A lot of students cram - they wait until the last minute, them in one evening they repeat the information again and again. But research show this itsn't good for long tem memory. Practice a little bit one day, then two days later.The btter idea is to space repetition. Practice a little bit one day, then put your flashcards away, then take them out the next day, then two days later. Study after study shows that spacing is really important.

Don't cram - space out your studying

It turns out that the mindsets predict how well students end up doing. Students with growth mindsets tend to stick with it, tend to preserve in the face of difficulty, and tend to be successful in challenging class. Students with fixed mindset tend not to.

Growth mindset vs Fixed Mindset: Part II

Retreiving information is what produces more robust learning and memory. And even when you can't retreive it - when you get the question wrong , it gives you an accurate diagnostic on what you don't know, and this tells you what you should go back and study. This helps guide your studying more effectively.

Ask yourself a lot of questions

On your first reading of something, you extract a lot of unerstanding. But when you do the second reading, you read with a sense of "I know this, I know this". So basically, you're not processing it deeply, or picking more out of it. Often the re-reading is cursory- and it's insidious, because this gives you the illusion that you know the material very well, when in fact there are gaps"

Don't just re-read your notes with a illusion of "I know this"

It turns out that mindsets perdict how well students end up doing.One is a fixed learning model. It says, " I have a certain amount of talent for this topic - say chemistry or physics and I'll do well until I hit that limit. Past that, it's too hard for me, and I'm not going to do well. The other mindset is a growth mindset. It says that learning involves using effective strategies, putting aside time to do the work, and engaging in the process, all of which help you gradually increase your capacity for a topic.

Growth mindset vs Fixed Mindset: Part I

Another strategy is, during a second reading, to try relating the principles in the text to something you already know about. Relate new information to prior information for better learning.

Connect new information to something you already know

A great strategy is making diagrams, or visual models or flowcharts. Anything that creates active learning generating understanding on your won - is very effective in retention. It basically means the learner needs to become more involved and more engaged and less passive.

Draw out information in a visual form

Keeping a correct card in the deck and encountering it again is more useful.Repeating the act of memory retreival is important. Studies show that keeping the correct item in the deck and encountering it again is useful. You might want to practice the incorrect items a little more, but repeated exposure to the onces you get right is important too.

Use flashcards

The majority of readers study by re-reading notes and textbooks - but the psychologists research, both in lab experiments and of actual students in classes, shows this is a terrible way to learn materical. Using active learning strategies - like flashcards, diagramming, and quizzing yourself is much more effective as is spacing out studying over time and mixing different topics together.

Ask yourself a lot of questions

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