academic studies into effective study strategies

Use of headings, overviews and summaries

Wilhite, S.C. 1989. Headings as memory facilitators: The importance of prior knowledge. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 115-117.

Finding: Headings are mainly useful as triggers of information already known.

This study confirmed an earlier study showing that the use of headings in text only improves performance in a multichoice test when the students already have a high existing knowledge of the subject. This is consistent with the theory that headings act to activate relevant prior knowledge.

The effect appears to apply only to the main ideas, not details.

However, it should be noted that this finding only applies to recognition memory (as measured in a multichoice test), not to recall. Headings may have other benefits, not tested, for low-knowledge readers (e.g., headings may help them organize the information; they may help them search the text for specific information).

Lorch, R.F. Jr & Lorch, E.P. 1995. Effects of organizational signals on text-processing strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 537-544.

Finding: Headings, overviews and topical summaries appear to be equally effective in providing an organizational structure that increases recall of the emphasized information. To be effective in improving recall, the organizational structure also needs to be used as a cue for remembering.

Organizational signals emphasize topics and the organizational structure of a text without providing any new information that is contained in the text. Thus, headings, overviews and topical summaries (but not advance organizers) would be considered organizational signals.

Organizational signals do not appear to be particularly helpful in increasing the amount of information a reader recalls from a text, but they do affect what information is recalled. A number of studies have shown that organizational signals increase recall for the information emphasized by the signals, and that such recall tends to follow the signaled structure.

It may be that in the absence of such signals, readers tend to encode the text as a simple list of information. However, skilled readers may use an organizing structure whether or not it is signaled. In that case, signaling may simply make it easier to structure the information.

The present experiment compared the effects of headings, overviews, and topical summaries on cued and uncued recall. No differences were found between any of these three types of signal, in any condition.

In general, the results supported the idea that readers use a listing strategy in the absence of organizational signals. It was also found that it was not enough to encode the material using the organizational structure, if the structure wasn't used when retrieving (recalling) the material.

Lorch, R.F. Jr, Lorch, E.P. & Inman, W.E. 1993. Effects of signaling topic structure on text recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 281-290.

Finding: Organizational signals such as headings and summaries produce better remembering of the structure and main ideas of the text, but poorer remembering of the details of the text.

Organizational signals produce better memory for the topics and their organization, but readers recall less about the topics, particularly when the topic is discussed at length.

It seems likely that signals affect the reader's organization of the text, and thus in turn guide recall of the text. Readers are encouraged to attend more to the structure of the text, which occurs at the expense of the content of the text. Those details that support the signals are more likely to be remembered than other details.

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Use of outlines, graphic organizers and multimedia summaries

Benton, S.L., Kiewra, K.A., Whitfill, J.M. & Dennison, R. 1993. Encoding and external-storage effects on writing processes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 267-280.

Finding: Prepared outline structures are helpful for students in organising lecture material. When appropriate, writing notes in a matrix format may be of particular assistance in helping the student develop a coherent overview of the subject.

Students attended a lecture then were given 25 minutes to write an essay on the subject. Different groups of students listened to the lecture, or took notes according to one of three note-taking formats, than wrote either with or without notes.

The three note-taking formats were:

conventional (the format usually used by the student; usually brief, verbatim notes, often lacking headings and sub-headings)
outline (framework provided in which the major topics and subtopics were listed in linear fashion, with spaces between for the student's notes)
matrix (framework provided which names the topics across the page and subtopics vertically down the page, providing a matrix in which notes can be written in the intersecting cells)

It was found that students writing from their notes wrote essays that were more organised and lengthier than students writing without their notes.

It was found that students who were given frameworks usually wrote more detailed and organised essays, with those using a matrix framework tending to write more cohesive essays. This was true whether or not the matrix notes were written by the student himself, or written by another. However, matrix notes written by another student only helped coherence after a delay.

Mayer, R.E., Bove, W., Bryman, A., Mars, R. & Tapangco, L. 1996. When less is more: meaningful learning from visual and verbal summaries of science textbook lessons. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 64-73.

Finding: Scientific cause-and-effect explanations are best taught by means of a summary that uses pictures with a small amount of integrated, explanatory text.

Different instructional treatments were compared to find which was more effective in helping students understand scientific explanations.

The different conditions included:

a 600-word passage with summary
a summary alone
variants of a multimedia summary (one which combines words and pictures)

The various multimedia summaries varied in conciseness (the number of pictures and words), coherence, and coordination (between words and pictures).

It was found that lengthy text, even including a summary, was no better than a summary on its own.

A multimedia summary appeared to be more effective than a purely verbal summary.

A multimedia summary was more effective when it had only a small amount of text, and when the words and images were coordinated.

Robinson, D.H. & Kiewra, K.A. 1995. Visual argument: graphic organizers are superior to outlines in improving learning from text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 455-467.

