We know a lot about study strategies—how they can be used to improve exam performance and promote a deeper understanding of the material. We also know that many students are attempting to learn course content without particularly strong study skills. They procrastinate and have short attention spans. If they read, they spend lots of time haphazardly highlighting large passages. And they equate memorizing with understanding. If these approaches to studying don’t work, what about the ones that do?
The research enterprise has much to offer. It includes concrete evidence that certain ways of studying are more effective than others. Self-testing, regular review, review of several topics during a study session, elaborating, and explaining to others are among the strategies that improve performance on exams and promote deeper understanding and better long-term retention. Teachers can play an important role in helping students develop study skills that promote success in college and translate into increasingly necessary lifelong learning skills.
The resources below comprise a small collection of the work that’s been done on study strategies. They are representative of the findings. All the articles are well referenced and can lead those interested to a wide range of other studies and resources on study strategies and related topics. Many of the articles in this collection have been highlighted in the Teaching Professor newsletter and its associated blog. Links to those fuller descriptions of the study are included in the reference, when available.
Background: Good overviews of the research on learning generally
Benassi, V. A., Overson, C. E., & Hakala, C. M. (Editors). (2014). Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology website: http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/asle2014/index.php
- Here’s an amazing free resource with chapters summarizing much of the current research on learning with many chapters written by those doing the research and with suggestions for implementing what the research has established.
- If you don’t have time to get through the entire 300-page book, then how about one chapter? Stephen Chew’s chapter, “How to Help Students Get the Most out of Studying,” is the one not to miss. He starts by dissecting the mistaken assumptions students make about studying and moves from there to a succinct discussion of what teachers can do to promote the use of good study strategies.
Halpern, D. F, and Hakel, M. D. (2008). Applying the science of learning to the university and beyond: Teaching for long-term retention and transfer. Change, July/August, 36-41.
- This well organized and clearly written article identifies 10 research-based learning principles that enhance long-term retention and transfer.
How do students study?
Blaisman, R. N., Dunlosky, J., and Rawson, K. A. (2017). The what, how much, and when of study strategies: comparing intended versus actual study behavior. Memory, 25 (6), 784-792.
- Researchers were interested in what specific strategies students use to learn, understand, and remember course content, how much time students spend studying, and when, as in what times during the course, do they study. “Our results indicate that during the semester, students rely on relatively ineffective strategies and mass their studying the day or two before an exam.” (p. 784)
Hora, M. T. and Oleson, A. K. (2017). Examining study habits in undergraduate STEM courses from a situative perspective. International Journal of STEM Education, 4 (1), 19 pages.
- Students in undergraduate science courses were asked to describe in as much detail as possible how they studied in this course. The researchers found that studying was not “easily distilled into a set of discrete strategies” (p. 6/19) but was a multi-faceted process. They also found that these students persisted in using “low-impact” strategies, such as re-reading.
- This Teaching Professor article has more details about the research. Read more »
Sebesta A. J. and Speth, E. B. (2017). How should I study for the exam? Self-regulated learning strategies and achievement in introductory biology. Cell Biology Education—Life Sciences Education, 16 (2), 1-12.
- Students in an introductory science course were asked what self-regulated study strategies they used. Researcher then looked which of those were associated with higher achievement and how students proposed to study for future exams. They found students had “limited knowledge” of self-regulated strategies and a limited ability to implement them.
- This Teaching Professor article has more details about the research. Read more »
Which study strategies does the research say are most effective?
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J. and Willingham, D. T., (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14 (1), 4-58.
- This lengthy, but very well-organized article, authored by an impressive collection of cognitive psychologists, reviews research on 10 study strategies. Study strategies rated “high” included distributed practice (the opposite of cramming) and practice testing. Interleaved (mixed up) practice, elaborative interrogations, and self-explanations were rated as “moderate.” Among those strategies given low ratings were highlighting and re-reading, two of students’ favorite strategies.
- This Teaching Professor article has more details about the research. Read more »
How much do students and faculty know about evidence-based study strategies?
Hunter, A. S., and Lloyd, M. E. (2018). Faculty discuss study strategies, but not the best ones: A survey of suggested exam preparation techniques for difficult courses across disciplines. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4 (2), 105-114.
- 123 faculty across a range of disciplines were asked to think of the most difficult course they teach and then share what information they gave to students about how to study. Ninety-one percent study information. However, more than 50 percent recommended passive study strategies like re-reading and reviewing. “There is great room for improvement in the information being delivered in college classrooms regarding exam preparation.” (p.110)
McCabe, J. (2011). Metacognitive awareness of learning strategies. Memory and Cognition, 39 (3), 462-476.
