Cramming for an important test is practically a rite of passage for college students. Whether you view it as a necessary evil, an inevitable byproduct of your busy schedule, or a perfectly fine way to study, doing marathon study sessions the night before a test may seem like an unavoidable part of the college experience.
Cramming is undoubtedly a common study method, but that doesn’t mean that it’s an unavoidable (or good) one. Trying to learn or relearn everything you need to know for a test in one sitting is inefficient, and even if you’re able to get by on the test, it’s not effective for long-term learning. You’ll find yourself right back at square one when you get to the cumulative final exam or when you move on to the next class that builds on the same material. Plus, cramming is just stressful!
So what’s the alternative? Make your studying more efficient, effective and less stressful by making it more challenging. That sounds counterintuitive, but bear with me. Author Benedict Carey theorizes that our memories have two different strengths: storage strength and retrieval strength. Storage strength has to do with our ability to retain information, while retrieval strength has to do with our ability to access information.
The problem with cramming for one big block of time, is that you can trick yourself into thinking you know the material just because it becomes familiar. Unfortunately, becoming familiar with the material isn’t the same as learning it. You might get to a point where accessing the information feels easy, but you haven’t actually retained it in your long-term memory. The best way to ensure that the knowledge really sticks is to challenge your brain in the right ways.
There are two interconnected strategies for achieving this “desirable difficulty” in your studying: spaced studying and interleaving. Spaced studying is exactly what it sounds like – you spread out your studying over a longer period of time over multiple days, and your study sessions are shorter but more frequent. With spaced studying, your studying process begins as soon as you learn new material.
Let’s say you learn a new concept two weeks before a test. Instead of waiting until the night before the test to study that concept during a long cram session, you study it during several shorter sessions over the course of those two weeks. You could review the concept the day after you first learn it, then three or four days later, then a week later, and then one more time before the test.
The purpose of spacing out your studying is to give yourself time to almost forget the new material before each review session, which is actually important for learning. When your brain has to work harder in order to retrieve the information you need, it is much more likely that you will be able to gradually commit that information to your long-term memory. The process may feel uncomfortable, but you’ll have better results in the long run.
Spaced studying has to do with the “when” of studying, while interleaving has to do with the “how.” Interleaving is the process of mixing up multiple subjects or concepts while you study, rather than focus on one at a time.
Let’s say you have tests in biology and chemistry coming up. Instead of devoting a five-hour study session to biology and another five-hour study session to chemistry, you could break your studying into five, two-hour sessions during which you spend an hour on each subject. You’re still spending five total hours on each subject, but by working on both subjects during your study sessions, you’re giving yourself more of a challenge.
Your brain is forced to stay active and work hard to continually retrieve the right information, which means you can avoid the trap of becoming complacent and mistaking familiarity for learning. This is why interleaving won’t work well during a long cram session and should always be implemented along with spaced studying. Again, studying in this way might feel strange at first, but it pays off.
There is no single “right” way of implementing spaced studying and interleaving. A lot will depend on the individual and on the specific situation. But the important takeaway is that you should use these strategies to introduce a level of “desirable difficulty” to your studying process. Spaced studying and interleaving will probably make your studying feel more challenging, but these strategies will also make your studying more efficient, more effective and less stressful than cramming.