hey guys welcome back to the channel if
you new here my name is Ellie I'm a
junior doctor working in Cambridge and
in this video I want to talk about how
you as a student can learn content for
the first time so if you're watching
this video then hopefully you've seen
two of my other videos on this channel
about evidence-based study tips the
first one is about effective recall and
the second one is about spaced
repetition and if you haven't seen those
videos they'll be linked here and there
and down below and everywhere I'd really
suggest you watch those videos first
because I've had literally hundreds of
messages from students all around the
world who've said that those videos have
changed their lives and changed their
study techniques to the point that
they're much more efficient and are
getting much better marks active recall
basically means testing yourself and
spaced repetition is basically you know
spacing your testing of yourself across
you know intervals over or over a period
of time but in these two videos I talked
about the evidence behind them and
explain exactly how you can go about
using active recall and using spaced
repetition to supercharge your study
techniques and to make yourself much
much more efficient and getting
information into your brain but that's
all well and good it's all well and good
knowing that we need to test ourselves
and we need to space our testing of
ourselves over time but a question that
I've got from a lot of people has been
how do you actually learn the content
for the first time and surely in order
to revise the content you have to learn
the content first and that's the
question that I'm gonna be trying to
answer in this video so the way I like
to think about it is that is essentially
just two components of learning and that
is step one understanding and step two
remembering so understanding plus
remembering equals good learning equals
good exam performance equals good real
life performance at whatever job or
whatever you're doing and saving lives
if you're a doctor or you're working in
that sort of trade or you know making
money for a rich corporate banker if
you're in the finance trade or or
whatever you like step one
understanding step two remembering so
I'm going to talk about those in turn
but first I want to make a point about
what not to do and the biggest mistake
that I've heard students make and that I
certainly used to make back in the day
and that I've seen loads of my friends
make is that we are very quick to rely
on memorization especially when you
first get introduced to flashcards or to
active recall ad testing yourself as a
general concept then you start thinking
oh my god I have no need to make notes
because making notes is not
as we know from the evidence behind it
more in my previous videos I know that
making notes is not very efficient I
know that testing myself is very
efficient therefore I'm gonna rock up to
my lectures and I'm gonna convert every
single thing the lecturer says into a
flashcard on Ankita the flashcard app or
Quizlet or whatever and then I'm gonna
make like a thousand different
flashcards for each of my lectures and
then I'm just gonna go through those
flashcards there's a problem with that
and that firstly you get too many
flashcards and secondly you're relying
on memorizing the stuff you're relying
on like rote learning it rather than
understanding the content and having
kind of a mental model of your subject
of your content in your head and that's
really the key thing the key thing is to
not rely on memorization but instead to
rely on understanding the stuff and then
only using rote memorization when you
absolutely have to to nail down those
random arbitrary facts that you couldn't
possibly understand so if you find
yourself making loads of flashcards for
every single lecture I think the key is
to really ask yourself do I really need
a flashcard to remember this and ideally
you want to try and remember it because
you understand the subject rather than
you're just trying to memorize bits and
bobs of it so let's now talk about
understanding and what that actually
means how do you define understanding I
don't know what the dictionary
definition is I'll put it up on
Wikipedia or whatever over here but the
way I like to think of it is that I know
I understand something if I can
competently explain it to a friend and
answer their questions about it so it's
kind of like when you are able to teach
something to someone then you know that
you truly understand it and that's
partly why I love teaching so much
because when I'm running a teaching
session for students in the year below
or you know 4th years or whatever I
really have to understand the subject
before I can competently run that
session and obviously I want to do a
good job therefore it really
incentivizes me to actively try and
understand the subject in advance and
that's the key question can you explain
it to a friend or you know some people
like to extend this analogy further I
think this is called the Feynman
technique can you explain it to a
five-year-old why obviously not
literally to a five-year-old but you
know to a layman with you know
reasonable competent command of your
language can you explain the subject to
them and when you can explain something
to someone else then you really know you
understand it all right so while editing
this video I realized that there was one