- “This research suggests that undergraduates were largely unaware of several specific strategies that could benefit memory for course information.” (p. 462)
Morehead, K., Rhodes, M. G., and DeLozier, S. (2016). Instructor and student knowledge of study strategies. Memory, 24 (2), 257-271. [For a version of the scenarios used in this research see A Quiz on Study Strategies that Support Student Learning.]
- On the basis of responses to survey questions and scenarios, these researchers conclude, “Our results suggest that instructors and students have modest knowledge of optimal study strategies and differ little in this regard.” (p. 268)
Are there approaches that get students using more effective study strategies?
Chen, P., Chavez, O., Ong, D. C., and Gunderson, B. (2017). Strategic resource use for learning: A self-administered intervention that guides self-reflection on effective resource use enhances academic performance. Psychological Science, 28 (6), 774-785.
- Prior to exams in a statistics course, students were given a list of 15 study resources, asked which ones they planned to use, why they thought those were useful, and how they planned to use them. Students who experienced this treatment condition reported “being more self-reflective about their learning throughout the class, used their resources more effectively and outperformed students in the control condition by an average of one-third of a letter grade in the class.” (p. 774)
Dang, N., Chiang, J., Brown, H., and McDonald, K. (2018). Curricular activities that promote cognitive skills impact lower-performing students in an introductory biology course. Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, 19 (1), 1-9.
- Three curricular interventions were used to promote metacognitive skills development in an introductory biology course. Students completed pre-lecture assignments, participate in collaborative group work (discussions and group quizzes), and an exam review assignment in which students corrected missed questions, diagnosed reasons for their mistakes and explored their study strategies. “Our findings suggest that assignments designed to promote metacognition can have an impact on students over the course of one semester and may provide the greatest benefits to lower-performing students.” (p. 1/9)
A sampling of the evidence supporting individual strategies shown to improve performance and promote learning
Study Groups
McCabe, J. A. and Lummis, S. N. (2018). Why and how do undergraduates study in groups? Scholarships of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4 (1), 27-42.
- In a cross disciplinary cohort of 463 students at 38 different institutions, 78 percent said they participated in at least one study group per semester. The top three study strategies students reported using in these groups were: asking each other questions, discussing course materials, and quizzing each other, all of which are evidence-based strategies. More than 60 percent said their level of learning in study groups was somewhat more or a lot more than when studying individually. Almost 70 percent said that study groups increased their motivation to study.
- This article has more details about the research. Read more »
Test-Enhanced Learning
Brame, C. J. and Biel, R. (2015). Test-enhanced learning: The potential for testing to promote greater learning in undergraduate science courses. Cell Biology Education—Life Sciences Education, 14 (Summer), 1-12.
- These authors identify six benefits that accrue when student “test” themselves on course materials including repeated retrieval practice, needing to find the correct answer and overall improved approaches to study.
- This Teaching Professor article has more details about the research. Read more »
Batsell Jr., W. R., Perry, J. L., Hanley, E., and Hostetter, A. B., (2017). Ecological validity of the testing effect: The use of daily quizzes in introductory psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 44 (1), 18-23.
- Regular quizzes show the same benefits as self-testing. In this study students in the experimental section had the same content and reading assignments plus a graded quiz every class session. The control and experimental sections each took three exams. Some those questions were the same questions used on the quiz, some were similar, and some were entirely new questions. The quiz section “scores were significantly higher than the control class” (p. 21) and they were higher on all three types of questions.
- This Teaching Professor article has more details about the research. Read more »
Distributed Practice
Benjamin, A. S. and Tullis, J. (2010). What makes distributed practice effective? Cognitive Psychology, 61 (3), 229-228.
- “The effects of distributing practice are extremely robust and cross-cutting. The advantages are evident in basic memory tasks using words and pictures, in motor skill acquisition and with more complex educationally relevant materials.” (pp. 228-229)
Interleaving
Rohrer, D. (2012). Interleaving helps students distinguish among similar concepts. Educational Psychology Review, 24 (3), 355-367.
- “In a number of experiments that have compared interleaving [mixing up what’s being studied] and blocking [study only similar items], interleaving produced better scores on final tests of learning. The evidence is limited, though, and ecologically valid studies are needed. Still, a prudent reading of the data suggests that at least a portion of the exposures should be interleaved.” (p. 355)
