Studying Tips – 30 Education Experts Share Their Learning Strategies

The educational system has been facing many new challenges lately due to the pandemic.

In many countries, schools and universities have shifted from a traditional way of teaching, in person, to online teaching.

This causes a lot of difficulties for students that don’t have access to a PC or to the internet.

In addition to that, the learning process is also affected. It’s more difficult to focus when you are home because you have a lot of distractions, and also many people learn things easier when they can practice what they study, especially in technical domains.

As test prep coaches and learning strategists who’ve guided countless students through their most challenging academic moments, we understand these obstacles firsthand. As the exams are getting closer, we want to help students learn faster and better, so that’s why we reached out to 30 education experts and we asked them the following question:

What is your best tip for students that need to learn a large quantity of information in a short period of time?

We received amazing answers explaining different learning techniques. Most of the experts are professors and teachers and some of them are psychologists which understand very well how memory works. Keep reading to see what they had to share.

Lindsey Wander – WorldWise Tutoring

First, see what tried and true resources are already available. No need to “reinvent the wheel.” Maybe there is already a highly-reviewed guide, website, or app that you can utilize. Try to choose resources that incorporate different learning styles in order to deepen the infiltration of the info into your brain.

For instance, you can say the info on your flashcards out loud to tap into visual and auditory learning. If the flashcards are tangible, you can also randomly choose two or three and then arrange them logically based on a connection you synthesize to also tap into reading/writing and kinesthetic learning.

Second, seek help when needed. This can be in the form of online support groups, in-person study groups, or a private tutor.

Third, make studying a daily practice. While brushing your teeth, recite the info in your head. During your lunch break, complete a quiz. Before you go to sleep, study your notes. Constantly upload the info into your mind.

And lastly, laser focus on what is most challenging. Highlight flashcards, questions, notes, etc. that continue to give you trouble as a reminder to revisit those close to the actual assessment – then stop studying what you have already mastered.

Karen Gross Education

There are a lot of things that contribute to information retention: the affinity for the subject; the level of engagement; quality of teaching to different learning styles of the learner; the level of anxiety and stress.

That said, here are some strategies:

1. Create nemonic devices where key concerns/issues/topics are represented as letters in a word that one can remember. Even set it to music. A learner can have three or four words that they can decode. Healthcare students do this all the time and pass these words/sings from generation to generation.

2. Create all the information — if you are a visual learner — on a one-page map/flow chart. Then keep adding detail to the map (so things connect) and then reduce and simplify the map. The vision and revisions to the map will stick in one’s memory.

I created course charts for students and they completed them again and again over the course of a semester.

Alison Clark – Healthy Minds, Safe Schools

Learning and memorizing new concepts and information to do well on tests can be very rewarding. There are very few earned experiences in life that result in instant gratification like putting in the time and effort to study for a test and getting high marks. Using tried and true study tips is a life hack that makes learning easier and taking tests less stressful.

Mental Imagery

Using mental images can help you remember new information with connections to visual representations, diagrams, and familiar places. Pairing new words or concepts with mental pictures are better remembered than words alone.

Mental images of routes and places can be associated with new information to help organize memories and lead to higher accuracy of labels, locations, and compositions.

Chunking and Rehearsal

Breaking information into manageable lengths to rehearse is key to learning. Chunks can then be connected and retrieved together later.

Short-term memory can hold four to seven bits of information, so a chunk should never exceed that amount.

The real trick to quickly transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory is to interrupt the rehearsal between sets for at least 10 seconds doing something else, such as singing the alphabet or counting to 20 and then rehearsing the chunk of information again. That little break in between rehearsals allows the information to transfer into longer-term memory so it can be recalled later.

Otherwise, when short-term memory is full any new information added on top will be lost and there will be no guarantee that what was in short-term memory will transfer over to long-term memory, dimming your chances for retrieval on demand.

Mnemonic Devices

A mnemonic device is a way to organize, memorize and retrieve information by pairing new information with familiar, memorable and relatable images, words, phrases, sentences, rhymes, and songs.

Phrases and sentences can be used as reminders of lists and the correct order of things by using the first letter of each word to cue the correct order, like using “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” when solving algebraic equations to do math operations in the correct order, “parenthesis, exponents, multiplication and division, and addition and subtraction.”

Using rhymes helps with encoding information so it can be retrieved in an accessible way. “In fourteen ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Or try changing the words of a familiar song or poem to include the information you need to memorize, and you are more likely to recall it.

Acronyms use short words with a series of letters matching the first letter of each word in a list. For example, remember the great lakes by using the word “HOMES” to remind you of Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. Mnemonic devices can even help with rules of spelling, such as the difference in spelling between desert and dessert, because more than one “s” means you get seconds.

Speaking of dessert, give yourself frequent breaks with a highly positive reinforcement schedule while studying, like hugging a loved one, eating a piece of candy, making a short call to a friend, or listening to a good song. Your brain will reward you by associating the act of storing and retrieving large amounts of information with pleasure, which also improves performance.

Brian Galvin – Varsity Tutors

Triage that mass of information into four categories:

1) Do Know – information you know well and just want to refresh briefly to make sure you don’t forget, so this gets 5-10% of your time just to make sure it’s easy to recall when you need it.

2) Should Know – information that’s totally within your reach, the “it’s on the tip of my tongue” knowledge. That should get 30-40% of your time and be a priority in each study session – these are the easiest points for you to pick up fast.

3) Could Know –