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How to study for exams - Evidence-based revision tips — Transcript

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0:00Hey guys, welcome back to the channel.
0:01If you're new here, my name is Ollie.
0:02I'm a final year medical student at
0:03Cambridge University. And today we're
0:05kicking off a new series where I'm going
0:06to be sharing with you evidence-based
0:08revision tips. So, I'm going to be
0:09giving you advice on how you can prepare
0:10for your exams. But hopefully, I'll be
0:12backing up everything I say with
0:13evidence from studies that have been
0:15done in the field of psychology on
0:16students like you and me over the last
0:18100 years. No one ever really teaches us
0:20how to study. We tend to just go with
0:22what feels intuitively right. And as
0:24we'll see, uh, the research has shown
0:25that actually the techniques that
0:27students think are the most intuitive
0:29often tend not to be the ones that are
0:30actually the most effective. So if
0:32you've got exams coming up, then
0:33hopefully by the end of this video,
0:34you'll pick up some techniques that you
0:35can apply to your own studies to make
0:37everything a little bit more efficient
0:38and enjoyable. So let's jump into it.
0:40This is going to be the structure of the
0:41video. Firstly, I'm going to be talking
0:42about the three very popular revision
0:44techniques that are shown to be less
0:46effective in the literature, namely
0:47rereading, highlighting, and making
0:49notes/summarizing. Those are by far the
0:51most popular techniques, but they're
0:53also not very effective if you look at
0:54the evidence behind them. Secondly, I'm
0:55going to be introducing the concept of
0:57active recall, which is by far the most
0:58powerful effective study technique, and
1:00that involves like testing yourself and
1:02practicing retrieving information from
1:04your brain because the very act of
1:05retrieving information actually
1:06strengthens connections in the brain.
1:08And there's like a load of evidence
1:09behind this. And finally, in part three
1:11of the video, I'll be giving you some
1:12specific tips on how you can actually
1:14apply this active recall thing to your
1:15own study. So hopefully by the end of
1:16the video, you'll have some practical
1:17strategies that you can apply if you
1:19feel like it. As always, everything is
1:21going to be timestamped down below. So,
1:22if you want to skip to a certain bit of
1:23the video, feel free. But now, let's
1:24jump into it and let's talk about the
1:26three common but not very effective
1:28revision technique that students love to
1:29use.
1:31Let's start with rereading. Over here is
1:33going to be a list of some of the
1:34various studies that have been done that
1:35show that students really love rereading
1:37as like a really common revision
1:39technique. And if you, you know, look at
1:40what you've done for your own exams and
1:42ask your friends, you'll probably find
1:43out that rereading plays a big part of
1:45most people's exam preparation strategy.
1:47The question is, is rereading effective
1:49as a study technique? Uh, there have
1:50been lots of studies done about this. I
1:51will link some of them in the
1:52description below, but I'm not going to
1:54go into each of them in depth. Instead,
1:56I'm going to be quoting from a paper
1:57written by Professor Dunloski, uh, which
1:59was written in 2013, where he and his
2:00colleagues analyzed like hundreds of
2:02papers looking at all the research
2:03behind 10 different revision techniques.
2:06And this is what he had to say on the
2:07topic of rereading. He said, "Based on
2:09the available evidence, we rate
2:10rereading as having low utility.
2:12Although rereading is relatively
2:13economical with respect to time demands,
2:15when compared with other learning
2:16techniques, rereading is also typically
2:18much less effective, the relative
2:19disadvantage of rereading to other
2:21techniques is the largest strike against
2:23it and it's the factor that weighted
2:24most heavily in our decision to assign
2:26it a rating of low utility. So this
2:28professor who's a psychology professor
2:29and he and his colleagues have looked at
2:30hundreds of research papers looking at
2:32evidence-based revision techniques
2:34regards rereading your notes or
2:35rereading your textbooks as having low
2:37utility. He's saying that yeah, there's
2:38some limited evidence that rereading
2:40does work. It does improve retention.
