With the exam season approaching, a greater emphasis is placed on revision, preparation strategy, and learning techniques by teachers, educators, and experts. Revision charts, highlighter pens and sticky notes around the room are some of the methods people use to ensure information stays in their mind.
Highlighting notes in bright colours may feel productive, but researchers have cautioned that it can offer little benefit for comprehension, and may even hinder deeper understanding when used as the main revision strategy. According to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), psychologists in the United States have warned that many favourite revision techniques will not lead to exam success.
Universities, schools and colleges offer students a variety of ways to help them remember the content of their courses and get good grades. These include re-reading notes, summarising them, and highlighting the important points. Others involve testing knowledge and using mnemonics – ways of helping recall facts and lists, or creating visual representations of the knowledge.
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However, according to Prof John Dunlovsky, of Kent State University, there is not enough information about how memory works and therefore which techniques are most effective.
Reviewing 1,000 scientific studies and looking at 10 of the most popular revision strategies, Prof Dunlovsky and his team noted that picking out individual phrases in florescent yellow, green or pink can hinder revision.
In his research, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, he mentioned: “When students are using a highlighter they often focus on one concept at a time and are less likely to integrate the information they are reading into a larger whole.”
“That could undermine their comprehension of that material,” he added. The expert noted that he is not suggesting that highlighters should be abandoned. He further asserted that they are “safety blankets” for many students.
As per the survey, only two of the 10 techniques that were examined turned out to be really effective: testing yourself and spreading out your revision over time. “Students who can test themselves or try to retrieve material from their memory are going to learn that material better in the long run”, Prof Dunlovsky said.
“Start by reading the text book then make flash cards of the critical concepts and test yourself,” he noted. “A century of research has shown that repeated testing works,” he said. This is because the student is more engaged and it is harder for the mind to wander, the researcher said.
Dunlovsky further stated that the best strategy is to plan ahead and not do all the revision on one subject in a block before moving on to the next, a technique called “distributed practice”. Prof Dunlovsky asserted that it is the “most powerful” of all the strategies.
