Study Strategies

Which study strategies make the grade?

Students everywhere, put down those highlighters and pick up some flashcards! Some of the most popular study strategies -- such as highlighting and even rereading -- don't show much promise for improving student learning, according to a new report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

If I understand correctly, basically they support flashcards and practice tests (spread over time). Looking at the successes and failures, it seems that the more effective techniques (in their study) are those which directly mimic performance (on a test) rather than those like highlighting and summarizing which try to make sense of the material. My suspicion is that we're not comparing apples and oranges but rather axes and hammers -- different tools which should be used at different times for different tasks by different students; so I'd advocate computerized highlighters (as in the Kindle) and computerized flashcards (all kinds of software available) linked to self-tracking software (based on Google spreadsheet forms, or the equivalent.) Your mileage may vary, so you should keep track of it.