2:41somewhat, but especially if you compare
2:43it to other techniques that you could be
2:44doing, rereading is pretty much a waste
2:46of time. Here's another quote from a
2:472016 paper that again looked at the
2:49evidence behind lots of study
2:50techniques. And this is what they had to
2:52say about rereading. They said, "A
2:53wealth of research has shown that
2:54passive repetitive reading produces
2:56little or no benefit for learning. Yet,
2:58not only was repetitive reading the most
3:00frequently listed strategy, it was also
3:02the strategy most often listed at
3:03students number one choice by a large
3:05margin. So, that's what I'm going to say
3:07about rereading for the time being. Um,
3:08I'm very happy to discuss all the
3:09evidence against rereading and against
3:11these other techniques. If you guys want
3:12to hear about that, just leave a comment
3:13down below and I'll do it. But I want to
3:15focus on stuff you can do rather than
3:16kind of just hopping on to stuff that
3:18you shouldn't be doing. So, we'll close
3:19that for now. Uh, rereading generally,
3:21according to the evidence, is pretty
3:23ineffective. It does sort of work, but,
3:25you know, compared to other things you
3:26could be doing, it's it's it's by no
3:28means the most efficient study tactic.
3:29Secondly, let's talk about highlighting.
3:31And either we highlight ourselves or we
3:32know friends who like to highlight their
3:33textbooks and the notes in pretty
3:35colors. Here is a list of studies that
3:36show that highlighting is a very popular
3:38revision strategy and I'll link these
3:39studies in the description below. So if
3:40you really want to read them, you can.
3:41But let's go back to Professor
3:42Dunloski's paper where again he looked
3:44at all the evidence around these and
3:45this is what he had to say about
3:46highlighting and underlining. He said,
3:48"On the basis of available evidence, we
3:50rate highlighting and underlining as
3:51having low utility. In most situations
3:53that have been examined and with most
3:55participants, highlighting does little
3:56to boost performance. It may help when
3:58students have the knowledge needed to
4:00highlight more effectively or when the
4:01texts are difficult. But it may actually
4:03hurt performance on higher level tasks
4:05that require inference making. You know,
4:07especially with art subject at GCSE and
4:09most subjects at Alevel and definitely
4:11everything at undergrad, all of these
4:12subjects require inference making. So
4:14highlighting, Professor Dowski is saying
4:16is probably not a very good tactic. He
4:17continues, he says, "Future research
4:19should be aimed at teaching students how
4:20to highlight effectively given that
4:22students are likely to continue to use
4:24this popular technique despite its
4:26relative ineffectiveness." So he's
4:28conceding in his paper that although,
4:30you know, the evidence shows that
4:31highlighting is not very good, to be
4:32honest, students are probably going to
4:34continue using it. And later on in the
4:36paper, he describes highlighting as a
4:38safety blanket that students like to
4:39have. I've experienced this. I'm sure
4:41you've experienced this as well. It it
4:42feels productive, doesn't it? Like, you
4:43know, going through a book and
4:44highlighting one thing in blue and one
4:45thing in yellow, one thing in orange. I
4:47used to do it all the time, but you
4:48know, the evidence says it's not very
4:49good. You know, we could be doing more
4:51efficient things. Finally, let's talk
4:52about summarizing or making notes.
4:54Again, a really, really popular
4:55technique that I have been using pretty
4:57much all my life, uh, and still use to
4:58this day, but I'm trying to phase it out
5:00because the evidence around summarizing
5:01and making notes is, you know, a bit
5:03equivocal. There are some studies that
5:04show that students that do summarizing
5:06well perform slightly better on exams,
5:08but it's really quite hard to test this
5:10because, as you can imagine, the quality
5:11of notes varies massively between
5:13students. And so that makes it quite
5:15hard to actually test a proper rigorous
5:17scientific study about it. In any case,
5:18Professor Dunloski again he and his
5:19colleagues tried. They looked at all the
5:21evidence around summarizing and making
5:22notes. And this is what they said. On
5:23the basis of the available evidence, we
5:25rate summarization as low utility. It
5:27can be an effective learning strategy
5:28for learners who are who are already
5:30skilled at summarizing. However, many
5:32learners, including children, high
5:34school students, and even some
5:35undergraduates, will require extensive
5:37training, which makes the strategy less
5:38feasible. What they're saying is that if
5:40you already know how to effectively
5:42summarize and make notes, which you
5:43might well do, although it tends not to
5:45be taught in schools or anything, if you
5:46already know that, then okay,
5:48summarization is probably going to help
