So my (very cool) teacher was talking about this in class the other day, made me want to make a post about it.
The image above is adapted from the National Training Lab in Bethel, Maine. It basically shows how much information the average student retains when using certain methods.
Attending a lecture is only 5% and reading the material is only 10%.
Which could be a potential answer imo to why many people spend hours reading stuff and not retain most of it or not do well on tests.
Anything audiovisual increases the percentage of information you’ll likely retain up to 20%, having it demonstrated in front of you gives you 30%. Discussion (which can be done very easily) can make you retain up to 50%, practicing with your own hands means you’ll retain 75% and finally when you teach others you’ll retain a massive 90%.
So how can you implement this into your study routine to retain the most information?
Audiovisual: I think this is very easy, YouTube channels like Khan Academy cover almost everything, so go online, find some videos relevant to whatever you’re studying and watch them.
Demonstration: This is pretty much your teacher’s job, an example here would be anything related to social or hand skills, in my case interviewing and examining patients. At my school before we interview any patient or examine them my teacher does it first and we carefully observe. So whenever someone is demonstrating something pay full attention. And then if possible practice it (possibly with your friends as a role play) because that’ll increase the percentage of information you retained to 75%
Discussion: This is very basic and can be done simply by just reading the material before, preparing questions and engaging in brief discussions with your teacher throughout the lecture. Or if pre reading isn’t your thing just join a study group and discuss everything you’re learning over there.
I’ve already talked about practice briefly with demonstration, it’s pretty self explanatory (especially for OSCEs, for all you medstudents)
Teaching others: You can volunteer to tutor anyone or just take the lead in your study group. All of my teachers swear by this method. Some even suggest explaining to yourself if you can’t find anyone else but I have never tried it. (or force your family/boyfriend or SO to listen, that’s what I do)
Get creative and make the most of your study sessions, if anyone tries any of these please let me know!!
i love student housing. i’m in the common room waiting for a friend and there’s some dude crying on the couch w a bunch of his friends around him and i can only hear bits and pieces but someone asked him “who gets the minecraft server if you guys break up?” and he started crying harder and a 3rd person reached over to smack the guy who asked it on the back of the head
university is the best place on earth bc everyone has like 400 iq points but we’re all collectively only using 18 of them (7 on weekends but we have to share them)
Morgan Rae. 21. One of those CS-ish people. {She/Her}
This is my main blog (some kind of jumble of nice pictures, text posts, and whatever I'm currently obsessed with). I'm also a semi-active member of the studblr community (see top link). Have questions? Wanna chat? Send me a message!
