Use what scientists know about how the brain learns 

to help you study and learn new things

Memories are created and strengthened by practice – the neural networks that memories create can fade when you don’t use them, so frequent, spaced practice helps solidify them.

Here are some metacognitive approaches to firming up those neural pathways:

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE – active remembering, lots of ways to do it

SPACING – studying for shorter periods of time, more often, rather than cramming

INTERLEAVING – doing different kinds of activities in the same study session

 ACTIVE LEARNING – don’t just ‘go over’ your notes, or reread stuff; find ways to make your brain work at it and remember – reading and going over information is recognition, NOT recall!

Telling someone else about what you’re learning is a good way to self-test and organize your thoughts

SLEEP – it’s not just a time to rest, but a period when your brain cleans out unnecessary stuff from your day. It also sorts through memories and keeps and reinforces the ones you’ve worked on.

Study in different places if you can – the effort your brain makes to keep you focused and not distracted by the environment helps strengthen memory skills

Studies show that students who do at least some of their studying in groups improve their learning – but have a plan for the session!

Specific strategies you can use for this class

Flash cards - even though you won't have to memorize images, it can help you get familiar with them if you use them.

Images – image on one side, identification (title, period and region) on the other side

Terms – term on one side, definition (including any specifics like period, or placement in a building, for example)

            You can of course use the cards for retrieval practice, but you can also use them to build a network in your head by shuffling image cards, laying them out in chronological order (by period), and then matching term cards to the images.

Practice trying just to remember the images! When you’re standing in line somewhere, or waiting for something, see if you can remember the images from the culture we’re studying, by culture or by period, even if you don’t have access to your notes or the internet. The act of trying to remember helps cement those memory pathways in your brain.

Other things you can do:

Take notes on the readings and on the videos! When we have our live (synchronous) meetings, we'll be doing some activities where I'll ask you questions and we'll talk through things. NO LECTURE! So come prepared to engage!

 Don’t try to study/work for more than 30 minutes at a time, because your brain can’t focus longer than that. 

You may want to schedule a separate 30 minute session to do some of the things I’ve mentioned above (spacing). In the 30 minute study session, don’t do the same thing the entire time – mix it up with different activities (interleaving). It makes your brain work a bit harder, which is a good thing when you’re trying to learn something. Ideally you would schedule the study sessions every other day.

Study in a group after you’ve done work on your own – explaining things to other people is a form of retrieval practice. You can exchange practice test questions right before the test as a way to practice, too.

 From https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-students-forget-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

Peer-to-peer explanations: When students explain what they’ve learned to peers, fading memories are reactivated, strengthened, and consolidated. This strategy not only increases retention but also encourages active learning (Sekeres et al., 2016).

1. The spacing effect: Instead of covering a topic and then moving on, revisit key ideas throughout the school year. Research shows that students perform better academically when given multiple opportunities to review learned material. For example, teachers can quickly incorporate a brief review of what was covered several weeks earlier into ongoing lessons, or use homework to re-expose students to previous concepts (Carpenter et al., 2012; Kang, 2016).

2. Frequent practice tests: Akin to regularly reviewing material, giving frequent practice tests can boost long-term retention and, as a bonus, help protect against stress, which often impairs memory performance. Practice tests can be low stakes and ungraded, such as a quick pop quiz at the start of a lesson or a trivia quiz on Kahoot, a popular online game-based learning platform. Breaking down one large high-stakes test into smaller tests over several months is an effective approach (Adesope, Trevisan, & Sundararajan, 2017; Butler, 2010; Karpicke, 2016).

3. Interleave concepts: Instead of grouping similar problems together, mix them up. Solving problems involves identifying the correct strategy to use and then executing the strategy. When similar problems are grouped together, students don’t have to think about what strategies to use—they automatically apply the same solution over and over. Interleaving forces students to think on their feet, and encodes learning more deeply (Rohrer, 2012; Rohrer, Dedrick, & Stershic, 2015).

4. Combine text with images: It’s often easier to remember information that’s been presented in different ways, especially if visual aids can help organize information. For example, pairing a list of countries occupied by German forces during World War II with a map of German military expansion can reinforce that lesson. It’s easier to remember what’s been read and seen, instead of either one alone (Carney & Levin, 2002; Bui & McDaniel, 2015).