5:49you. But even if that's the case, even
5:51if you're already quite pro at
5:52summarizing, it still falls about the
5:53middle of the pack when compared to
5:55other more effective revision
5:56techniques. But I think in general, the
5:57conclusion we should draw from this is
5:59that we are sort of wasting our time
6:01probably by making notes. Now, that's
6:04not to say that if you enjoy making
6:05notes that you shouldn't do it. Uh, you
6:06know, I enjoy making notes. I like
6:07having pretty colors. is I like, you
6:09know, doing trying to do a bit of, you
6:10know, calligraphy on them. You know,
6:11taking photos for the Instagram, my
6:13friends comment on like, "Oh, your notes
6:14are so pretty." But to be honest, I
6:16wouldn't want to make notes thinking
6:18it's an effective revision strategy. And
6:20I know looking back on the school days,
6:21a lot of my friends who were really into
6:22their notes, you know, they'd have these
6:24massive blue folders for chemistry and
6:26have absolutely beautiful notes. Those
6:27were the students that would spend hours
6:28and hours on a single topic and then
6:31kind complain sometimes about why stuff
6:33wasn't going in. So, yeah, making notes,
6:34summarizing sort of works, probably
6:36doesn't. evidence is a bit iffy about
6:38it. I think we should be avoiding it
6:39personally based on based on the results
6:41of of these review papers.
6:44All right, just to sum up what we've
6:45talked about so far, we've said that
6:46rereading, highlighting, underlining,
6:48and summarizing are probably not very
6:49effective revision strategies based on
6:51the evidence. So yeah, if we want to
6:52make our revision more efficient, we
6:53probably shouldn't be doing these three
6:55things that we all we all like to do. Uh
6:57we had a lecture about this in our
6:58second year of medicine and it was
6:59towards the end of the year when we had
7:00exams coming up and my mind was
7:02completely blown when I found out that
7:03highlighting and making notes was not
7:04very efficient. uh and talking to a lot
7:06of my friends, we were all we were all
7:08absolutely a gasast that like you know
7:09how how could we have survived these 22
7:11years of our life without knowing you
7:13know effective study techniques um and
7:15that we felt that a lot of our our own
7:17success in exams had had been in spite
7:19of our revision techniques rather than
7:20because of them. So you know hopefully
7:22at this point you're you're thinking
7:24that okay maybe we should be spending a
7:26little bit a little bit less time doing
7:28rereading highlighting and making notes.
7:29Uh let's now talk about active recall.
7:31And active recall is by far the most
7:33important technique that you can and
7:34should be using in order to make your
7:36studies more efficient. Active recall or
7:37active retrieval or practice testing,
7:39whatever you want to call it, basically
7:40involves retrieving facts from your
7:42brain, retrieving stuff from your brain
7:44because the very act of retrieving stuff
7:45from your brain actually strengthens the
7:47connections between the stuff in your
7:49brain. And this this was quite
7:50counterintuitive to me. For me anyway,
7:52I'd always kind of assumed learning was
7:54this sort of process whereby you put
7:56stuff into your brain. And the only
7:57purpose of getting stuff out of your
7:59brain was to, you know, ace that exam or
8:01get that A star or whatever. In fact,
8:02this cannot be further from the truth.
8:03And over a 100red years of research has
8:05shown that we learn far better by
8:07retrieving practicing retrieving stuff
8:09from our brains than by trying to, you
8:10know, put stuff back into our brain. So,
8:12what's the evidence behind this? Uh,
8:13let's go back to Professor Dunloski's
8:14review paper. You know, the one where he
8:16looked at hundreds of studies and, you
8:17know, decided that rereading,
8:18highlighting, and summarizing weren't
8:19very good. This is what these guys had
8:20to say about practice recall, active
8:22recall, practice testing. They said on
8:24the basis of the evidence described
8:26above, we rate practice testing as
8:28having high utility. Practice testing is
8:30not particularly timeintensive relative
8:31to other techniques and it can be
8:33implemented with minimal training.
8:35Finally, several studies have provided
8:36evidence for the efficacy of practice
8:38testing in representative educational
8:40contexts. So, this review paper that's
8:42looked at loads of studies again,
8:43they've said practice testing has very
8:45high utility. And in fact, if you read
8:47the paper, in their conclusions, they
8:48recommend that everyone, you know, start
8:50testing themselves more if they're not
8:52doing it enough already. Now, because
8:53this is really, really important, I'm
8:54going to be sharing with you three
8:55different studies that actually show
8:56this properly. Um, if you're already
8:58convinced by active recall at this
9:00point, you can skip to this timestamp.
