iCanStudy — Lesson Transcript Lesson: The Complete Study System — Full Review & Self-Audit Corresponding report: reports/study-system-review.html Known transcription errors (corrected in the report): - "Hopat-Hol / Hop-and-Hol reteaching" should be "Whole-Part-Whole (WPW) reteaching" - "COBS experiential learning cycle" should be "Kolb's experiential learning cycle" --- So let's take a look back and just reflect for a little bit in terms of how far we've come and look at the entire study system that we have begun to develop and hopefully forming into a habit now. What I want you to do is take a piece of paper and I want you to be writing down any elements that you think you've slacked off on or you've forgotten about or areas that you need to really just, in general, focus on and emphasize more for the weeks to come. This full study system is what you really need to be doing to be getting those top grades and if you're able to follow these guidelines then you should have a pretty easy time of achieving that as well. So I'll go through from pretty much top to bottom covering everything that we need to be incorporating and if you're missing even one of these things then there's going to be a noticeable disadvantage and you are increasing your risk of making certain types of mistakes. So have that piece of paper and write your notes as you go make sure that you're checking off all of these things so the first thing that we need to make sure is recapping on our fundamentals right so we know that we need to have a good amount of spacing we need to have interleaving we need to have a a good method and frequency for retrieval and then we need to have a few other guidelines around note taking and things like that which we'll get to soon so let's go through spacing first so in terms of spacing we should be having a good space revision schedule You could be using any combination of the schedules that we've covered already so far in the course, or you could be doing the general rule of thumb one day, one week, one month type thing, or a midweek one if you're a university student and you've got lots to study. We should be following basic guidelines of doing pre-study, and the pre-study that we're doing should be topic wide. And we then would go and learn it in class on a daily basis slash in your lecture. and this repeats every single day. So this is not topic wide anymore. This is obviously just daily. And then after your class or your lecture, you would be doing your same day review and the content that you'll be going over again is just a daily. And then you'd do optionally your midweek revision. And this is obviously now for the couple of days worth. So this is probably two to three days of content. And then we should have our end of week. Now, your end of week should ideally also be topic-wide because you'll be covering it at that pace. If your end of week is not topic-wide, it might be half the topic, but ideally we want to do it so that our end of week revision is topic-wide or as close to topic-wide as is feasible or reasonable. If you're in school, especially the younger levels where a single topic could take you weeks or even months, then you can break this up so it's not topic-wide but maybe quarterly or something like that. if you're a university student, you're usually doing around a topic per week or so. So we can do a topic-wide revision at the end of the week. The next one is the end of month review and the end of month will be multi-topic wide. And then we've got our pre-test reviews, which is entire subject wide, well, at least up until the area that you're getting assessed on at least. So that's your basic spacing that we need to be doing. And then through all of this, we need to be interleaving as you guys already know. we should be interleaving all of this stuff constantly. All of the techniques, all of the spacing that we're doing should always be interleaved, but you guys should already obviously know that by now. So all of this stuff is interleaved when we're doing our pre-study because we're doing that topic wide. We can be using our BHS aim shoot cycle here. We're aiming to get around coverage of layer one plus two of learning at least. This is our goal here. and you can go even into bits of layer three if you really wanted to and you had the time but at the very least you want to be getting going through layer one and two during that time there are other methods that you could be using depending on how refined your technique is but the main one that we'll be we'll be using that we've gone through is just a simple aim shoot cycle without the need to skin yet i remember that when we're doing that we've got our relational priority and we've also got our importance based chunking okay very important obviously and all of this is going to allow us to do a very high efficiency first pass encoding right so this is allowing us to create high efficiency first pass encoding and that's obviously from your working memory to your long term and that reduces the amount of forgetting that you that you have on the lecture day on the lecture day for that day's material we are consolidating here and we're aiming for layer two plus three maybe parts of four and you may be consolidating on your layer one as well we want to make sure that we are making our relationships at this stage are now accurate and very explicit we don't want to just say oh they are linked together because that's very weak we want to know exactly what that relationship is and how that compares with other relationships And then later that day, on our same-day revision when we're consolidating, we're really cleaning this. We are doing an addition. So for example, we're adding on the layer 3 plus 4 and then at this stage we can choose to skin the mind