I once mentioned active and passive learning and said that I’ll write a post on them, so, as someone who keeps their promises, here it is.
Active learning and passive learning may both sound like they have nothing to do with studying, save for the word ‘learning’. You may think of exercising and doing something physical, but they’ve got nothing to do with that either. Before we break down the energy of active learning, let me tell you about passive learning:
Passive learning is when you are studying without using much cognitive resources. That means you are not thinking much or getting your brain to really work. Whilst learning passively, you may feel uninterested, disengaged or even sleepy. You’ll also find that it is harder to recall the information you ‘learnt’ later... and that's because you didn’t actually learn the stuff by studying passively.
Examples of passive learning include:
Rereading textbooks
Highlighting
Watching/listening to lectures
Now, active learning requires more effort when studying, but it reaps much more. You have to continuously test yourself, which will require a lot more brain power, but it will lead to you remembering the things better because you are taking charge more and more.
There are loads of examples of active learning, but they include:
free recall / blurting
Discussions
Testing yourself (read, cover, summarise is one way of doing it)
Flashcards
Drawing images to represent the information
Practice Questions / Past papers
In fact, we can divide active learning into 3 main parts:
Organisation: Organising your knowledge makes it more sophisticated and gives it a lot more depth and detail as you then understand how each piece of information links to each other. You could do this using mind maps and diagrams.
Recall: Testing yourself regularly makes you more likely to remember the information as you learn from your mistakes. Methods include flashcards or summarising the information for yourself.
Practice: You know how the saying goes: practice makes perfect. If it doesn’t actually lead to perfection then it will at least lead to improvement. Try questions that you might be tested on. Or think like an examiner by creating your own questions.
If you change your study style to something more challenging you’d be switching to the active learning approach. This is what allows you to study smart, not hard and you’ll notice your study sessions go from taking long hours to taking much less time, freeing up your schedule.
That’s all from me today! I’ll see you in my next post. Study active! ;)
Comments