9:01Um, and then at this time stamp, we
9:03we'll just be talking about the specific
9:05strategies that you can use to implement
9:06active recall in your studies. But if
9:08you're interested in the evidence, then
9:09uh continue watching this video and I'll
9:11explain some of the studies that have
9:12been done that convincingly show that
9:14active recall is by far a better
9:16revision strategy than pretty much
9:18anything else you can do. So let's start
9:19with this study from 1939, the start of
9:21World War II. Uh you know, this sort of
9:23research has been going back literally
9:24decades and decades. Um what they did is
9:27that they got groups of students and
9:29they made them learn a topic and then
9:30gave them a test either a week later or
9:32a day later. Now half of these students
9:35uh just kind of studied the material as
9:36they normally would. And these are their
9:38results. So you can see the the results
9:40were on about 50% for the high achievers
9:42and around sort of 30% for the bottom
9:44third of the group as decided by some
9:46other outcome measure. So that was half
9:47of the group. Uh they just studied the
9:48subject as they normally would have done
9:49and they got a test either a day later
9:51or a week later. Now the other half of
9:52the class study the content in exactly
9:54the same way. However, they had a
9:55practice test at the end of it and these
9:57are their results. So as you can see the
9:59guys that had the practice test did far
10:01better. you know, it's an increase of
10:02like 15% for the high achievers, an
10:04increase of like 10 to 15% for the for
10:06the bottom third of the class. Just
10:07having a practice test at the end of
10:08their study session improved their
10:10performance by 10 to 15%. And I don't
10:13know about you, but if I could improve
10:14my exam performance from by by 10 to
10:1615%, just by, you know, practice testing
10:18myself a bit at the end of each study
10:20session, I would certainly take that.
10:21But that's just one study. Let's talk
10:22about another study, a more recent one.
10:24This one's from 2010. And again, they
10:25split students up into two groups. One
10:27group we're going to have a practice
10:28test and the other group were just going
10:29to restudy the material using whatever
10:32method they wanted. Um most likely
10:34rereading, highlighting and summarizing
10:35which as we've seen from other studies
10:37are the most popular revision techniques
10:38for students. And this study was
10:39interesting because it tested students
10:41on both the facts and concepts. Here is
10:43the group that just restudied the
10:45material normally and these are their
10:46results. So, you know, hovering between
10:47kind of 30 and 40% because they just
10:48studied the material once and then, you
10:50know, had a had a test a week later. And
10:51here is the group that studied the
10:52material, had a little practice test at
10:54the end of it, and then had the same
10:55test a week later. And these are their
10:57results. And as you can see, you know,
10:58they're performing significantly better.
11:00For some, it's even an increase of like
11:0130% for the first group. A difference
11:03between 30% and 60%. And again, I don't
11:05know about you, but if I if I could get
11:07a 30% improvement in my exam score by
11:09practicing testing myself, uh, I would
11:11certainly take it and I would, yeah, be
11:13doubling down on that on that strategy
11:15as much as I possibly could. Finally,
11:16this is one of my favorite studies. This
11:17is done from 2011. And what they did was
11:19they split students into four different
11:20groups. They had to learn some material
11:22and then had a test at the end like a
11:23week later or something like that. The
11:24first group was just supposed to study
11:26the text uh the chapter once. The second
11:28group was just supposed to study it four
11:29times. The third group read the text
11:30once and then made a mind map. And the
11:32fourth group read the text once and then
11:34just tried to recall as much of the
11:36contents of the text as they possibly
11:37could. So we've got these four groups.
