IMPORTANCE OF REVISION IN LEARNING
Our brain works in such a way that, it requires constant reminding to help us to keep information in the long-term memory. Often, we are asked to cram enormous amount of information in our memory in a short space of time. Most of this information are kept in the short. We require thinking space to reflect on information in order to move the information from the short-term memory to the long-term memory. Doing so, helps us to remember what we have learnt. Revision places a key part in helping us not only to remember or memorising what we have learnt but plays in key part in helping us to understand key concepts that helps to develop as learners. Some of the revision strategies that have been useful in helps students to revise and achieve highly have been discussed below.
DIFFERENT REVISION STRATEGIES
There are many different revision strategies. A few of these have been provided below. You will have to choose which revision technique best suits your learning style. Read each of these carefully and adopt those that are suitable to your learning style.
Mind Maps
Mind maps are known to be a great way to identify and make connections between ideas and concepts that are learnt. Mind maps can be designed in the in different ways using colours and images, bubble and connections which will help to aid memory. You may want to create mind maps using cars or large A3 paper or electronically. There are free apps such as mindmeister, canva, mindmups are available to help you create different types of mind maps to aid your learning. Alternatively, you draw diagrams to help you to remember processes or cycles.
Flash cards
Flash cards are useful in helping learners to summarize information on topics or units learnt and can help learners to identify any gaps in their learning. Empty flashcards can be purchased, or you can cut pieces of paper into flashcard sizes for use. You may also use an electronic app such as Study Blue to create flashcards. You can use images colour coding to help you categorise your flashcards appropriately. Flashcards are known to be useful to summarise notes about a specific topic/unit on to a card, to write terms on one side and a definition the other. You may also use the flashcard to write questions on one side and answer on the other.
Post-it Notes
Post-it notes are simple to use. They are helpful in allow learners to summarise information on topic/units studied. They are very useful and great way to remember key details on each topic/unit. You may use different coloured post-it notes for recording different key points and to identify themes. You may stick your post-it notes around your home – your bedroom, kitchen, lounge/hall and other places so you can read them as you walk about in your home.
Practice Questions
For learners who have to sit exams, it is very important to familiarise yourself with practice questions in your textbook but more importantly to practice past examination papers or practice questions. There is one thing learning new ideas and concepts and another in retrieving your knowledge and understanding exams questions. Practising past exams questions is a great way to test your knowledge, understand gaps in knowledge and understand how to answer exams questions. You may provide full answers to past exam questions with and without your revision notes. You can find past examination papers on the Exam Board website.
Rhymes or Stories or Mnemonics
Strangely, the brain is wired to remember songs, rhymes or stories easier than just simply reading and seeking to crump or learn facts. However, it is known fact that rhymes, stories and mnemonics help us to remember facts and retrieve information form memory easily. For example, “in the discovery of gases Horace fell down a well and started laughing”. This simply, helps learners to remember that “Horace Wells was an American dentist and one of the first to routinely use nitrous oxide (laughing gas) on his patients”.
Mnemonics can also be used to memorise facts by using the first letter of a series of words to create a phrase that is easy to remember. For example, Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (colours of the rainbow in order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet).
Making Notes
To help revise what is being learnt, you may write down the key points and revisit these after you have read the facts and concepts. However, you may find that you learn better by listening or hearing things. In this case, you may use your phone or a recorder to record yourself, relative or friend reading out short parts of your notes. Later, you can listen back to your recordings at any time.
Retrieval Practice
You may use retrieval practice, also referred to as 'the testing effect' to generate answers to questions. This revision technique is known to one of the most effective revision strategies. Often, the retrieval practice may involve of past papers, multiple choice tests or answering questions aloud.
Reflections
In current education systems around the world, reflection is highly encouraged as part of the teaching and learning processes. Reflection is using with reading for meaning. After reading, it is important to think over or reflect on what has been learnt. If you have received feedback on your assignment from a teacher or tutor, it is important to think about both the positive points and those you need to improve. Learn to repeat the positive feedback by completing similar questions. This helps to reinforce learning and the former; try to change the latter.
Spacing
Spacing as a revision strategy is where learners study little portions of their subject information regularly, rather than trying to learn a huge chunk of information in a single day. Spacing out enable learners to keep information in the long-term memory. Recent research indicate that as a revision method helps learners to achieve 10% to 30% better results in final test/examination results compared to those who cram huge volumes of information.
Interleaving
Interleaving is a revision technique where learners mix up the topics they study within a given subject. Recent research has shown that interleaving is an effective revision strategy because students perform better and achieve at higher level, when tested immediately after learning the information, than those make no connections with their learning. Thus students who used interleaving performed more than three times better if the test was more than a day later. This is because this technique helps students to make links between different concepts and facts as well as categorize different types of problems, allowing them to identify the most appropriate thought process for each topic learned.
A Good Study Partner
Although, a study partner can be useful companion to motivate learning. However, a study partner can distract you from learning if they are close friends who love to chat away evening during the times of learning. Therefore, it is important to choose a study partner who would motivate you. Research has shown that if you are next to a person who is hardworking then you are likely to emulate and increase your work ethic to match theirs. There is plethora of evidence to indicate that when people learn together to complete problem-solving task, they are more likely to use different techniques to solve problems as well as learn faster from feedback.
USING REVISION STRATEGIES TO ACHIEVE
For any revision strategy to produce the expected outcome: and help learners to achieve highly, these techniques must keep learners motivated. For this reason, it is important to:
- Vary the topics or subjects you revise. To keep yourself motivated, it is important to study/revise the from the difficult subject to the more familiar ones. This approach makes the revision more interesting, and the easier and small chunks are easier to remember.
- Establish a routine and be disciplined to stick to it. For example, you can set an alarm, get dressed and eat breakfast as you normally would to prepare for the day.
- Use a mixture of active revision techniques such as rhythms, songs etc with other passive ones
- Take regular breaks after revising for 1-2 hours but be strict about returning to your revision. Even when you are on a break, you may still be thinking about what you have revised previously and it will be a good idea to keep note of any thoughts.
- Reward yourself treats and rewards to keep you going
AVOID PASSIVE REVISION
When revision is passive, it becomes difficult to engage with large amounts of information. There are some passive revision techniques that are
Copying Out Material
This approach is inefficient and adds not much value to learning and does not help with your memorisation. Simply copying out information does not engage the mind actively enough to help you remember the content.
Typing and Tidying Up Notes
Typing or retyping and rewriting information which is already in any format is a complete waste of time unless the information is needed in a new format to support your learning. Simply typing and writing texts without reflection does not improve brain activity and engagement.
Reading Notes
Reading text passively does not engage the brain. As a result, it is important to summarise, annotate and jot the key points for further revision in order to engage your mind.
Highlighting
Highlighting text can be a mindlessly tasks and a passive revision technique that achieves very little. It is therefore important to combine highlighting the document with annotation for this method to be effective.
It is worthy to note that any revision that you adopt can be effective only when the learner can stay focussed, visit our pages on dealing with distractions.