Finding: For passages longer than 2500 words, where time is sufficient to allow study, graphic representations of outline notes are helpful in allowing the student to make connections between ideas. Building connections helps make information more easily remembered for longer.

Outlines involve the systematic and usually hierarchical listing of information. They are easily constructed, popular, and of proven effectiveness. However, their linear structure discourages finding connections.

Graphic organizers use a spatial format to represent the outline.

The effectiveness of graphic organizers has had mixed results, but this may well be due to some studies using quite brief texts. It has been suggested that with texts shorter than some 2500 words, such summaries are unnecessary.

The present study compared the effects of text only; text with outline; and text with a graphical organizer, either in matrix or tree format.

When time was limited, both outlines and graphical organizers were poor for learning facts which were included in the text but not mentioned in the summary. However, when more time was given, the advantage of text-only disappeared.

Graphic organizers were no better than outlines for teaching the represented facts, but were more effective for learning relations between concepts and expressing them in an integrated fashion. Common and distinctive features of concepts were learned better by the graphic organizer groups.

Information was better retained in the graphic organizer conditions - both text-only and outline-plus-text groups dropped their performance when tested two days later, but there was no drop at all for the graphic organizer groups.

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Use of advance organizers

Kloster, A.M. & Winne, P.H. 1989. The effects of different types of organizers on students' learning from text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 9-15.

Finding: Advance organizers can be an effective aid to learning but many students don't know how to use them effectively.

An advance organizer is not simply an introductory summary - a summary is written at the same level of generality as the text, but an advance organizer is written at a more abstract level, and provides a structure which the reader can use to interpret and understand the text.

The use of advance organizers has had mixed reviews as to its effectiveness as an aid to learning.

The present study found that many 8th grade students had trouble using advance organizers effectively. The authors suggest that the mixed results in the research may be more due to the variant ability of the students than to the effectiveness of the organizers.

Glover, J.A., Bullock, R.G. & Dietzer, M.L. 1990. Advance organizers: Delay hypotheses. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 291-7.

Finding: Advance organizers are more effective if there is a delay between reading the advance organizer and reading the text.

When advance organizers are carefully attended to, they assist recall of the text. Recall is improved even more if there is a delay between reading the advance organizer and reading the text.

This can be interpreted in terms of the spacing hypothesis - that repeated presentations of the same material are more effective when there is a delay between them. This is considered to occur because, when repetitions are too close together, the material is still in working memory. If there is sufficient delay, the material needs to be reactivated from long-term store. Repeated activations make the information more easily activated.

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Using elaborative interrogation

McDaniel, M.A. & Donnelly, C.M. 1996. Learning with analogy and elaborative interrogation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 508-519.

Finding: Elaborative interrogation is as effective as an analogy in helping students understand new scientific concepts, and superior for improving recall of the facts.

Analogies are often used to help student's understand new scientific concepts. However, a previous study found that while analogies are useful for helping the student make inferences when learning new scientific concepts (presumably demonstrating a greater understanding), this occurs at the expense of factual learning.

The present experiments compared the following learning conditions:

analogy combined with a schematic
keyword highlighting
elaborative interrogation (transformation of the facts into why-questions, which the student has to answer)

It was found that the use of an analogy combined with a schematic had no significant effect on learning, while keyword highlighting increased factual learning to the level found in a standard text condition (that is, where an analogy wasn't used - remember, use of an analogy inhibits the learning of factual content).

Elaborative interrogation however, resulted in significant improvement both in factual and inferential learning, whether or not analogy was used.

Martin, V.L. & Pressley, M. 1991. Elaborative-interrogation effects depend on the nature of the question. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 113-119.

Finding: Elaborative interrogation is more effective when the questions confirm the facts to be remembered, rather than calling them into question.

The elaborative interrogation strategy involves turning facts into why-questions (e.g., The tree is green. Why is the tree green?), and then answering them. It is a very effective strategy, but requires the student to have sufficient background knowledge about the subject to answer the questions.

In the present study, the why questions concerned facts about Canadian provinces and varied according to two conditions:

they required the student to confirm why the fact made sense for the province; or
they required the student to explain why the fact was unexpected.

Students were required to answer the questions either on the basis of what they knew about the specific province in question, or on the basis of what they knew about other provinces.

It was found that the strategy was more effective when the student was trying to confirm the fact, regardless of whether they were using general or specific information.

Simpson, M.L., Olejnik, S., Tan, A.Y. & Supattathum, S. 1994. Elaborative verbal rehearsals and college students' cognitive performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 267-278.

Finding: Verbal rehearsal of information is more likely to be effective when the rehearsed information includes information not explicitly stated in the text.

The study compared the effectiveness of a verbal rehearsal strategy versus elaborative verbal rehearsal.