11:38Here are the results. So on verbatim
11:40questions I you know questions
11:41specifically from the text about factual
11:43things mentioned in the text. The group
11:44that studied it once performed the
11:45worst. As you can see the active recall
11:47group performed significantly better
11:48than the group that's that restudied it
11:49four times. This kind of tells me that,
11:51you know, if I just practice testing
11:53myself once, that's probably more
11:54effective than rereading this chapter
11:56four times. And rereading a chapter four
11:57times, it's such a common strategy that,
11:59you know, it's pretty pretty insane that
12:01you can get better results by just
12:03testing yourself once, by just reading
12:04it once and then just trying to recall
12:05as much of it as you can. Okay, so that
12:06was verbatim questions. Let's take these
12:08same groups of people and ask them
12:09inference questions. So questions that
12:10require you to kind of understand the
12:12text a bit more, not just retrieve
12:13isolated facts from it. And here are
12:14their results. As you can see, the group
12:16that studied it once performed the worst
12:17as as you'd expect because they only
12:19studied it once. Um, the active recall
12:21group performs the best. Um, and you
12:23know, the other groups perform perform
12:24all right. Again, active recall
12:27practicing just writing down as much as
12:28they could remember from the text
12:30improved their results significantly
12:31more than the students that have read
12:32the text four times. So, I think this is
12:33pretty solid evidence that that active
12:35recall is a really really useful
12:36strategy. But these guys being clever
12:38psychologists they had a third phase of
12:40the study and what they did was they
12:41like before doing any of this they asked
12:43the students what they think the results
12:46of the study would be. So they asked the
12:48students to kind of have a guess at you
12:50know which of these techniques would be
12:51the most effective and these are the
12:53results of that. So as you can see the
12:55students rated repeated study as being
12:57the most useful technique and they rated
12:59active recall as being probably the
13:01least effective one. So, this kind of
13:03goes to show that our own intuitive idea
13:05of what makes a good study technique
13:07does not match up with the evidence at
13:09all. We think that, you know, reading
13:11something over and over again, of
13:12course, that's going to, you know,
13:13increase our understanding, increase our
13:14retention of it. But actually, just
13:15reading it once and then just practicing
13:17testing oursel is just so much more
13:19efficient that it's it's insane that
13:21this isn't taught in schools more often.
13:22And there's a really good book called
13:23Make It Stick, uh, which I'll link down
13:25in the description below and which will
13:26pop pop up over here that you can read
13:28more about these sorts of techniques if
13:30you want. And they go into more in depth
13:31about the exact evidence behind these
13:33techniques. But even then, you know,
13:35they say that the two most important
13:37things are active recall, which we're
13:38talking about in this video, and space
13:39repetition, which we'll be talking about
13:40in the next video.
13:43Point. Hopefully, I've convinced you
13:44that rereading, highlighting, and
13:45summarizing/making notes are not very
13:47effective revision strategies, as judged
13:48by the evidence. Again, links in in the
13:50description below if you want to read it
13:51for yourself. And hopefully I've
13:52convinced you that active recall or
13:53practice testing is a really really
13:55useful technique and it's far more
13:56efficient than these other techniques
13:57that students enjoy using. Now we're
13:59going to be talking about specific
14:00strategies that you can use to apply
14:01active recall or practice testing in
14:03your own studies. And the first thing to
14:04say is that this is not really rocket
14:05science. Pretty much anything you do
14:07that requires you to use cognitive
14:09effort like use brain power to retrieve
14:11information that you have learned once
14:12already. Pretty much anything is going
14:14to be really really efficient for you.
14:15But having said that, I know a lot of
14:16you guys benefit from specific
14:17strategies. So here are three that I
14:18find useful personally. Number one is an
14:20app called Anki. And Anki is a flash
14:22card app that you might have heard of
14:23like loads of medical students use it.
