Techniques for effective study at undergraduate level

On reaching university, students are suddenly expected to become independent learners, responsible for evaluating their progress and knowing which areas to focus on, as well as organising their studies and effectively revising the content. This is a significant step up from GCSEs and even A Levels and leaves many students unsure about how to learn and how best to revise when they are at university.

This article will consider cognitive science and the fundamentals that underpin how we, as individuals, learn. It will consider a number of different effective revision techniques that will support higher quality and in-depth learning at undergraduate level.

Learning versus performing

The first key area to understand is the difference between learning and ‘performing’. At university, you want to ensure that you are learning information. However, you will often find that you are performing, not learning. So, what is the difference?

Performing means that, after you have been taught something new (such as a new theory or skill) you will be able to repeat it successfully. You may be able to repeat it successfully in a number of different circumstances, feeling confident that you have learnt it. However, at this point, you are unable to declare that you have learnt something. To have learnt information or a skill you need to be able to successfully recall and apply it several days, weeks and months later (Soderstrom and Bjork, 2015). In this example, you may be confident you have learnt a new skill, but if you have forgotten how to do it a week or two later, you didn't learn, you performed.

In order to be confident that you have learnt information, you need to ensure that it becomes encoded in your long-term memory (Mujawar et al, 2021).

Working memory versus long-term memory

This brings us on to the next two key terms when understanding how we learn: working memory and long-term memory. Working memory refers to the limited amount of information that can be remembered at any given point in time, whereas long-term memory refers to information that has been cemented in our memory and are less likely to forget (Busch, 2024). Let us take a couple of examples.

If I challenged you to recall the number pattern 47301857 in one go, it would be difficult. There are a lot of individual digits included, and no real pattern or anything to help you recall them. The other factor is that our working memory is very limited. We can only remember a small amount of new information at any one time before it starts falling out of our head again. For example, have you ever asked someone for directions and by the third instruction you have forgotten what the first one was?

However, if I challenged you to recall a different eight-digit number – the date of your birthday – you would be able to remember that, because it's your birthday! You can probably also remember an 11-digit number – your phone number – and maybe the phone number(s) of a family member or partner, too. Maybe you can also remember your National Insurance number, postcode(s), the amount of money in your bank account and so forth. How can you hold on to all of this information if you can't remember an eight-digit number? Information, such as a birthday, a postcode or a phone number, sits in our long-term memory. This long-term memory is like a toolbox of all of the information we know, and we can just keep adding to it. Once it is there, it can be forgotten but less readily than information in the working memory (Cowan, 2008).

How, then, do we get information into our long-term memory? Once information is in our long-term memory, we can say that we have learnt something, rather than just performed it.

Forgetting

We always forget things – it is a natural part of life. We may forget the digits someone randomly gives to us and we may even forget phone numbers, even if they were once in our long-term memory.

We can't stop ourselves forgetting, but we can slow down the process and even stop certain bits of information from being forgotten. We can do this by ‘attending’ to that information.

This means that we need to remember and use that information (Breed and Moore, 2022). If we have remembered our own phone number, one of the ways that we can attend to this information is by practising saying it out loud, perhaps, or by recounting it to people when they ask us for our number. In effect, to stop ourselves forgetting information, we need to keep double and triple checking that we remember it Over time, if we forget to check that we still know some information, it will be forgotten.

Cognitive overload

We have a further issue. Human brains are fundamentally a compromised. Remember the example earlier where I challenged you to remember those eight digits, or raised the example of being given directions and by the third instruction you have forgotten the first? Well this is because our working memory is limited (Miller, 1956) – and we can make it worse with cognitive overload (Chandler and Sweller 1991).

Imagine that you have an empty cup representing your working memory. As people tell you different pieces of information, your cup gradually gets filled up. However, if information keeps being poured in, eventually, some information has to make way to allow the new information in. And boom! You've forgotten something that might have been said to you only 30 seconds ago (de Jong, 2010).

But there are more issues that we face because of our compromised human brains.