Simple verbal rehearsal typically emphasizes rote repetition of selected statements, often topic sentences, or one sentence combined with another. In elaborative rehearsal the student includes information that is not explicitly stated in the text.

It was found that recall was better when elaborative verbal rehearsal was used, compared to verbatim verbal rehearsal.

Willoughby, T., Wood, E. & Khan, M. 1994. Isolating variables that impact on or detract from the effectiveness of elaboration strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 279-289.

Finding: Where students have little relevant prior knowledge, the use of an imagery mnemonic is a greater aid to remembering than use of the elaborative interrogation strategy.

Elaborative interrogation is most effective when learners are able to draw on a rich knowledge base. When learners do not have such a knowledge base, an imagery-based strategy is more effective.

An effective imagery-based strategy (such as the keyword mnemonic strategy) involves creating interactive images. Creating such images helps the student make connections and attend to distinctive details.

Elaborative interrogation has been established as an effective strategy when the student has background knowledge to draw on, to help them answer the questions raised. One of the reasons it is an effective strategy is because it aids the student make connections between information they already have, and new information.

In the case of a student with little background knowledge, the making of relatively meaningless connections (as are typically made when interactive images are constructed) is better than making no connections at all.

Woloshyn, V.E., Paivio, A. & Pressley, M. 1994. Use of elaborative interrogation to help students acquire information consistent with prior knowledge and information inconsistent with prior knowledge. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 79-89.

Finding: Appropriate use of elaborative interrogation can enhance remembering by connecting new information with existing knowledge that is consistent with the new information.

Elaborative interrogation is established as an effective strategy when the student has sufficient background knowledge to enable them to answer the why-questions raised. However, what happens when that prior "knowledge" contradicts the new information?

New information tends to be poorly learned when existing beliefs contradict it.

This effect can be counteracted by increasing the student's awareness of the discrepancies (e.g., by saying things like "most people believe ... but in fact ...").

A lot of the time in fact, we possess both consistent and inconsistent knowledge about a subject. Elaborative interrogation can be useful for reminding the student of the consistent information, for example, by asking questions such as "Why is this true?".

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Using mnemonics

Rosenheck, M.B., Levin, M.E. & Levin, J.R. 1989. Learning botany concepts mnemonically: seeing the forest and the trees. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 196-203.

Finding: Using a pictorial mnemonic to remember taxonomic information resulted in better long-term recall than use of standard strategies.

Students were presented with text describing a plant classification system and the distinguishing characteristics of the plant groups. Some of the students (the "taxonomic" group) were given a standard figural taxonomy (boxes connected by lines) as an aid to learning. Others (the "mnemonic" group) were given a pictorial mnemonic. The third group was a control group ("free study"), that is, they were not given any learning aids but could use whatever strategy they wished.

The students' memory for the information was tested at three stages: immediately after learning; two days later; and two months later.

The students who had used a mnemonic performed significantly better than the control students on every measure. They performed significantly better than the students who had used a standard taxonomic aid when tested immediately and after the long two month delay. The difference was not statistically significant at the two day test.

It was found that the mnemonic students tended not to guess as often as the other students, and made fewer errors.

also see Willoughby, Wood & Khan 1994.

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Use of learning strategies (general)

Foos, P.W., Mora, J.J. & Tkacz, S. 1994. Student study techniques and the generation effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 567-576.

Finding: It will be easier for you to remember the specific details you targeted in your questions if you thought the questions up yourself, but it won't necessarily help you recall the study material in general any better than if you used another person's questions or notes.

The generation effect refers to the common finding that generating your own ideas / concepts / notes etc results in superior recall than using ideas etc generated by another person.

The present study found a generation effect when students generated their own outlines or study questions, compared to students who were presented with experimenter-generated or student-generated material. However, the advantage of generating your own questions or notes only applied to the test items targeted by the generating students. That is, there was no general advantage of self-generation for the material as a whole.

Kiewra, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Christensen, M., Kim, S. & Risch, N. 1991. Effects of repetition on recall and note-taking: Strategies for learning from lectures. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 120-123.

Finding: Repeating a lecture may be of value for recording information other than the most important.

Repeating a lecture didn't result in much increase in the noting of the most important information (which was already heavily represented in the notes when the lecture was heard the fist time), but less important information (poorly represented in notes of the initial lecture) was much more likely to appear in notes when the lecture was heard again.

Zimmerman, B.J. & Martinez-Pons, M. 1990. Student differences in self-regulated learning: Relating grade, sex, and giftedness to self-efficacy and strategy use. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 51-59.

Finding: Better students, and more confident students, use more learning strategies.

Students were asked to describe their use of 14 self-regulated learning strategies and to estimate their verbal and mathematical competence.

Gifted students demonstrated more strategy use than regular students. Students' perception of their own verbal and mathematical competence was related to their use of learning strategies.

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References