Hi, I’m Dr. Stephen Chew. I’m a professor of psychology here at Samford University.
This is the third in a series of five videos on how to study effectively in college.
Effective studying is more than just a matter of having a desire to learn and devoting sufficient
time and effort. Students have to utilize effective learning strategies. If they use
ineffective strategies, they can study long and hard and still fail. In this video, I’ll
explain the basic principles of how people learn best, and how you can apply these principles
to improve your study effectiveness. As we saw in the earlier videos, you can be
highly motivated to learn, but if you use a shallow learning strategy, you simply won’t
learn. Shallow learning strategies focus on superficial
aspects like memorization. But if you use a deep learning strategy which focuses on
meaning and comprehension and visual imagery, then you will learn whether you intend to
or not. So if deep processing is the key to effective
study, how do we accomplish this while we’re studying? Here are some basic principles for
achieving deep processing, and a question which will allow you to satisfy each principle.
First, elaboration means making meaningful associations between the concept you are studying
and related concepts. The associations can be among concepts you are studying or with
your prior knowledge. The more meaningful associations you can make, the better you
will learn. Next, distinctiveness means that you make clear contrasts between the concept
you are studying and other concepts. You need to understand the key differences among related
concepts.
Say you’re in a general psychology class and you are learning about short-term and
long-term memory. You elaborate the two by relating them together. They both hold information
for later use. You also emphasize the distinctiveness between the two by focusing on the key differences.
One has a limited capacity and the other has an unlimited capacity. One has very rapid
forgetting. The other has much slower forgetting.
Finally, you relate it to your own personal experience. I meet people at parties. I forget
their names a few seconds later because of short-term memory. I still remember that time
I got lost in the mall as a child because of long-term memory.
The last aspect of deep processing is practicing appropriate retrieval and application of the
material. By appropriate, I mean that you practice recalling the information and using
the information in the way that your teacher expects you to be able to do. If the teacher
expects you to solve real-world problems, then you need to practice recalling and using
information in that way. If your teacher expects you to analyze hypothetical situations, you
need to practice doing that. Instead of reading the material over and over, close your book
and notes, and recall as much of the information as you can. Write it down. Explain it to a
friend. Take advantage of questions the textbooks often have at the end of a chapter that ask
you to review the information. Or, take advantage of textbook websites that often have review
tests. Now one thing I have told you not to do is to memorize isolated facts. Here is
the exception to that rule. If, for some reason, your teacher tests you over exact wording
of isolated facts, then memorize isolated facts.
So these are the basic principles of deep processing. Effective study strategies take
advantage of some or all of these principles. Good students have multiple ways of studying
depending on the teacher and the subject, but all their study strategies are based on
these principles. You will have to figure out the best study strategies for yourself,
and in the next video, we will discuss some possibilities. But no matter what you do,
they should be rooted in these principles. Here are two other important concepts you
need to understand for effective learning: automaticity and overlearning. An automatic
process is one that is so highly practiced that you can do it without any conscious thought
or effort. Like driving a familiar route, where you arrive at your destination without
even thinking about it. Any task that is practiced enough can become automatic, including study
skills.
When you get to college, you bring high school skills that are automatic. Developing effective
college skills involves not just developing more effective skills, but overcoming those
high school skills that are automatic and overlearned. Overcoming those high school
skills is a big reason why developing effective college-level study skills is so effortful
and takes so long. For most students, it takes conscious effort over weeks or even months.
I have had students who have seen immediate improvement using the principles of deep processing.
And if that happens to you, be pleasantly surprised. But for most, it is a process of
ongoing improvement. You need to develop these skills and practice them over a long period
of time. The good news is though, once they become automatic they will be helpful to you
in any learning situation. A concept related to automaticity is overlearning.
Overlearning means that you don’t just study material until you can just recall it. You
keep studying it over and over again until you can recall it quickly and easily. Overlearning
information helps prevent forgetting and it makes recall fast and easy. If you are studying
critical information that you will need to know in the future as part of more complex
learning, it is a good idea to overlearn it. In this video, we have operationalized deep
processing into a a set of principles you can use to achieve deep learning. I also talked
about the pitfalls of bad study habits that are automatic and the advantages of good study
skills that are automatic. Finally, I talked about the importance of overlearning critical
information. In the next video, we will use these principles
for deep processing and apply them to common learning situations. We’ll be looking at
how to take notes using deep processing and also how to use deep processing while reading
a textbook.