Teaching Effective Learning Strategies

By: Megan A. Sumeracki, PhD M.A. Sumeracki is assistant professor of psychology, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island. Even by the time I reached college at Purdue University, no one had taught me how to study effectively. I was a diligent student, so I blocked off time to engage with my course material and get all of my homework and other projects done, but during my study sessions, I would just look over the material. I continued to read and reread my notes, all while trying hard to force the information into my head. It wasn’t until my junior year, when I started working on my honors thesis and became interested in cognitive psychology and effective learning strategies, that I discovered I was studying all wrong. It turns out that cognitive psychologists had been systematically investigating the best ways for students to independently learn for decades. They developed six key strategies that I cover in my recent Last Page for Academic Medicine—including spacing, concrete examples, and retrieval practice—that have a lot of evidence suggesting they help students learn, and there was a pretty significant body of evidence to show that rereading my notes wasn’t actually effective. I began sharing what I was learning with friends and family, like spacing. I created detailed study schedules, making sure to study for each class every few days (even when I didn’t have an exam coming up), and I made sure to study both old information and new information. My youn...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective assessment medical education medical students self-assessment Source Type: blogs