Back in 2010, I approached my university’s office of communications with the idea of making a series of brief videos aimed at teaching effective study skills to college students. They were enthusiastic. They envisioned a video full of study tips, like get plenty of rest, find a quiet place to study, and set up a regular study schedule. No, I told them. I want to teach students some key principles of cognitive psychology. Their enthusiasm faded. Students want handy, memorable tips; they don’t want to be taught abstract principles of how people learn. It’s true; they do want the former, but they really need the latter. Luckily, they still let me make the videos.
I have several problems with a “study tips” approach to better studying. First, tips tend to be general and vague. “Study harder,” for example. A good idea, but it isn’t at all clear how one goes about doing it. “Get plenty of sleep.” Good advice, but I doubt students are pulling all-nighters because they think it is good for their health. Second, study tips aren’t necessarily tied to valid research and can be wrong. I’ve seen tips such as, “Chewing gum while you study helps you learn,” or “Listening to Baroque music improves memory,” or “Study with the right, intuitive side of your brain.” None of these have valid empirical support (and don’t get me started on learning styles). Next, study tips are usually presented as practices without theoretical context. “Don’t cram,” for example, and “Study in the same room where you will be tested.” There is no explanation of why these practices are supposed to aid learning. Finally, even when study tips are validated by research, just knowing the tip won’t tell you how or when to use it. Retrieval practice and interleaving are good ways to learn (Agarwal and Bain, 2019; Weinstein, Sumeracki and Caviglioli, 2019), but that tip won’t help you if your problem is studying while distracted. Psychologists should have study advice that is both rooted in research and theory, and rises above conventional wisdom and general knowledge. Instead of just saying students should get a good night’s sleep, psychologists should explain how sleep deprivation affects the brain and hurts both cognitive functioning, including learning, and overall health.
What students really need is a basic understanding of how they learn, a model or schema of the mind’s strengths and limitations when it comes to learning. Such a mental framework would allow students to diagnose the problems they are having in learning and craft effective solutions. A valid model would give students the ability to identify good versus bad study strategies, and to adapt good study strategies to particular subjects, teachers and testing methods.
I’ve been involved in the APA Introductory Psychology Initiative for the past two years and part of our work is producing a teaching module on developing effective study skills. Guy Boysen and I took the lead on developing the module, which is based on a simplified information processing model that includes attention, short-term or working memory, and long-term memory (Weinstein, Sumeracki and Caviglioli, 2019). Students study the principles of learning within a connected framework.
The study skills module includes a complete lesson plan, slides, activities and assessments. The goals of the module are to teach students the principles of learning based on cognitive research that will allow them to identify the components of effective studying and to design an effective study plan.
The module begins with a class survey to identify common misconceptions about learning that students might have that hurt their learning. The teachers shows students a set of 20 statements about studying, and the teacher can have the students rate each statement on whether or not it represents a good learning practice. Half the statements represent evidence-based study practices, such as “Mixing up material from different classes rather than studying for just one class at a time,” and “Coming up with questions to test your understanding.” The other half are relatively ineffective study strategies, such as “Reading the material over and over.” and “Memorizing definitions of key terms.”
The next section addresses different aspects of attention relevant to studying. Students learn about inattentional blindness, the lack of awareness of most anything that happens outside the focus of awareness, through two suggested videos. Students learn how much they can miss when their attention is distracted and how they are unaware of all that they missed. The lack of awareness can lead students into a false confidence that they can pay only partial attention in class without missing anything. Next comes an activity which shows the cost of multitasking on performance, which shows how much time students waste when trying to study while distracted.
Students then learn about the bottleneck of short-term or working memory and how effective study strategies are needed to create long-term memories (Weinstein, Sumeracki and Caviglioli, 2019). The module covers the following set of empirically validated study strategies: distributed or spaced practice, interleaving, chunking, elaboration, retrieval practice and overlearning. Teachers can add to or skip certain strategies if they wish. The module cites a depth of processing demonstration to reinforce the importance of study skills and teachers can use those videos I made on how to studyopens in new window.
The final concept in the module is metacognition, which is explained as the student’s awareness of their own level of understanding of a topic (Agarwal and Bain, 2019). Students are warned of the dangers of overconfidence and how it can undermine learning.
The module is not just about the principles of learning, students are given specific advice about putting the principles into practice. There is a discussion activity about how to distribute their study time for an exam. Alternatively, teachers can use the included assignment to have students develop a study plan based on the information in the module. The module includes a concrete plan for students to structure a study session to optimize learning.
The complete study skills module (PDF, 38KB)opens in new window can be found online. It includes a lesson plan with outline, slides, activities, assignments and resources. The module includes both formative assessments for checking student understanding and summative assessments for evaluation. For teachers not up-to-date with principles of learning, the module has a list of suggested readings for learning more about learning science.
People sometimes question the usefulness of taking psychology courses. Effective study skills are a great example of the kinds of knowledge and abilities that students can learn in psychology courses that are critical to their academic and career success. They demonstrate the value of studying psychology.
Stephen L. Chew is a professor of psychology at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He studies the cognitive basis of effective teaching and learning. He is the creator of a series of videos for students on 
