How to Get the Most Out of Studying: Part 3 of 5, "Cognitive Principles for Optimizing Learning" [MUSIC PLAYING] STEPHEN CHEW: Hi. I'm Dr. Stephen Chew. I'm a professor of psychology here Samford University. This is the third in a series of five videos on how to study effectively in college. Effective studying is more than just a matter of having a desire to learn and devoting sufficient time and effort. Students have to utilize effective learning strategies. If they use ineffective strategies, they can study long and hard and still fail. In this video, I'll explain the basic principles of how people learn best and how you can apply those principles to improve your study effectiveness. As we saw in the earlier videos, you can be highly motivated to learn, but if you use a shallow learning strategy, you simply won't learn. Shallow learning strategies focus on superficial aspects like memorization. But if you use a deep learning strategy, which focuses on meaning and comprehension and visual imagery, then you'll learn whether you intend to or not. So if deep processing is the key to effective study, how do we accomplish this while we're studying? Here are some basic principles for achieving deep processing, and a question which will allow you to satisfy each principal. First, elaboration means making meaningful associations between the concept you're studying and related concepts. The associations can be among concepts you're studying or with your prior knowledge. The more meaningful associations you can make, the better you'll learn. Next, distinctiveness means that you make a clear contrast between the concept you're studying and other concepts. You need to understand the key differences among related concepts. Say you're in a general psychology class, and you're learning about short-term and long-term memory. You elaborate the two by relating them together. They both hold information for later use. You also emphasize the distinctiveness between the two by focusing on the key differences. One has a limited capacity. The other has an unlimited capacity. One has very rapid forgetting. The other has much slower forgetting. Finally, you relate it to your own personal experience. I meet people at parties. I forget their names a few seconds later because of short-term memory. I still remember that time I got lost in the mall as a child because of long-term memory. The last aspect of deep processing is practicing a proper retrieval and application of the material. By appropriate, I mean that you practice recalling information and using the information in the way that the teacher expects you to be able to do. If the teacher expects you to solve real-world problems, then you need to practice recalling using information in that way. If your teacher expects you to analyze hypothetical situations, you need to practice doing that. Instead of reading the material over and over, close your book and notes and recall as much of the information as you can. Write it down, explain it to a friend. Take advantage of questions that textbooks often have at the end of the chapter that ask you to review the information. Or take advantage of textbook websites that often have review tests. Now, one thing I've told you not to do is to memorize isolated facts. Here's the exception to that rule. If for some reason your teacher tests you over exact wording of isolated facts, then memorize isolated facts. So these are the basic principles of deep processing. Effective study strategies take advantage of some or all of these principles. Good students have multiple ways of studying, depending on the teacher and the subject. But all their study strategies are based on these principles. You have to figure out the best study strategies for yourself, and in the next video, we'll discuss some possibilities. But no matter what you do, they should be rooted in these principles. Here are two other important concepts you need to understand for effective learning, automaticity and overlearning. An automatic process is one that's so highly practiced that you can do it without any conscious thought or effort, like driving a familiar route, where you arrive at your destination without even thinking about it. Any task that is practiced enough can become automatic, including study skills. When you get to college, you bring high school skills that are automatic. Developing effective college skills involves not just developing more effective skills but overcoming those high school skills that are automatic and overlearned. Overcoming those high school skills is a big reason why developing effective college-level studies skills is so effortful and takes so long. For most students, it takes conscious effort over weeks or even months. I have had students who've seen immediate improvement using the principles of deep processing. And if that happens do you, be pleasantly surprised. But for most, it's a process of ongoing improvement. You need to develop these skills and practice them over a long period of time. The good news is though, once they become automatic, they'll be helpful to you in any learning situation. A concept that's related to automaticity is overlearning. Overlearning means that you don't just study material until you can just recall it. You keep studying it over and over again until you can recall it quickly and easily. Overlearning information helps prevent forgetting, and it makes recall fast and easy. If you're studying critical information that you'll need to know in the future as part of more complex learning, it's a good idea to overlearn it. In this video, we've operationalized deep processing into a set of principles you can use to achieve deep learning. I also talked about the pitfalls of bad study habits that are automatic, and the advantages of good study skills that are automatic. Finally, I talked about the importance of overlearning critical information. In the next video, we'll use these principles of deep processing and apply them to common learning situations. We'll be looking at how to take notes using deep processing, and also how to use deep processing while reading a textbook.