14:25The idea behind that is that you make a
14:26fl like an online flash card and then it
14:28comes up and in your like practice
14:30session. But the special thing about
14:31Anki is that once once a flash card
14:34comes up, you can mark it as being easy,
14:36medium or hard. And depending on what
14:38rating you gave it, it comes up later on
14:40depending on what that rating was. So if
14:41you found a fact really easy to recall,
14:43maybe they'd ask you again in a day. If
14:45you found it hard to recall, they'd ask
14:46you again in 10 minutes. If you found it
14:47impossible to recall, they ask you again
14:49in one minute. And this kind of learns
14:50from your behavior, it kind of changes
14:51over time. So, as you progress through
14:53your studies, as you progress through
14:54your revision, some facts that are
14:56really easy, you might see them in two
14:57months time because the whole algorithm
14:59changes and it really uses this whole
15:01space repetition thing uh to great
15:02effect. I think I think Anki is really
15:04good for two things. Firstly, I think
15:05it's really good for memorizing
15:06particular facts. So, I used it a lot
15:08for anatomy back in the day whereas
15:10like, you know, what's the nerve supply
15:11for particular muscles, things like
15:12that. And I used it a lot for
15:13pharmarmacology. So learning the names
15:15of drugs and what they do and what the
15:16mechanism of action is. In my third year
15:17when I was doing psychology as a subject
15:19I also used Anki like a lot to memorize
15:21particular paragraphs for to like slot
15:24into my essays. Um on one side of the
15:26flash card I would have copy key and
15:27blunt 2011 and on the other side of the
15:29flash card I would describe the study
15:30that they did and the evidence behind it
15:32and what I was going to say about it. So
15:34therefore in the essay in the exam when
15:37I wanted to recall the carpian blunt
15:38study I would have kind of the
15:40information about it already memorized
15:42it. So, I used it to memorize chunks
15:43that I could then drag and drop into my
15:44essays effectively. One of my friends,
15:46he's a Cambridge medic. He it's got like
15:47first class every year. Uh he uses Anki
15:50for pretty much everything and and he
15:51said that he can't imagine getting
15:52through Cambridge without having used
15:54Anki. And instead of making notes and
15:55lectures, what he started doing now is
15:57just going directly to making the flash
15:58card. So yeah, if you're interested,
16:00please do check out Anki. It's free. I
16:02think you can pay a few pounds for the
16:03iOS version, but even if you don't want
16:04to pay, you can use the web version
16:06completely free of charge. I'll link it
16:07here and in the description below.
16:08Secondly, something that I like doing
16:09because I because I still can't quite
16:11break the habit that you know I enjoy
16:13making notes is that making notes with
16:15the book closed. So not like having the
16:17textbook open and making notes and
16:18making it all pretty and copy from the
16:20textbook like I used to do, but actually
16:22like learning a topic and then closing
16:23the book and then thinking, okay, how
16:25would I explain this topic, how would I
16:27kind of make my own notes on it? So then
16:28I write down as much as I can remember
16:30about the topic in a nice fashion with
16:32like pretty colors because that makes me
16:33feel good. And then afterwards I open
16:35the book and see the bits that I missed.
16:37And actually when I was preparing for my
16:38third year exams in in third year I did
16:40psychology. I ended up that was by far
16:42my best performance like ever in my life
16:44on on any exams. And I think the reason
16:45behind that was that because I very
16:47aggressively used these two techniques
16:48of space repetition and active recall.
16:50So what I did I made about 50 different
16:52essay plans initially uh earlier on in
16:54the year and then in order to commit
16:55those to memory I just drew spider
16:57diagrams with with the book closed. So,
16:59I would have a spider diagram for each
17:01essay plan and I just drew out as much
17:02of it as I could possibly remember. And
17:04then afterwards, when I was done with
17:06it, I'd look at my actual essay plan and
17:08fill out the bits that were missing. And
17:09I repeated this over over the course of
17:11like 2 months leading up to the exams.
