P R O D U C T I V I T Y

30/30*  - personal favorite, I always use this to study and manage time.

Essential productivity apps for any student*

Top 5 productivity apps for iOS (video)*

Top 5 productivity apps for Android (video)*

StayFocusd*- limits the time you can spend on time-wasting websites

Time Warp* - keeps you from procrastinating 

Self Control* - blocks websites

The science of productivity (video)

The science of procrastination and how to manage it (video)

7 brain hacks to improve your productivity (video)

The simple science of getting more done (in less time)

Productivity tips

About power naps

How to pull an all-nighter effectively

O R G A N I Z A T I O N 

My Study Life* - It’s a planner to help you remember when your homework is due and stuff like that

Free printable planner

To do list

How to make a study schedule

Class folder organization 

S C H O O L // S T U D Y I N G

Inkflow Visual Notebook* - I haven’t used this one, but it’s for note taking (if you’re a visual learner it’s probably quite useful

Free Flashcards Study Helper* - Create flashcards and carry them around to study anywhere

Apps for students*

Tips and trick to help you get good grades

Learning how to study

Cornell note taking method

BBC Bitesize

Studyblue - flashcards, quizzes, review sheets, study guides, etc.

Essay writing

Textbook masterpost (and other stuff too)

Wolfram Alpha for research 

Memorizing dates

Making a good study guide

Note taking like a pro

Online calculator

Finals survival guide

How to survive finals

School survival guide

Free online courses

Scholarpedia

Mathway

Khan academy

Quizlet

Homework help

Exam survival tips

Studying for an important exam

Answering multiple choice questions

Guide on punctuation

Science simplified 

How to answer exam questions

How to study

Useful websites

CrashCourse

How to write an essay

Duolingo

P R  O J E C T S

Public speaking

Annoying Power Point presentation mistakes

Power Point presentations

Prezi

Emaze - similar to prezi

Rawshorts - video presentations

Badass women of the future: part 1 (part 2)

Malavath Poorna, the youngest person ever to reach Mount Everest’s summit at the age of 13 years, 11 months

Ann Makosinksi, Canadian inventor of a flashlight powered strictly by body heat at age 16

Mo’Ne Davis, first girl to throw a Little League World Series shutout in history, with fastballs reaching speeds of up to 70mph, at age 13

Alia Sabur, youngest university professor in the world, appointed to Konkuk University in South Korea at age 18

There are so many study methods and techniques to try out that it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes. Luckily, there are many expalantions online about these methods. Here are some resources to find your perfect study method(s).

Types of learners + methods

Types of learners + methods

4 types of learners

Learning styles

Learning styles quiz

Types of learners info sheet

Study methods for auditory learners

Study technique - multiple intelligences

Some study methods masterposts

study methods @letsget-downtobusiness

study methods @etudiance

study methods @prettylittlestudies

study methods @studiyng

study methods @moleskinestudies

study methods @thegrangersapprentice

revision methods @studydiaryofamedstudent

13 study methods

five study methods

study methods + purposes

study methods infographic

Top 40 study methods

different ways to study

Some well known study methods to try out

mindmaps

note taking

teaching others

flashcards

discussing the topic

mnemomics

watching videos on the topic

highlighting

sticky notes

practice questions

recite out loud

Some less known methods to try out

Sqr3

ADEPT

QDASC

Snowball method

Journey method

Dominic system

Flip tips

Alternative to flashcards

Creating a memory palace

Feynman technique

Imply your study methods

study sessions

study guide

pre-studying

active studying

study moods

resources + methods

3 days study plan

3 - 2 - 1 hour system

My other masterposts

study skills

scheduling studying

study problems

Not all studying is made equal. There are actually two different types of learning, active and passive. This post will discuss the differences between them and explain how you can use active learning to get the most out of your study sessions.

PASSIVE LEARNING

Passive learning is when you’re merely sitting back and absorbing the information, like a sponge absorbing water. This includes:

reading a textbook

rereading/rewriting notes

highlighting

listening to a lecture

watching a documentary or demonstration

All of the above methods essentially involve just exposing yourself to the material and naïvely hoping some of it will stick. This is not effective for long-term retention or critical analysis.

Of course, quickly skimming over your notes might be helpful the morning of an exam, and it is certainly better than not studying at all. But if your tests involve writing essays, analyzing arguments, or building off of concepts to create new ones, passive studying is not recommended. Instead, you should use…

ACTIVE LEARNING

You learn best when you are forced to actively engage with the material. Active learning strategies include:

testing yourself with flashcards

answering practice problems

identifying patterns and cause/effect relationships

creating connections between topics

explaining concepts to others

formulating questions that push your learning further

revising notes (Note that this is different from rewriting, which is a passive learning technique. Turning your lecture notes into different forms, such as mind maps, sketchnotes, and summaries is an effective learning method. Copying your textbook onto lined paper and going over it with gel pens + Mildliners is not.)

discussing, debating, and challenging

These methods require you to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information, strengthening both your memory and comprehension. That sounds a little intimidating, but active learning is easier to implement than it sounds. For example, my favorite way to study for history is to pretend I’m the teacher and explain a topic out loud to my invisible “students”. Flashcards and writing unique sentences is great for foreign languages. For math, I’ll always try to prove every formula or theorem I use instead of merely memorizing it. If you’re not used to using active learning methods, the extra effort may present a challenge at first, but I promise it’ll lead to improved understanding and better grades in the end!

