TED-ED: 3 TIPS ON HOW TO STUDY
EFFECTIVELY
Medical Training and Study Techniques
During their training, medical residents learn countless techniques,
surgeries, and procedures which they’ll later use to save lives. Being
able to remember these skills can quite literally be a matter of life and
death. With this in mind, a 2006 research study took a class of surgical
residents learning to suture arteries and split them into two groups. Each
received the same study materials, but one group implemented a small
change in how they studied them.
And when tested one month later, this group performed the surgeries
significantly better than the other residents. We’ll discuss the secret to
that group’s success, along with two other highly effective study
techniques which can be applied both in and out of the classroom. But to
understand why these methods work, let's first unpack how the brain
learns and stores information.
How the Brain Stores Information
Say you're trying to memorize the anatomy of the heart. When you’re
introduced to a new concept, the memory is temporarily encoded in
groups of neurons in a brain area called the hippocampus. As you
continue to learn about workings of the heart in class or study its
chambers for an exam, you reactivate these same neurons. This repeated
firing strengthens the connections between the cells, stabilizing the
memory. Gradually, the knowledge of heart anatomy is stored long-
term, which involves another brain area known as the neocortex.
How information is transferred from short-term to long-term storage is
still not completely understood, but it’s thought to happen in between
study sessions and perhaps most crucially during sleep. Here the new
knowledge is integrated with other related concepts you already know,
such as how to measure heart rate, or the anatomy of other organs. And
the process doesn’t end there.
Each time you recall heart anatomy, you reactivate the long-term
memory, which makes it susceptible to change. The knowledge can be
updated, strengthened, and reintegrated with other pieces of information.
This is where our first study technique comes in.
1. Active Recall Through Testing
Testing yourself with flashcards and quizzes forces you to actively
retrieve knowledge, which updates and strengthens the memory.
Students often prefer other study methods, like rereading textbooks and
highlighting notes. But these practices can generate a false sense of
competence, since the information is right in front of you.
Testing yourself, however, allows you to more accurately gauge what
you actually know. But what if, while doing this, you can’t remember
the answers? Not to worry—making mistakes can actually improve
learning in the long term. It’s theorized that as you rack your brain for
the answer, you activate relevant pieces of knowledge. Then, when the
correct answer is later revealed, the brain can better integrate this
information with what you already know.
2. Interleaving Study Subjects
Our second technique builds on the first. When using flashcards to
study, it's best to mix the deck with multiple subjects. Interleaving, or
mixing the concepts you focus on in a single session, can lead to better
retention than practicing a single skill or topic at a time.
One hypothesis of why this works is that, similar to testing, cycling
through different subjects forces your brain to temporarily forget, then
retrieve information, further strengthening the memory. You may also
find connections across the topics, and better understand their
differences.
3. Spacing Out Study Sessions
Now that you know how and what to study, our final technique
concerns when. Spacing your review across multiple days allows for rest
and sleep between sessions.
While “offline,” the brain is actively at work, storing and integrating
knowledge in the neocortex. So while cramming the night before the
exam may seem logical—after all, won’t the material be fresh in your
mind?—the information won’t stick around for the long term.
This brings us back to our medical residents. Both groups studied the
surgery for the same amount of time. Yet one group’s training was
crammed in a single day, while the other more successful group’s
training was spread over four weeks.
Why These Techniques Work
The reason all three of these study techniques work is because they’re
designed with the brain in mind. They complement and reinforce the
incredible way the brain works, sorting through and storing the
abundance of information it’s fed day after day.
