»Teaching Students How to Learn

The text below explains some of the more important tips on what it is that students should study and how they should go about actually studying. It also incorporates links to useful resources, including videos and websites. Pick and choose what you think might be useful for your students and adjust as needed!

Hot tip: Students strongly prefer videos. As useful or well-written as an article, chapter, or webpage may be, it is unlikely they will read it.

Additionally, James M. Lang’s Small Teaching is not only a great book with many useful teaching tips, but these teaching tips are also all actively linked to best practices for learning/studying and informed by cognitive psychological research.

Tips on how to study 

Before we talk about how to study, it is important to first understand what it is that professors will be teaching you. Not only are we teaching you differently from how you have been taught before, we also want you to know different things. So, let’s first take a quick look at what professors will want you to know. 

What professors will be teaching you

Professors are not that interested in if you can remember definitions of concepts, but in the links between these concepts. These can take many different forms! Some examples: cause and effect, event and reaction, category and example, problem and solution, theory and evidence, etc. 

Professors are still teaching you content (i.e., concepts), but they are also teaching you: 

  • That concept A and concept B are related (link)
  • How A and B are related (mechanisms, processes)
  • When A and B are related (context, situations)
  • Why A and B are related (reasons, background)
  • How to research whether, how, and why A and B are related (i.e., finding existing research, conducting your own research)
  • How to support whether, how, and why A and B are related (i.e., building arguments)

Your studying should therefore focus on these links between concepts, and information about these links. For example, if you use flashcards, they should focus less on a concept and its definition, but more on a concept and its mechanisms, outcomes, examples, related concepts, etc. 

How to Study

What do you do when you prepare for an athletic event? You train! You don’t just read about how to score points and then show up on the day of the match hoping that you know how to actually do it. Studying is training for an exam. What is it that you are asked to do during an exam? You are asked to remember information. So how do you train? You train by practicing remembering information. And that is studying.

Practicing remembering requires active recall. Rereading the book, slides, or your notes is not sufficient. Highlighting text is not sufficient. You need to engage with the material, think about it on a meaningful level, and interact with it. Organizing your notes, making concept maps, drafting outlines, and making flash cards are a great first step. But they are only the first step. You now still need to practice remembering. The only way to do this is to quiz yourself (or have someone else quiz you!). This may seem like a lot of work, but note that: A) yes, that’s studying; and B) it’s better to find out you don’t know or understand something while you’re studying than when you’re taking the exam.

(Psst: The best method to learn is actually to teach! Round up your unsuspecting friends, family members, pets, roommates, or stuffed animals and teach them about the study material)

Useful videos and other resources to help you learn how to study 

  1. Watch this video from the Learning Scientists about the six most effective study strategies.
  2. They also have videos for each individual strategy...
  3. ...plus, they have a poster/handout for each strategy!
  4. Their whole website is a treasure trove of information for students.
  5. Watch this video that lists 12 ways to active recall (in 12 minutes).
  6. Watch this five-part video series about how to get the most out of studying. Each video is 5-10 minutes long and they cover the following topics:
  7. Beliefs that make you fail and succeed
  8. What students should know about how people learn
  9. Cognitive principles for optimizing learning
  10. Putting principles for learning into practice
  11. “I blew the exam, now what?”

How to use AI to study 

Rather than using AI to complete assignments for you (please don’t do that), you can use it to help you study! Some ways in which you can use AI to study:

  1. Ask AI for examples in different contexts
  2. Ask it for practice questions
  3. Ask it to explain things in a way that you understand
  4. Ask it for examples related to your interests

Useful videos and other resources to help you learn how to use AI to study 

  1. Watch this med student’s video on how to study faster with AI.
  2. Watch this video that lists some AI-powered studying apps (there are many more out there!)
  3. You can upload any class materials, texts, videos, webpages, etc. into a Google Notebook. This Notebook can then help you create study guides, quiz you, even create a podcast based on the materials you uploaded, etc.
  4. Watch this video that lists 10 ways in which NotebookLM is helpful to students.