First, is attention. If we are not paying attention (or as we call it in cognitive science, attending to information) then it won't enter the cup in the first instance (Craik, 2014). Sometimes this will be your fault (talking to friends, messaging someone, ordering a pizza), and sometimes this will be due to the environment (for example, it is so loud you ‘can't hear yourself think’, or if there are posters over every wall that keep taking your attention). In short, if we don't attend to this new information, it is never going to get into our ‘cup’ in the first place.

The second issue is how much information we are given. If we are given a large amount of information (typically more than seven pieces) (de Jong, 2010), our working memory starts to overflow. So, if you are being told too much at once in a lecture, it is actually not your fault if you cannot remember it all.

The third issue is the difficulty of the content (Muijs, 2019). If the content is new and complex, and requires you to remember other information in order to understand it (that is, recalling other information from your long-term memory) then your cup is will be filled up quicker, and start to overflow sooner.

Due to these factors, and the compromised brain, learning is quite hard. We can, fortunately, make matters a little better for ourselves.

Environment

The environment in which we work can have an impact on how effective we are at learning. When considering the environment that we are working in, we are considering factors that may draw away our attention, or may have already partially filled up our cup. Consider the impact of some of these situations:

• Listening to music while you work
• Having a conversation with friends while you revise
• Sitting in a cold and dark room while you study
• Trying to revise while feeling hungry
• Revising on a bed with a film on in the background.

We may have all worked in one of these situations, but none of them are good working environments. The first two will take up some of our working memory instantly, especially talking with friends. By taking up some of this working memory, we have less space to deal with the new information, meaning we:

• Don't learn it
• Don't understand it
• Take even more time to get it done.

In the other examples, our brain will be drifting elsewhere – to how cold we are; to what we want to eat; to what is happening in the film. Once again, each of these situations takes up our already limited working memory and means that we will be learning less effectively and efficiently.

So far I have said what not to do, I haven't said what to do. Here are some considerations (Hendrix, 2024):

• Find a quiet working environment free from distractions
• Work at a desk
• Work in a warm but not overly hot or cold room
• Ensure you are not very hungry or thirsty, and have not just had a huge meal.

The aim here is to limit things that may distract you from the work you have at hand.

Active versus passive learning

You now know about cognitive load, good working environments, how we forget and how important it is to recall information. We now move on to how to effectively revise – how to get that information into your long-term memory and keep it there. How do we turn performance, into learning? The answer to that is to be active.

Active learning means that you are forcing yourself to think hard, attempting to recall information from your long-term memory, and apply it to standard and non-standard examples (Deslauriers et al, 2019). Passive learning is exactly what it says, being passive. That would mean re-reading notes, highlighting key terms and taking a peek back at notes when you're struggling to remember something (John Hopkins University, 2024; Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation, 2024).

In short, the harder your brain is having to work, and the more you are forcing retrieval from your long-term memory (and ensuring that you haven't forgotten that information), the more effectively you are learning.

This means that many of the revision techniques that you are likely familiar and comfortable with, need to be jettisoned. Activities such as note taking, highlighting, poster creation, PowerPoint making, textbook reading and case study skimming all need to take a back seat in your effective learning and revision. The reason that all of these techniques feel comfortable is because they do not force great thinking and strain. Due to this, they are ‘nice’ ways to revise, so we settle for them. It is human nature not to make things any harder for ourselves.

But these techniques are passive, and if you want to learn both more effectively and efficiently (that is, learn more and learn it quicker), then you need to push yourself outside of these comfort zones and become an active learner. How exactly do we do this?

Strategies

This part of the article will focus on a range of different strategies that you can use in order to become an active learner and make your revision more effective (see Table 1). Plenty more information about these strategies can be found online.

Flashcards

Flashcards are one of the more common strategies that you will have heard about. They are great for testing yourself on ‘declarative knows’ (that is facts and core information), which will be commonplace on your courses. Simply record a key question on one side of the card, and place the answer on the other, and blind-test yourself to see if you can recall the answer.

One of the most effective ways to use flashcards is using the Leitner system (Leitner, 1972). This method proposes that you review all flashcards, and those that you answer correctly then get tested every 3 days, and those you get wrong are tested again every day. When you get to the third day, and test those cards again, if you get the answers correct, they move to a once-a-week pile, but if you get them wrong, they return to the daily pile. The same is true of the weekly cards – get one wrong and it returns to the daily pile. Over time, you will have fewer cards in the daily pile and more on the every-3-days or every-week pile.

