Yesterday we talked a little about the struggle of starting. Whether you’re working on your next EOR or you’re getting ready for the PANRE, here’s one way to fight against that struggle: Start by writing down the exam date and the date you will begin studying. This small, simple step can make a big difference. Seem easy right? That’s because it is. Things don’t have to be hard and complicated to work.
Let’s take studying as another example. We can use some simple techniques to make your life so much easier. I touched on it yesterday, and today you’re in for a treat.
I spent a ton of time testing these methods on myself. I’ve spoken with bushels of people about their study habits and what works best for them. I also found that when I went to study for my PANRE I had less time than ever. I know PA school is tough and the PANCE is scary, but having two young kids, a full-time job, and a wife I wanted to see from time to time made me much more focused when getting ready for my PANRE. I only had a few hours a week to study, so I had to make the most of them. I had to be incredibly efficient.
What does studying look like to most people? What comes to mind for you if I ask you, “How do you study?” Do you picture a quiet desk reading books and taking notes? Do you have visions of a highlighter, a stack of review books, and a five-subject notebook? Do you listen to lectures or podcasts? What about rewriting your notes? The problem with all of these methods is that they are passive. They do not force your brain to work with the material. These methods DO NOT create new connections or strengthen neural pathways. In short, these methods are terribly inefficient, if not a total waste of time. You and I can’t afford to be wasting any time, let alone hours and hours of precious study time. Keep reading and I’ll share with you a better way. I’ll show what I did to get a great score on my PANRE with LESS studying.
Method 1 – Active Recall
Passive studying is the process of putting information into your brain. All of the study practices listed above fall into this category. Basically, you’re just trying to jam information into your brain. The biggest problem with only using passive methods to study is that the exam doesn’t care what’s in your head. You only get credit for the information you can get back out of your head. Active studying is practicing getting information out of your brain and onto the paper.
Active studying includes things like drawing and labeling a diagram from memory, answering test questions, teaching someone else the material, and any other thing you do that forces you to think. Anything that makes you work with the material. Using active methods of studying is far more efficient and gives you a much better retention rate. The references are at the bottom of the page for the studies I’m talking about.
The Testing Effect is one example of this. “A testing effect occurs when a learner performs better on a retention test after studying the material and taking a practice-retention test than after studying the material twice.” In a study of 282 students, Cheryl Johnson and Richard Mayer found that students who studied and then took a pre-test outperformed another group of students who instead studied the material twice.
In one study, students were shown a short movie. Group A watched the movie a second time. Instead of watching the movie a second time, group B was asked to write summary of the movie from memory. One week later an exam was given on the content of the movie, and group B did significantly better than group A.
Pyc and Rawson found that there was also a direct link as to how hard the information was to retain and whether or not people retained it. They found that the best results came from using “difficult but successful retrievals.” You need to be using active recall on materials that are not too easy but also not too hard. If you start down this path, you can find tons of research to back it up. I believe strongly that this is the key that most people are missing.
I often speak with people who say, “I understand all of the lectures. I take great notes. I study and I study, and then I bomb the test.” They just can’t figure out where the disconnect is. I hear from tons of people with test anxiety who get completely freaked out on test day. If this is you, you need to change how you’ve been preparing. You need to stop reading and rereading your notes and textbooks and start using the information in your head. Your exams are going to expect that you can use the information stored in your head. If you don’t try using it until test day, you should have test anxiety.
I had a physics professor in college who used to do problems on the board. He used to mock us all by saying, “It’s easy to watch me do it, right? Just like watching Derek Jeter take ground balls is easy. It’s a lot different when you have to do it. You need to practice. You need to practice a lot.”
The Final Step is the #1 tool for PA students (or anyone learning medicine) to use active recall to prepare for their exams. That is exactly why I wrote it.
But, right now, I want to give you another amazing method to help you study. If you have ever used repetition to try and memorize something, keep reading. This next method will take it to a whole new level.
Method 2 – Spaced Repetition
Active recall will do wonders for you on test day. Knowing this, most people will intuitively head to a process of repetition when they need to memorize something. I would use flash cards, tons of flashcards. You couldn’t walk across my living room. I remember anatomy class in particular. I would buy index cards at Costco and it wouldn’t be enough. I would go over and over these flash cards. Then, I would put them down when it was time to move to the next topic. If I had known about spaced repetition in PA school, I would have blown it out of the water.
Spaced repetition, or temporal distribution of practice, involves active practice with specific time intervals or spaces between sessions. These spaces between sessions get progressively longer each time.
The spacing should be done methodically. It will be different for different people and different material, but it should be methodical. You may choose 1 minute, 5 minutes, 20 minutes. 3 hours, 1 day, 2 days. You many choose 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours, 5 hours. The time frames and number of repetitions can be fluid and don’t need to be set in stone. After using this method for a little while, you should begin to see what works best for you. You may prefer 5 separations while someone else needs 8. There is only one part about timing that is really important.
The longer you need to remember something, the longer the lag time before the final repetition should be. At some point there is diminishing returns, but for our purposes one day seems to be a good place to start. Those studied using a lag time of one day before the final repetition showed an improvement of 30% in testing scores when tested between 8 and 30 days later. They remembered 30% more for up to a month after studying simply by using repetition and waiting a full day before the last study session of that particular material! Really, students retained 30% more for up to a month. Impossible you say? In the references section at the bottom, I will include a hyperlink to a paper consisting of a meta-analysis of 839 sessions testing spaced repetition.
These are two very powerful study methods you can begin using right away to help you retain more information and perform better on your exams. These will definitely make your study sessions more valuable and more efficient. As I said earlier, while studying for my PANRE I had less time than ever. I had to be focused and efficient. I knew that using active recall was essential for me to pass my exam. I looked and looked for good resources to use for active studying. It turns out I didn’t find anything I liked. The only thing I found were full length test questions.
Everyone recommends that you do lots of test questions. That’s because they know intuitively that by taking practice exams you are using active recall and it will dramatically help with your exam scores. I think full-length test questions have their place in your study plan, but they shouldn’t be the only active recall you do. Full-length test questions take too much time and don’t lend themselves well to repetition. I knew I was going to need more active studying than test banks could provide.
Spend a little time thinking about how you study. What percentage of study time do you use passive methods? What percentage do you use active methods? What do you think works better for you? How can you incorporate more active studying and spaced repetition?
This stuff is amazing and has changed the focus of how I prepared for my exams. I am certain it is the main reason I scored as high as I did on the PANRE.
I created The Final Step as I was preparing for my PANRE, so that I could use active recall and spaced repetition better and faster than I’d ever used them before. Today, I’m giving you the opportunity to get your hands on the The Final Step 2.0. The #1 tool for remembering key medical facts. It’s packed with over 2,000 questions that, together with active recall and spaced repetition, will have the information stuck in your head like bubble gum on the bottom of your shoe on a hot summer day.
Get you copy while they’re still available. I’m only offering the TFS 2.0 Package through Sunday or when the first 200 copies get sold. Either way you better hurry.
Brian Wallace
References
Pyc, M. A., & Rawson, K. A. Testing the retrieval effort hypothesis: Does greater difficulty correctly recalling information lead to higher levels of memory? Journal of Memory and Language, 60(4), 437-447.
Johnson, Cheryl I.; Mayer, Richard E. A testing effect with multimedia learning.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 101(3), Aug 2009, 621-629.