Priming
Do you gain a big-picture understanding of a new topic before
learning the details?
Do you spend time to briefly look through the topic before classes,
lectures, or long study sessions?
Do you think of how the main ideas of a topic might relate to each
other before learning about each idea more deeply?
Do you look for how ideas, facts, and concepts may influence each
other?
Reference
Do you write and store detailed information that needs to be
referred back to later (e.g. facts and figures, statistics, etc.)
in a different way than conceptual information?
Do you use substantial non-linear note-taking to represent
relationships between concepts when learning conceptual
information?
Do you write many notes that you do not read again?
Encoding
Do you constantly relate new information to a big-picture
understanding of importance or relevance?
Do you look for ways to make new information more
relevant, intuitive, and simple to understand?
Do you actively try and find ways to organise information
that reduces the need for rote memorisation?
Do you actively group and rearrange information so that it is
more organised?
Do you try to create analogies for new ideas that are initially
complicated to understand or remember?
Do you regularly pause when consuming new information so
that you can make the information you've already consumed
more intuitive and organised, to prevent yourself from being
overloaded by the stream of new, unorganised information?
Do you use note-taking to help visually organise your
thoughts so that your mental effort can be used to explore
how concepts are related to each other, group and organise
information, simplify and make new information more
intuitive, and connect information to the big picture?
Do you spend a significant amount of time writing notes that
do not help you to...
Connect information to the big picture
Make new information simpler and more intuitive
Group and rearrange ideas
Create analogies
Exploring how ideas are related to each other
Retrieval
Do you use and apply knowledge you have learned from
memory within the first week of learning it?
Do you test your knowledge (in any form, deliberately or
opportunistically) to identify gaps in your knowledge?
Do you reinforce your learning for isolated facts with a different
method (e.g. flashcards and spaced repetition) than for
conceptual learning?
Interleaving
Do you shuffle problems from different chapters? ( no block
practice )
Do you try to fill gaps in knowledge by approaching the
information from a different perspective or looking for new
connections and relationships compared to the first time?
Do you recall and apply your knowledge from memory in
multiple ways (e.g. answering diverse types of
problems/questions or applying your knowledge in diverse
contexts).
Overlearning
Do you use techniques that involve repetitive recall from
memory to increase the consistency and speed of your recall
accuracy? These techniques often rely on high volumes such
as doing a large number of quizzes, practice questions or
flashcards (if necessary and relevant).
Do you spend time to actively look for ways your knowledge
may be tested that may be beyond your expected scope, to
look for weaknesses and improve mastery of core material?
