Studying is the bane of every student's existence. Make no mistake about it, every single student no matter how studious has moaned and complained about how arduous and tiresome the entire process of studying is, at least once in their academic lifespans. It may come as good news to many then, that a study conducted by a Stanford researcher fellow, which was published in April 2017, claims to have have cracked the code and finally found the Holy Grail of studying. What did this person conclude? Merely studying does not cut the mustard, rather it's
how you study that truly matters.
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Raise your hand if this is you: Coming home after a long day of classes, be it school or university, you dump your backpack in a corner, pull out a textbook and start sifting through pages that were taught that day, hoping that eventually, your mind will attune itself and you would begin to concentrate. Or maybe, you pick out your notes instead and re-read them. Too bad that
re-reading notes are, wait for it,
ineffective *dum dum dum* This is according to the Stanford research fellow Patricia Chen, who stresses that students who focus on how they plan to use their study time produces the real results. The process is termed
metacognition or in simple layman's terms, thinking about one's thinking. We know,
deep stuff.
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The proof is in the pudding and Chen has pudding by the bucket-load. In her study, a few students in an introductory statistics class (yikes!) received a survey 10 to 15 days before every examinations that had them take 15 minutes to reflect on how they study. Specifically, the survey left the students to ponder on the kinds of questions in their examinations and to identify 15 available class resources they would use to study such as lecture notes, practice test questions, textbook readings, instructor office hours, peer discussions and private tutoring. Then they were asked to explain why each of the resources would be useful. Sounds like an incredibly tedious task to complete right before an exam, right? The twist was that the students were actually laying out a study plan. The control group in the study merely got a notification with a reminder that their test was approaching, nothing more, nothing less. In the end, the students who went through the laborious process during the pre-exam period outscored the control group by an average of a third of a letter grade, turning a B+ to an A.
Image via theatlantic.com
Taking some time to map out what you are going to study may seem essential but how many of us are guilty of forgoing it entirely? As Chen points out, "All too often, students jump mindlessly into studying before thinking of a strategy, without understanding why they are using each of the resources and without planning on using the resources to learn effectively". In short, mindless zombies that gobble up information, only to regurgitate it back out during exams. Sound familiar?
Image via Flickr@RecklessMe
The good news? This ground breaking method , requiring students to adopt a new mode of thinking and studying, is miles cheaper than the millions of ringgit that is needed for a revised curriculum or the implementation of gadgets. It can start at home, where parents are responsible for instilling the smart studying method, and continue on in the classroom, where teachers will take the mantle of guiding students in this new brain training technique. While gadgets and new books may be the way of the future, metacognition may just be future-proof, as it has been found to be one of the most effective and long lasting tools for teaching and learning. So, whether you are a student, teacher or even a parent, why not give metacognition a shot? Those B's may just evolve into solid A's.
