10 How Should I Review?
Damian stared listlessly at his outline for the umpteenth time. The outline stared back at him, almost mocking him, as if asking whether Damian was really learning anything. Damian shook his head and even gave a rueful smile at the odd impression of the outline staring at him as he stared at the outline. But maybe the impression was right, Damian thought. Maybe he wasn’t really learning anything, just staring for hours on end at his outline. Yet what else was he supposed to do?
Reviewing
Reviewing is a common and traditional study practice in instructional programs of all kinds. Instruction often has the design of an initial reading, lecture, or other presentation followed by a period during which the instructor expects students to review what they learned, preparing for a quiz, test, or exam. Indeed, for many students, studying largely means reviewing. Instructors may assign a reading before class, which students may complete only cursorily if at all, instead expecting the lecture, slide show, discussion, or other presentation and activities in class to supply the information necessary to do well on the exam. And instructors usually comply, covering in class at least the priority information if not everything on the exam. Students then spend the bulk of their study time reviewing what they learned in class. Thus, in many instructional programs, review becomes the critical study practice. Students generally know what they want review to accomplish, which is to prepare them for the coming assessment. But is that the right objective? And if so, what should review entail?
Objectives
Preparing for a quiz, test, or exam is the common objective for reviewing. Indeed, that procedure is the instruction's design. Of course, assessments help programs determine student progress toward learning goals. Schools must be accountable to their students and accreditation standards. But assessments also play a significant role in promoting learning. If students know that they must pass a test to get course credit and eventually graduate, then they’ll review for the test. And reviewing serves the purpose not only of preparing for the test but also confirming and extending learning. In that sense, tests are only external, artificial motivators. The deeper, internal motivation should be to learn. The student who truly wants to learn and not just to pass a bunch of tests should make reviewing a practice even if the student has no test to pass. So, consider reviewing anytime you want to retain, confirm, refine, and extend your learning, whether or not you have a test to pass. If, for instance, you take job training and want to recall the training to do well at your job, then review as if preparing for a test. If, for another example, you are reading broadly in philosophy to improve your knowledge of the subject, then review as if preparing for a test.
Effects
If done properly, review can indeed be effective for promoting learning. Review can first of all confirm what you learned. Review can ensure that you actually understood what you heard, saw, or recorded in your notes. Review gives you the opportunity to ask yourself questions, look up definitions, and otherwise investigate until you are confident in your comprehension. Review can also refine what you learned, enabling you to work out elements, factors, conditions, and relationships that you did not initially discern. Review can also rehearse what you learned, moving short-term memories into intermediate memory for further rehearsal, for retention long term. Review can also elaborate what you learned, giving it new shape while expanding the settings in which you can apply it. Review can also develop an automaticity to what you learned, speeding your recall and application, thus freeing your working memory for other beneficial use. Review, done properly, can have substantial beneficial effects. Put your review to good use.
Strategy
But you must review properly to gain its positive effects. The key to effective review, active engagement, is the key to learning generally. The more you process the information you are reviewing, the more you are likely to aid your learning. The more your review requires you to recall information, especially retrieving discrete bits of information out of the structure in which you first recorded or placed it, the more likely you are to promote your learning. The more your review requires you to deploy information into new settings and adapt the information as you do so, the more likely you are to improve your learning. Paraphrasing or elaborating the information into different words, phrases, and forms also aids your learning. The great temptation with review is to let it become passive, as if your learning has already taken place in the classroom or other setting in which you first encountered the subject, and as if in review you only need to let it pass before your eyes again. Yet simply staring at the information in the same form you recorded it won’t benefit your learning. Don’t let your review become passive. In review, actively and repeatedly engage, deploy, and reshape your materials, for your best benefit.
Content
Ensure that your review covers the course content that your review aims to confirm. Don’t study the wrong content for the quiz, test, exam, recital, or other assessment or performance you expect to face. Whatever it is for which you are preparing, be deliberate about learning the scope of your assignment from the instructor, syllabus, or other authority directing your program. Licensing exams, for instance, often publish clear guidelines on exam content, sometimes beyond the broad subjects right down to the detailed topics. Cut out of your review anything not relevant to your challenge. Include in your review everything you may encounter. If an exam is only over a portion of the course, focus your review on that portion, not other portions. Confirm and reconfirm that you are reviewing the correct subjects, units, and topics.
Gaps
Review is the time to identify and fill gaps in your knowledge. You may have missed classes or units due to illness or other responsibilities. If you haven’t already obtained notes or other resources to cover those absences, then review is the time to do so. But you may also have missed topics during their presentation, or the presentation may not have addressed relevant topics that may appear on your quiz, test, or exam. Use the instructor’s course syllabus, any instructor description of course detail, and any disclosure of the exam topics to confirm that your review includes all topics, whether your instructor’s lectures or other presentations and resources addressed those topics or not. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and fill those gaps with reliable information.
Practice
Also confirm the nature of the expected performance for which you are reviewing. Your method of review may well differ if, for instance, you are preparing for a multiple-choice exam rather than an essay exam, or for problem sets rather than a short-answer test, or to defend a thesis rather than for a rapid-fire true/false exam. Your review should generally mimic to some degree, indeed the greatest degree possible, the conditions and nature of the expected performance. Think of reviewing as practicing the expected performance. If, again, multiple-choice questions are your exam format, then practice at least some multiple-choice questions if at all possible. If the exam format requires you to apply knowledge to varying scenarios rather than simply recall knowledge, then practice application to varying scenarios. If the exam format involves long essay answers, then practice producing long essay answers, for the continuous recall and fluid deployment long essay answers require.
