”
4. “In the first of these studies, students studied Swahili–English word pairs. The ISI [spacing between two study sessions] ranged from 5 minutes to 14 days, and the RI [the time after studying and before the test] was 10 days. ISI had a very large effect on test scores, with the 1-day ISI yielding the best recall.”

I’m not surprised to see a close correspondence between these results and what I observed of the straight-A students I studied. In particular, notice that Quiz-and-Recall eliminates overlearning by having students only revisit ideas that gave them trouble. Similarly, my claims that you should process information into ideas before recording them in your notes, and then study in small chunks spread over many days (explained here and here), fit nicely with the finding that separated study sessions perform far superior to one massed cram session.

(Thanks to Wray Herbert for finding this article)