really important thing that I missed out
and actually this is the one thing that
I'd recommend everyone take away from
this video and that is that active
recall is not just for revising active
recall is also the best way of learning
and what do I mean by this I mean when
you're reading something in a book or
through your lecture slides or whatever
instead of passively reading it what I
would recommend and what all the
research recommends and what the author
is in that really good book make it
stick
recommend what everyone recommends is
that as you're reading stuff you are
actively testing yourself on that
content as you go along so let's say
you've read two paragraphs or something
you would stop close the book metaphor
if you look away and ask yourself
alright whatever I just learnt what are
the key ideas can i rephrase this in my
own words in medicine is very easy you
would think okay I've just read that we
need you know to give anticoagulation
drugs in someone with atrial
fibrillation okay why do we do that okay
so that's because a true fibrillation
means you're quivering of you're a tree
and that predisposes you to clot
formation therefore we need an
anticoagulant to thin the blood to stop
them from forming clots in their left
atrial appendage and that will stop them
from getting strokes wait a minute why
would it why would a clot go from the
left atrial appendage to give them a
stroke okay
I'm not quite sure about that then you
go back to the book and then you would
read it and work it out and then he
would be like okay fine I now get that a
clot in the left atrial appendage is
gonna cause a stroke by embolizing over
to the brain or to the lungs or whatever
and you're at like as you're going along
you are actively testing yourself on the
content active recall is not just
something you do once you've learnt the
content it is a fundamental part of
actually learning the content in the
first place and actually there's a bit
at the end of that really good book make
it stick which you should definitely
read there's a bit at the end where the
authors are showing like you know text
interviews from students that have used
techniques like active recall and spaced
repetition to massively boost up their
marks and there's quite a good passage
where they're interviewing a medical
student who got into medicine by some
weird route that meant he didn't have
like the basic science background that
all his classmates had and he ended up
being bottom of the class and he talks
in this book like towards the end he
talked about how the only way he knew
how to revise how to study stuff was to
read stuff in the book and when he
didn't understand it or when it didn't
stick he didn't know what to do because
all he'd been taught all he'd been using
for his whole life was just reading the
information over and over again and
actually what he says is that when he
started quizzing himself on the material
as he went along
in fact I'll read out the bit to you he
says I would stop and think okay what
did I just read what is it what is this
about I have to think about it well I
believe it happens this way the enzyme
does this and then it does that and then
I'd have to go back and check if I was
way off base or on the right track
and he goes on to say the process was
not a natural fit it makes you
uncomfortable at first if you stop and
rehearse what you're reading and quiz
yourself on it it just takes a lot
longer if you have a test coming up here
not in a week and so much to cover then
slowing down makes you pretty nervous
but the only way he knew of to cover
more material his established habit of
dedicating long hours to rereading
wasn't getting the results that he
needed as hard as it was he made himself
stick to retrieval practice and to
recall long enough to at least see if it
worked and then the guy goes on to say
you just have to trust the process and
that was really the biggest hurdle for
me was getting myself to trust it and it
ended up working really well for me
really well by the time he started a
second year young the student had pulled
his grades up from the bottom of the
class of 200 students to join the high
performers and has remained there ever
since and then they talked about how
this guy actually started mentoring
students on effective study techniques
and how you know people started coming
to him to learn how to study this guy
who was literally bottom of his class in
this medical school coming from a
background where he didn't really have
any basic science knowledge managed to
get to the top to the extent that people
were then asking him for help and all he
did was quiz himself and stuff as he
went along
ie active recall retrieval practice
testing yourself is not just for when
you've learned the material it's
actually a fundamental part of learning
the material in the first place you're
weaving this narrative you're building
this mental model in your head you're
telling yourself the story of your
content as you're getting through it not
just you know when it comes to the exam
right at the end so yeah let's go back
to the scheduled programming but of
course anyone who's had that experience
of understanding something like you can
go to a lecture on you cling in and you
can think oh my god wow that actually
makes sense and then you can revise once
and you can think oh my god yeah it
makes sense I fully understand it but