Depth
Review is not only a good time to confirm and practice knowledge but also to deepen it. Your exam or other final performance for which you are reviewing may require only that you recall knowledge, answering prosaic questions. If so, then still deepen your knowledge of the topic. Doing so will aid your comprehension and recall. Don’t just memorize the knowledge. Generate examples and non-examples of it. Apply it to varying settings. Analyze its use and effectiveness in those settings. Evaluate the results it produces. Compare, contrast, and synthesize it with other knowledge. If your exam requires that you use your new knowledge in these deeper ways, then by all means practice doing so. But practice doing so, even if your exam or other final performance doesn’t require it. That’s how you best learn.
Outlines
Outlines are popular for review, and for good reason. An outline organizes the information for ready review, typically in a hierarchical form with headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings. As already stated in prior chapters, creating your own outline from your own notes can itself be a useful way of recalling, rehearsing, processing, prioritizing, and otherwise shaping the knowledge, beyond the use to which you will put the outline in review. By all means, create an outline if your instructor, or the nature of your course, instruction, and examination, suggest the wisdom of doing so. And avoid acquiring an outline from other sources, for anything other than to confirm the comprehensiveness of your own outline or fill gaps caused by your absences.
Misuse
The bigger question, though, is the use to which you put your outline. As also previously addressed in earlier chapters, and as illustrated in the vignette at this chapter’s beginning, staring endlessly at an outline isn’t generally an effective review. Strengthening your memory requires effortful retrieval of the memory, on your own without staring at the outline. If all you do is stare at the outline, you may leave only an impression of the outline in your mind, without having formed memories of its discrete parts. When an exam question asks you to do so, you won’t be able to instantly draw out of your mind the bit of information that remains hidden within your outline’s morass of information. Outlines have too much contextual information. Your mind remembers the whole image of the outline’s page or paragraph, not the bits of information that you need to instantly draw out to answer an exam question.
Use
So instead of staring endlessly at your outline, cover it up. Try to recall bits of information from it, reciting them from memory out loud. If you are unable to do so instantly and accurately, then uncover the outline just briefly enough to recall the missing information before promptly covering the outline back up. Then, say the information that you are trying to recall out loud again, to see if you can now recall it accurately. If so, move on to another bit of the outline, but return again soon to force your recall of the missed information once again. Try, in other words, to test your recall over the whole outline without looking at it and only glancing at it when needing a reminder. Mentally move forward, backward, and randomly around the outline, recalling and saying out loud details from memory and without looking at the outline, until you can retrieve every bit of the outline, in any order, without its use. In other words, disaggregate each bit of information from every other bit of information, so that you can recall each bit on its own, while placing it back in its relationship to other concepts. That’s how to use an outline for review, as a memory aid, not as an outline. And by the way, flashcards will do the disaggregating for you, if you wish to go that route.
Frequency
To consider how often you should review, think again of how memory works. You hold information in short-term memory for only seconds, which means you must rehearse information very soon after first receiving it. That’s why we forget names when introduced. We’re too busy going through the other motions of greeting and making small talk to rehearse the new name, and so we instantly forget it. So, rehearse short-term memory when reading or watching a presentation, to move the information into intermediate memory. But intermediate memory only lasts a few hours, perhaps a day at most. So, your first review should occur within a few hours of when you first learn the new information. Return within those first few hours, or within a day at most, to your notes or mentally rehearse the new information, shortly after class, after the reading, or after the other presentation you wish to recall. Then, review again within the next two to four days, and again within a week to ten days. You may thereafter extend the review interval. The key, though, is to review early and periodically. Don’t abandon your studies for weeks at a time, only to return to them shortly before the exam.
Timing
Consider a review’s timing another way. To preserve memories, you must repeat them initially, or they will dissipate and disappear. So, prioritize reviewing what you just learned the prior day and prior week. If you let that learning go a little bit thereafter, you may be alright, although returning to it for a brief refresher would help. Covering everything that you learned so far in a course, at least every other week, is a good practice. The learning will accumulate in its quantity over the fifteen-or-so weeks of the term. But you will have solidified what you learned early in the course by reviewing it two, three, four, or more times, every other week throughout the course. So the burden of an every-other-week review should not grow substantially. Then, as you approach the exam, in the last week before the exam and then the last day before the exam, resume and redouble your review. You should then be well prepared for the exam.
Reflection
How comfortable are you with your review practices? Do you generally feel well prepared for quizzes, tests, and exams? Having read the above chapter, where do you think you might be able to improve your review practices? Are your review practices adequately engaged and active? Is your review sufficiently effortful, requiring full concentration and energy? Do you routinely have a clear sense of the reason for your review? Do you confirm and reconfirm the material you should be reviewing? Do you know not only the exam content but also the exam format? Do you include in your review a practice of the exam format? Do you prepare outlines for review? If so, are you using those outlines effectively? Are you reviewing shortly after class or instead waiting until just before the test or exam? Are you reviewing frequently enough?
Key Points
Reviewing is a common and appropriate learning strategy.
Reviewing can both confirm comprehension and solidify memory.
Know the reason for your review, including the expected performance.
Confirm and reconfirm the material or content to review.
Use review to identify and fill gaps in your knowledge.
Include in your review actual practice in the performance format.
Use application, analysis, and evaluation to strengthen your review.
Creating an outline of your own from your own notes aids review.
Simply staring at an outline won’t sufficiently aid discrete memory.
Instead, withdraw the outline to recall from unaided memory.
Review shortly after class, the next day and week, and periodically.
Review close to the initial learning and close to the exam.