map. This is a great time to do it. And obviously all the auxiliary details that we're getting from textbooks, all of that sort of stuff will come in here as well. And at this point, we should really have around about 90 to 100% of the entire topic pretty well understood. And then we can also add on our memorization aids. So we can be introducing seamlessly modified method of loci plus minus flashcards with active flashcard management techniques on top of that, which should make it reasonably manageable, not overwhelming. Okay, so that was the... We've done the pre-study. We've done the class and lecture. We've done the same day revision. and you notice that at each step, it's slightly interleaving. And the technique that we're using may be variation of aim and shoot and then going through skin, but the BHS system is inherently naturally interleaving. So just by following the BHS, you're actually interleaving it. So the next one will be the midweek revision, if you are doing the midweek revision. And the midweek one, at this point, we've already skinned it. So doing the same thing again is going to be lower yield. So at this point, this is really revision number one after the pre-study and the lecture or the class material. And one example of what we could be doing here is our creating challenge questions. We could be doing challenge questions. We could even do a mini brain dump for just that day's worth of information, and we could potentially make questions based on the weaknesses that we find from that. The idea here is that whatever we're doing, we're looking for gaps and weaknesses. We want to target those weaknesses as early in our revision cycle as possible. And again, these challenging questions, you can also swap these with friends to get a bit of diversity and just make it a little bit more interesting as well. Then comes our end-of-week revision. Our end-of-week revision, this is where we want to do our high-volume retrieval practice. So that's obviously using things like brain dumps or Hopat-Hol reteaching. I would opt for the Hopat-Hol reteaching if you have the skill to do so because it's a little bit broader and it's just assessing us at all the different levels of Bloom's taxonomy in a more seamless way. And it's going to allow you to pick up on those gaps and weaknesses much faster than doing a linear brain dump. However, if you've got the time, for example, if you have an end-of-week revision and then let's say that you do a fortnightly revision as well, you could do a linear brain dump after that if you wanted to. And even your brain dump doesn't have to be linear necessarily. You could do a linear brain dump or you could also do a mind map brain dump, like a mini mind map, you know, semi-topic brain dump. So multiple different ways that you could do this. And then the next one, obviously after the end of week comes the end of month. And in your end of month, a great thing that you can do is actually be answering the questions that you've asked here. So this is now answering the challenge questions. You can do another type of high volume retrieval practice if you wanted to, like a linear or mind map brain dump. But another thing is, you know, the good old fashioned past papers practice questions if they're available to you. If you're writing essays, practice essays. And again, we're abiding by the same principle. We're always looking for our gaps and weaknesses. We're trying to find the areas that we're not sure about rather than just going through it mindlessly. And then the final stage is just pre-test. And in the pre-test period, we want to get that stylistic way of answering questions and the ability to retrieve and recall and the way that they may be testing us. So generally speaking, past papers during this period are a good way, as well as quizzing each other with your friends, things like that. And you could implement group study strategies that we've covered at any point throughout this, right? So at any point throughout this, you could be using, and by any point throughout this, I mean any point after the pre-study really, you could be using any of the group study strategies that we've covered. So now what about retrieval? So retrieval needs to be done well. And the way that we're going to make sure that we're doing retrieval well is all of the stuff that I've already mentioned here in terms of spacing and the interleaving continually throughout. We need to make sure that our flashcards are being done in parallel to our mainstream of studying. So mainstream of studying basically includes all of the stuff that we've talked about here. This is all the mainstream of studying. All of this stuff is your mainstream of studying. So when are you doing the flashcards? Well, you're doing them whenever they're due in parallel. You're doing them in parallel, and we want to make sure that we're leveraging off of that micro learning style, not batch. We need to make sure we're doing it micro learning. And remember, we are using active recall, but don't use pseudo recall. We want to make sure that it is true active recall whenever we're doing it. And this also comes through again when we're doing our notes. So that's the other point that I want to make is general guidelines around how we should be writing our notes at any given point. Our notes should have always a degree of chunking, and that chunking should be importance-based. Where possible, the layers three should go on your mind map. Whereas your layer four should go on flashcards plus minus other memorization tools as well as bits of layer three that you think you're likely to forget. Flashcards, obviously we're using all of our active flashcard management techniques and they need to be digital. Remember for all of those major reasons. And remember