Remember, making flashcards is a passive not active activity. To make it active, you need to get those flashcards made quickly (it doesn't matter whether they are pretty or not) and get testing.

Self-quizzing

Self-quizzing focuses on longer form responses. This strategy proposes identifying a set of questions and answers from notes/lectures/textbooks, and then covering up the answers. You then recall the answers, only checking after you have finished an answer or a time limit is up. Peeking early makes it a passive task again – so don't give in! One way to make this activity even more effective is to make notes of questions that you get wrong, so that you know to repeat these. If you don't do this, you may end up spending time repeating questions that you can already answer, which would be an inefficient use of your already limited working time (Simon-Campbell and Phelan, 2018).

Teach someone else

The process of teaching someone else is a highly active one, as it forces you to consider how best to explain a certain concept or topic area (Open University, 2024). This involves careful selection of language, a consideration of how to link certain factors together, and the order in which you explain these factors. If you can successfully teach a concept or problem to someone else, you will be in a better position when it comes to exams. The reason why this strategy is so active is because it forces significant retrieval from your long-term memory, and careful consideration of the factors outlined, leading to hard and deep thinking.

Brain dump

This is a strategy entails recalling all of the information that you can on one particular topic (Birss, 2023). This forced retrieval from your long-term memory ensures that you are attending to key information, meaning that it is less likely to be forgotten. When doing this, try to avoid topics which are too broad, otherwise your brain dump will either take too long or involve you in writing down too much information. Instead, stay with a narrow topic area, but cover several topics in separate brain dumps.

Interleaved practice

I'd hypothesise that during secondary school, you often had a rigid study timetable. A morning on maths, here, an afternoon on history there, and so on. However, more effective revision occurs where we interleave – that is, to mix up – our revision (Ferlazzo, 2021). What this doesn't mean is that you try to combine two completely different topics at the same time, but revising similar topic areas one after each other (in shorter time blocks) is often helpful. The reason for this is you're having to think more deeply about the correct answer(s) as the two topics are so similar. You will also be making connections between topics in your head, which again helps to cement facts into your long-term memory.

Spaced repetition

This strategy has already been alluded to in this article, but the idea of spaced repetition is to build-in forced retrieval of information on a more regular basis (Kang, 2016). Rather than learning something and allowing it to sit in your long-term memory for several months, only to find that you have forgotten it, you should try to revisit this information on a more regular basis – even when you are not in the revision period in the run up to exams. Consistently recalling information on a more frequent basis will make it more likely that you will continue to recall it and can firmly say that you have learnt something.

Elaboration

Do you remember that game little children love to play, where they continuously ask ‘why?’ after every answer? This is a really good revision strategy to force us to do active thinking (so long as we are answering the why questions, and that the topic is one of interest/necessity for our studies). By having to answer the question why after each statement we make, we justify our choices, consider the rationale for what we have done, and develop great depth to our responses (Smith and Weinstein, 2016). These are all factors that make us think harder, hence being more active, and hence revising more effectively. It is also fun to be the one who gets to repeatedly ask your study partner ‘why?’.

Learning diaries

The final strategy is less around effective revision strategies and more around effective time spent when revising. The one thing that you do not want to do is to continue to revise topics that you have already shown yourself that you can remember (for example, through self-quizzing). You also do not want to forget the topics that you struggled on and need to go back to learn more effectively.

Through keeping a very simple learning diary – a log of topics that you have mastered and are yet to master – you can keep track of the areas that you need to go back and revise further (Griffin-James, 2023). Saying to yourself you will remember these different topics is a recipe for disaster – remember our limited working memory – with all the will in the world, we will forget them unless we write them down.

This can be done on any template you like, and as neat or messy as you can tolerate, but it does ensure that you are spending time on the topics that you need to be spending time on rather than those you have already mastered (as then your revision will become passive yet again, rather than active).

Concluding questions

Having read this article, here are a handful of questions to guide your successful revision:

• What passive revision strategies do you use?
• What active revision strategies do you favour from this list?
• What do you need to change around your typical working environment?