then you know a few weeks later you come
across it again and you're like ah okay
maybe I didn't understand it as well as
I thought I did because I just can't
remember any of it and that brings us on
to the second component of effective
learning and that is the remembering
component
and obviously if you've seen my previous
videos you know what I'm gonna say here
the two absolute key pillars of
remembering anything are active recall
are you testing yourself and spaced
repetition repeating that testing of
yourself over a period of time right so
active recalled I took much more about
this in the actual video about it but
you know just briefly it's all about
testing yourself you can do this in
loads of different ways you could write
questions for yourself like I do for
example I've got a little spreadsheet
where I write like loads of questions
for myself that I will then answer and
if I don't know the answer then I'll
just look it up so that saves me from
having to actually write out flashcards
you could write up flashcards if you
want takes a bit of time but it's worth
it if you can consistently maintain this
flash card habit every day or however
often you want to do it you can do that
thing where you grab a blank piece of
paper and make a spider diagram where
you write everything you know about that
subject in the spider diagram there's
loads of methods for active recall it
really doesn't matter what you do the
point is you need to be testing yourself
because the more you try and retrieve
that knowledge from your brain the
stronger those connections are going to
be encoded and therefore yeah you can
understand something one day but unless
you test your understanding of it ie
test yourself with questions or get
someone else to test you you're just
going to forget it because there's that
thing called the forgetting curve that
over time you just forget everything
that you've ever learned unless you
actually revisit it by testing yourself
so that's active recall space repetition
is you know if you do it one day then
you'll do it the next day and then you
know wait a week and you'll have
forgotten some of it and then you test
yourself again and then look up the
stuff that you didn't know and then you
know by that point you already know most
of it so then a month later you might
test yourself and the idea is that
you're interrupting the forgetting curve
at spaced intervals and the more you do
this you're after about three or four
repetitions of this over a period of
let's say a month or two you'll find by
the end of it that your forgetting curve
is very flat in that over time even
though you're not testing yourself
anymore you probably won't forget the
information and that's kind of the key
thing to spaced repetition is to
interrupt our forgetting curve so that
we keep stuff in our brains for a longer
period of time so yeah that's pretty
much all there is to it this is a very
short video I've died if you if you're
interested in like in-depth study tips
firstly read the book called make it
stick it's a book I'd recommend to every
single student anyway because it
explores all of the evidence behind you
know all these effective study
techniques in a really engaging format
and if you're interested in like diving
more in depth into a
effective learning techniques watch my
two videos about active recall and
spaced repetition those are like 25
minutes long each and we fully go into
the evidence but I just wanted to make
this video to address this issue of how
do we learn things in the first place
and the way we learn things is not by
jumping straight to making a flashcard
it's by understanding it's by being able
to explain it to a five-year-old being
able to explain to a friend being able
to answer their questions and
essentially forming within our brains
this mental model of our subject and
getting an idea of how everything fits
together in our own words ideally using
simple language without having to rely
too much on jargon so yeah I can't state
it more emphatically the key thing is to
understand screw memorization
memorization does not work consistently
and over the long term in an efficient
way but if you can understand something
and then use active recall and spaced
repetition to you know bolster your
understanding and built you know
maintain that foundation then you will
truly understand your subject and you'll
absolutely smash your exams and end up
saving lives or whatever you want to do
with your degree or whatever so yeah I
hope you found that useful if you've got
any other specific questions about study
techniques let me know in the comments
of this video and I'll be sure to do a
more kind of shorter videos where I
address these in depth but yeah if you
haven't seen the videos and active
recall and spaced repetition they'll be
linked down below and above there and
everywhere so please watch those and I
can pretty much guarantee that if you're
currently not happy with the results
that you're getting from your study
techniques and you start incorporating
more testing of yourself and more spaced
repetition I can pretty much guarantee
that your marks will improve almost
overnight so yeah I hope you found this
video useful if you liked it please give
it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed
to the channel yet then please consider
doing so have a lovely day and I will
see you in the next video goodbye
[Music]