17:13And by the end of it, by the by the time
17:14the exam came around, I had these 50
17:16really really good essays in my head
17:17that had like 10 references each and was
17:19able to just kind of vomit them onto the
17:20paper in the actual exam. So, I would
17:22fully endorse uh this whole making
17:24notes, making spider diagrams with the
17:25book closed as being a really effective
17:27method of active recall. and and and
17:28there is actually some evidence behind
17:29this. Again, it's in the book, Make It
17:31Stick. Uh it's also in Professor
17:32Dowski's paper. You can read it down
17:33below. Finally, I want to talk about a
17:35third strategy, and that's an
17:36alternative to making notes. I know that
17:38this whole making notes thing, it's
17:39really hard to not make any notes. These
17:41days, if I'm in a lecture or if I want
17:44to learn something, instead of making
17:45notes from the lecture or from the
17:47textbook, what I instead do is that I
17:49write questions for myself. And I think
17:50this is called like the Cornell
17:52note-taking method. I came across that
17:53earlier today when when we when
17:54researching stuff for this video. The
17:56idea is that you write questions for
17:57yourself based on the material such that
17:59when you revise the material, you look
18:01at your questions and you try and
18:02actively answer them in your head or on
18:04paper or out loud or whatever. The point
18:05is that instead of passively rereading
18:07or highlighting the information like we
18:08are tempted to do, we have to engage in
18:10cognitive effort to retrieve this
18:12information from our brains and that
18:14strengthens the connections between the
18:15information. It makes us more likely to
18:16remember it and to understand it. So I
18:18actually gave a talk about this
18:19evidence-based revision thing like three
18:21years ago when I was when I was a third
18:22year. Uh and a friend of mine who was a
18:24first year medic at the time after this
18:25talk he had about two months left until
18:27the exams and he decided that the only
18:29technique he was going to use was to
18:30just write questions for himself. So for
18:32the entire Cambridge first year medical
18:33syllabus he wrote himself like a list
18:34ofund and something questions and each
18:36night before bed he would just kind of
18:37go through them and his revision
18:39technique was pretty much just answering
18:40these questions and he ended up coming
18:41second in the year out of like the whole
18:43cohort. He's very intelligent in itself,
18:45but I but talking to him afterwards, he
18:47he put a lot of faith in this method of
18:49writing questions for yourself because
18:50writing questions for yourself makes you
18:51engage in cognitive effort and kind of
18:53the more the more brain power it takes
18:55to recall a fact, the better strengthen
18:56that connection seems to get according
18:58to the evidence at least. So yeah,
18:59instead of kind of writing notes from
19:01the textbook or from the revision guide
19:02or from the lecture notes, maybe try
19:04this method where you're writing
19:05questions for yourself and then when
19:07you're revising the topic using
19:08hopefully space repetition, which we'll
19:09talk about in the next video, when
19:10you're when you're revising the topic,
19:11then you can just answer the questions
19:13in your head. And I find this to be a
19:14really really effective strategy for
19:15getting lots of information into your
19:17head very quickly and hopefully you can
19:18find it useful as well. So that brings
19:20us to the end of this video. I really
19:22hope you found some of this useful. Um,
19:24just to summarize, we've talked about
19:25why rereading, highlighting,
19:27underlining, and summarizing/making
19:28notes are probably not very efficient
19:30revision techniques. If you're using
19:32them, I'm not saying you're doing it
19:33wrong. Uh, I'm just saying that, you
19:34know, if you're using these techniques,
19:35which most of us do, and you think in
19:37yourself that your revision is not very
19:39effective or you're not really getting
19:40the results that you want, then maybe
19:41it's time to rethink some of these
19:42strategies. Feel free to continue using
19:44them. But, you know, what I would say is
19:45that use them, but alongside do practice
19:47testing, test yourself more, and then
19:48use space repetition and interle
19:50practice. Those are the three things
19:51we'll be talking about in in future
19:52videos as well. So yeah, hopefully you
19:54found this video useful. We talked about
19:55why those three particular strategies
19:56are not very effective. We talked about
19:57some of the evidence behind active
19:59recall. I quoted three studies at you
20:01and I've given you lots of links in the
20:02in the description below if you want to
20:03read more about this. The book Make It
20:05Stick is really good as well. And
20:06there's also a few podcast episodes that
20:07I've been listening to recently in
20:08preparation for this video that I'll
20:09link below. So you can find loads and
20:11loads of people around the world who've
20:13looked at all the evidence who are
20:14saying exactly the same thing. They're
20:15saying that most revision techniques
20:16students like to use like rereading,
20:18underlining, and making notes are not
20:19very effective. and they're saying that
20:20by far the most effective techniques are
20:21active recall and space repetition. So
20:23hopefully you can apply those to your to
20:25your own revision. And I've given you
20:27three possible ways to do it. But to be
20:28honest, pretty much anything that you do
20:30that requires you to retrieve
20:32information from your brain is going to
20:33be an effective revision strategy. So
20:35yeah, uh I really hope you like this
20:37video. Thank you very much for watching.
20:38If you like the video, if you found it
20:40useful, please give it a thumbs up or
20:41leave a comment down below. Uh that
20:42would be really nice. If you have any
20:43questions at all, uh again, leave a
20:45comment down below and I'll try and be
20:46as evidence-based as I can in my answers
20:48to you guys. So yeah, thanks very much
20:50for watching. Please subscribe to the
20:51channel if you are not already
20:52subscribed and I will see you in the
20:54next video and all the best with your
20:55revision. I really hope you smash it.

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