to follow the rule of three, including both variants of it, which is about what happens when you get it incorrect and about how you can introduce more interleaving through modifying the question based on the rule of three. So remember to do that, not just one of those. Your notes should be visualized. Okay, we're getting that hemispheric integration. We're wanting to make sure that we're using parts of our brain that aren't normally used in the learning process, especially the artistic and abstract representation and spatial arrangement of information. And then that's obviously going to come through with that modified method of loci that you're incorporating in there as well. So using different parts, leveraging off of spatial arrangement, leveraging off of the artistic parts of your brain, all of this stuff is gonna really drive up that encoding efficiency higher as well, which is gonna make your retrieval practice more effective. And obviously by this point, it shouldn't even need to be said, but all of your notes need to be processed, okay? And everything that goes into processing your notes, make sure that we're always processing it and we're using that brain power. We're optimizing that cognitive load as much as possible. We're not just going through passively. We're not finding it, you know, it's so easy to just read this material and then yet have learned nothing at the end of it. We're making sure that we're using our brain power in order to process it, in order to do the chunking and to identify the layers and to create the relationships and to, you know, do the retrieval and the interleaving and the artistic expression. All of that stuff requires the input of brain power, which is otherwise called cognitive load. And this needs to be maintained at all times. Your cognitive load should never really drop. And if it does, we're not really getting good learning out of it. So this is just a quick summary of everything that we need to be doing. And I haven't mentioned the obvious things that, you know, shouldn't even need to be said by now. Like don't ever copy verbatim what the teacher says. Don't just copy, you know, from a textbook. Don't write notes without thinking about what you want to write first. You know, don't write anything before mentally simplifying it first. Like all of the really, really obvious things, the mistakes that most very low level beginner students are making. You should be at a stage now where that is completely obvious that you shouldn't be making those mistakes. But make sure that we've got both sides of the coin. We've got the encoding things. They're using the aim shoot cycle and the skinning and the processing and the mind maps and the chunking and all of that sort of stuff. But make sure that we have the good spaced interleaved retrieval in there as well. We're not forgetting about that because, you know, there are students out there who are horrible at their encoding and therefore they have a hard cap on their efficiency, but they do the space retrieval religiously. They're not even necessarily interleaving. They just do the space retrieval religiously and they'll get pretty decent results. They'll need to spend a lot more time and effort, and it's a lot riskier doing it that way. But you who now should have a really high level of encoding, you want to make sure that you are doing the spaced interleave retrieval as well to get the full level of benefit. And I know that at this point in your progress, you may be so sort of, I guess like in love with the idea of this high efficiency encoding that we've been doing, that you can actually forget about the spaced interleaving retrieval and just making sure that we have the frequency and the spacing that we need. So see which areas that you missed, see if there's anything that you need to keep up with. I haven't talked about anything to do with maintaining your focus, optimize for focus risk timing. I haven't talked about any of the stuff about focus training or removing distractions or our habit building system. I haven't talked about any of that sort of stuff. This is just looking at the study system, making sure that we've covered most of our bases. As a little side note, what happens once you're able to do all of this? Well, again, we need to be working up our hierarchy obviously in terms of our hierarchy of competence. So once you get to a level of unconscious competence, so a lot of you are gonna be at a level of unconscious competence for some of these. However, you're probably gonna be sitting more around this area here, maybe still a little bit down here in the level of still incompetence. But most of you will be around level of conscious competence for a lot of these aspects so what happens here is that number one you need to drive towards a level of unconscious competence because when you're at a level of unconscious competence your speed that you're able to apply this technique to goes up massively so you're able to get faster and faster using the technique the other thing is also your quality of especially something like chunking goes up a lot so chunking may be something that's very easy and Pretty much second nature for you right now. And even importance-based chunking may be second nature for you by now. Well, hopefully it is by this point. But the thing is that when you require a lot of energy input to doing good importance-based chunking, and the effort that's required is very high, then the level of chunking that you can get is only so good. For example, if we had six different points and with maximum effort, we were able to chunk them into three different points. then over time, as your competency grows towards an unconscious level of competence, then we're able to chunk better and better. And that means that we can