Welcome to LearnLawBetter.
Do you forget information quickly after you learn it?
Are you looking for a method to help you remember better and longer?
Stay to the end and learn how to use spaced repetition for better grades on your exams.
Hi, this is Beau Baez, and today I want to talk to you the spacing effect, which is a
scientifically documented phenomenon where people learn better when they learn material
over time.
The opposite of spaced presentation is massed presentation, which we call cramming.
Many students wait till a week or two before the exam to really begin studying, and then
spend the night before the exam reading the material over and over again.
Though cramming does work, up to a point, study after study confirms that students who
use spaced repetition outperform those that cram.
By the way, if you cram the night before an exam, you might want to watch my episode,
“10 exam day tips.”
In legal education, spaced learning is more important than it was in college because of
the bar exam.
In college you could take a course, and rest assured that you would never again be
tested on the date that Rome fell or on the innerworkings of a cell.
But the material in your first semester of law school will be tested again on the bar
exam.
By studying, not only will you do better on the final but you will
also perform better on the bar exam three years later.
You are probably asking, “how do I do this?”
One technique for incorporating spaced repetition is through the use of Leitner boxes, which
I describe in detail in my episode called “Smart Way to Use Flashcards.”
In a nutshell, this flashcard technique incorporates spaced learning into your daily study routine.
You create four boxes, or stacks of cards if you don’t have actual boxes.
Then you regularly look at the flashcards, reviewing information you don’t know well
often, and information that you’ve mastered less often.
This technique has been proven to reduce the overall amount of time you study.
Alright, time for a bit more science and then a final study tip.
In 1885, German psychologist Julius Ebbinghaus published his work called “On Memory.”
For the first time in history, he quantified how quickly we forget by charting the “forgetting
curve.”
The most drastic forgetting occurs within the first hour and then begins to level off
after one day.
The good news is that you can benefit from Ebbinghaus’ breakthrough study.
Given the rapid decline in our memory, the optimal time to review information is within
the first 24 hours of first learning it.
So if you review your notes within 24 hours after class, you will make a stronger mental
connection to that knowledge, which will keep it in your memory longer.
By repeating this process, you not only will retain the knowledge for the final, but also
for the bar exam.
Let me end today’s episode with a short apocryphal story.
Bart and Lisa were both in the same Torts class, each struggling to understand proximate
cause.
On the final exam, both got an “A” on the proximate cause question, but Bart spent
20 hours learning the concept while Lisa spent 15 hours on it.
Lisa was able to accomplish this by starting earlier in the semester using spaced repetition,
while Bart waited till two weeks before the final and then he crammed.
Three years later, Lisa quickly picked up proximate cause while Bart spent hours relearning
it.
The moral of the story is this: if you start studying right after class, and keep reviewing up to
the final, you will take less overall time mastering the material and retain it in long-term memory.
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Thanks for watching.