A few days anticipating a big test, students rant to another about how they’re going to fail. What students usually turn to – rereading their notes and highlighting the textbook – doesn’t offer the level of benefit students expect from them. Research has shown that study techniques incorporating active recall, such as the Feynman method and SQ3R (skim, question, read, recite and review), are by far more effective.
Passive recall and active recall are two categories of study techniques. Passive recall is a learning technique that involves idly reviewing information, allowing half the brain to remain inactive. On the other hand, active recall is a study method that involves actively retrieving information with repeated testing to enhance retention, memory and comprehension. According to Iris Reading, students tend to gravitate toward passive recall because it is easier to do and gives them a false sense of confidence about their productivity.
“Using passive recall by blindly reading notes or things that you’ve written down doesn’t really help you grasp the concepts, because on a test, you’re not given those notes,” National Honor Society president Ishan Choksey said. “You have to take the test (based on) what’s in your brain, so active recall mimics what you’re going to have to do during tests.”
A 2017 study published by the journal Psychological Science revealed that doing practice tests is a better way of studying than methods like rereading notes. Forcing the brain to recall information repeatedly strengthens the neural pathways that are first forged when new information is introduced, allowing you to remember the information for a longer period of time.
“Taking a practice quiz or writing down random facts that you may have learned during class, I feel like that is more important to how you perform on a test,” Choksey said.
As technology has gotten more advanced and students are leaning toward typed or AI-generated notes, it has become harder to implement active recall, but it is still a necessity. According to a study done by the National Institute of Health (NIH) in 2022, writing on paper is better for learning than typing on a keyboard or even using a tablet and a stylus.
“Taking notes by hand or having kids summarize things in their own words and having them diagram out processes, even just by making flow charts or Venn diagrams, encourages them to take in information and engage with that information positively,” science teacher Massey-Burmeister said.
Choksey also believes that handwritten notes are better, but there are some benefits to using a computer while studying.
“There’s a lot more resources available nowadays, with Quizlet and practice questions and AI,” Choksey said. “AI is a big help when you’re trying to (study) because you can feed it a bunch of information and (tell it to) make you a practice test, which is really helpful.”
So, what are some ways you can use active recall while studying? Some lesser-known but effective ways are the Feynman method, SQ3R and chunking. The Feynman method involves teaching a concept you want to remember to someone while paying attention to the parts you struggle to explain. Then, go back to your notes and review until you can explain everything clearly and concisely. SQ3R is used for reading textbooks. Instead of reading every word all at once, first quickly skim the text to get an idea of the main concepts and second, write some questions. Then, read the text and answer the questions from memory. Go back to the questions you couldn’t answer and review that information. Lastly, chunking is simply the process of reviewing pieces of information in increments before reviewing the entire text.
“Over time, I think I’ve gotten better at studying, because I’ve learned different ways and (I now know) what I am comfortable with, which is mainly practice tests and using AI to help me study,” Choksey said.