take these three chunks and we can get to this with very, very minimal effort, right? So now this becomes easy. But this is kind of a false sense of confidence because this may not be the best level of chunking possible. And I see this a lot with my more intermediate, higher-level students. When the chunking process is second nature, they still calibrate their sense for how good the chunking is based on how good they were able to be when they were still a beginner. And they measure how much better they've become based on how much easier it is to do it. But we need to actually, again, make sure that we are using our brainpower and optimizing our cognitive load. If it's easy, we're not actually going to get as much learning out of it as we could be able to get. So don't make it easy. We want to get even better at chunking. So now it's challenging once again, but it's not challenging to get to this level, but it's challenging to maybe get to this level where we've found another level of chunking on top of it. So as your competency grows, the quality, especially of things like chunking, especially of things like finding that relational importance, even techniques like modified method of loci and your integration of that, these things become higher and higher quality, which make your studying process simpler and simpler and faster and faster and makes your retention greater and greater as well. But you should never feel that the process of learning mentally doesn't require any brain power because that means that you are failing in cognitive load. You need to actively maintain it. That's the active part of active learning. Just because you're good at active learning doesn't mean that you become passive again. Your active learning means that you just try harder and harder and harder. A really weak person tries really hard to lift five kilograms. A really strong person doesn't just settle for five kilograms. They try just as hard as a weak person and they end up lifting 100 kilograms instead. That's what you need to do. Don't be satisfied with lifting five kilograms, be satisfied with lifting 100 kilograms, keep things challenging. But then there's a stage after this as well. So once you are, you know, you're continually driving that up and you're getting better and better and all of these basic techniques that we've taught you are unconsciously competent, then the next step forward is about getting that real personalized adjustment. And that personalized adjustment is when you're taking various principles. So for example, you're taking the principle of interleaving or you're taking the principle of microlearning and you're driving up the amount of interleaving or the amount of microlearning that you're using in your system to suit your needs. So all of this is adjusting it for your own situation and for your own needs. So for example, when I work with competitive athletes, they often have a lot of training time. So they don't have time to just sit and study for a long period of time. they need to use a system that is much more micro learning heavy so their system is not going to look like this it's not going to have the same type of spacing it's not going to have even the same type of aim shoot cycle all of these techniques can then be adjusted to be more interleaving heavy or more micro learning heavy more relationally heavy the multi-pass system is one that is designed for rapid sprints of burst studying and that's an example of a small adjustment that can be made depending on your situation but there are many other adjustments that can be made that are like that so the next step is having a very deep understanding about some of the basic principles and the important principles that we've talked about and how we can actually modify the techniques themselves to get the most out of that for different subjects or different you know times of the year or different stages of life or when we're busy in different ways you know a lot of these different things so all of this stuff can seem very overwhelming for a beginner, but you guys know that you've just diligently gone through the course. And so you should actually be pretty good at almost everything that I've talked about, hopefully. So you just need to work on this unless there were things that you slacked off on or you missed out on in the earlier stages before that I was talking about over here. So if that's not the case, then well done. If you have found things that you need to work on, go and diligently work on that. Make sure that you are keeping up with your COBS experiential learning cycle to drive up that improvement in the fastest possible way. And, you know, just take a bit of time and reflect back on before you started this course and how little you really knew and yet probably how much you thought you knew about how to study and potentially how overconfident you were. You know, someone would have told you, hey, you can study five times faster and you would have thought, man, you're full of it. But just take a moment to reflect back on how far you've come. And there's just that much more improvement to come still. You're still early on in that journey. I've been doing this now for 10 years and the journey is continuing. I'm still finding ways to get faster and more and more efficient all the time. And remember that your challenges are going to grow as well. Next year is going to be harder than this year. The year after is going to be harder than that. You will need to learn and adapt and consolidate and get better and better and better as time goes on. So, you know, this what may seem like something that is completely overwhelming for a beginner. You guys, well done. You are at the summit. You're at the top and you've just got some further gains to look forward to.