THE LEARNING TRIANGLE

(image source)

The learning triangle ranks learning techniques based on how much information we retain afterwords. I’m not sure I agree with all the exact percentages, but it’s safe to say that the general order and concept is correct. If you want to improve the effectiveness of your study sessions, try to use learning methods near the bottom of the triangle, as well as all the active learning strategies I mentioned earlier. Personally, I created a list of my favorite active learning strategies to hang up above my desk as a constant reminder to be an active studier.

And there you have it! Active learning will help you improve recall and comprehension in a very short amount of time. It’s one of the best ways to study smarter, not harder. Next time you sit down to study, go give those active learning methods a try!

Thanks for reading! If you have questions, feedback, or post requests, feel free to drop me an ask. To find the rest of my original posts, click here. :)

Games That Teach You Something About Public Health

By Beth Skwarecki (PLOS Blogs

Spent: This game is for anybody who feels like they know how they would live if they were poor. Just don’t buy as much stuff, right? The game, created by an ad agency for Urban MInistries of Durham, starts you off with $1000 in the bank and asks you to choose a job. From there, you have 30 days’ worth of expenses and decisions. You win if you can make it through the month without going broke. 

Vax

This is a short, fast-paced game that pits you against an infectious disease. Your playing field: a network of susceptible people.

You get a head start, with a limited number of vaccinations you can give before the disease starts to spread. When you vaccinate somebody, they drop out of the network, their dot disappearing and the network breaking apart. Once the outbreak begins, your only tool is quarantine, which likewise drops people out of the network.

Strategies that win: vaccinating (or quarantining) people who have the most connections, which has the biggest impact on the route the disease can travel. If you can completely split the network into pieces, that helps you too. But beware: When you reach the “hard” level, you’ll find that some people in the network refuse to be vaccinated. The game was developed by Marcel Salathe’s epidemiology research group.

Gut Check – This one was designed by microbiologist Jonathan Eisen. It’s a “real” game, the website says, but “one might accidentally learn about concepts such as antibiotic resistance, hospital-acquired infections, prebiotics, probiotics, opportunistic infections and more.”

In this card game (which regretfully I have not played yet), you and friends each try to develop your own microbiome, filling it with beneficial species—but you can also play pathogens on your opponents, pass around antibiotic resistance plasmids, and spread germs in crowded places with the “airplane trip” and “go to work sick” cards. There’s even a homeopathy card for those turns when you’d rather not play anything at all.

The game is available as free downloads to print, and the makers are working on a professionally printed version too.

10 Rules of Good Studying

Use recall. After you read a page, look away and recall the main ideas. Highlight very little, and never highlight anything you haven’t put in your mind first by recalling. Try recalling main ideas when you are walking to class or in a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall—to generate the ideas from inside yourself—is one of the key indicators of good learning.

Test yourself. On everything. All the time. Flash cards are your friend.

Chunk your problems. Chunking is understanding and practicing with a problem solution so that it can all come to mind in a flash. After you solve a problem, rehearse it. Make sure you can solve it cold—every step. Pretend it’s a song and learn to play it over and over again in your mind, so the information combines into one smooth chunk you can pull up whenever you want.

Space your repetition. Spread out your learning in any subject a little every day, just like an athlete. Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time.

Alternate different problem-solving techniques during your practice. Never practice too long at any one session using only one problem-solving technique—after a while, you are just mimicking what you did on the previous problem. Mix it up and work on different types of problems. This teaches you both how and when to use a technique. (Books generally are not set up this way, so you’ll need to do this on your own.) After every assignment and test, go over your errors, make sure you understand why you made them, and then rework your solutions. To study most effectively, handwrite (don’t type) a problem on one side of a flash card and the solution on the other. (Handwriting builds stronger neural structures in memory than typing.) You might also photograph the card if you want to load it into a study app on your smartphone. Quiz yourself randomly on different types of problems. Another way to do this is to randomly flip through your book, pick out a problem, and see whether you can solve it cold.

Take breaks. It is common to be unable to solve problems or figure out concepts in math or science the first time you encounter them. This is why a little study every day is much better than a lot of studying all at once. When you get frustrated with a math or science problem, take a break so that another part of your mind can take over and work in the background.

Use explanatory questioning and simple analogies. Whenever you are struggling with a concept, think to yourself, How can I explain this so that a ten-year-old could understand it? Using an analogy really helps, like saying that the flow of electricity is like the flow of water. Don’t just think your explanation—say it out loud or put it in writing. The additional effort of speaking and writing allows you to more deeply encode (that is, convert into neural memory structures) what you are learning.

Focus. Turn off all interrupting beeps and alarms on your phone and computer, and then turn on a timer for twenty-five minutes. Focus intently for those twenty-five minutes and try to work as diligently as you can. After the timer goes off, give yourself a small, fun reward. A few of these sessions in a day can really move your studies forward. Try to set up times and places where studying—not glancing at your computer or phone—is just something you naturally do.

Eat your frogs first. Do the hardest thing earliest in the day, when you are fresh.

Make a mental contrast. Imagine where you’ve come from and contrast that with the dream of where your studies will take you. Post a picture or words in your workspace to remind you of your dream. Look at that when you find your motivation lagging. This work will pay off both for you and those you love!

10 Rules of Bad Studying

Avoid these techniques—they can waste your time even while they fool you into thinking you’re learning!

Passive rereading—sitting passively and running your eyes back over a page. Unless you can prove that the material is moving into your brain by recalling the main ideas without looking at the page, rereading is a waste of time.

Letting highlights overwhelm you. Highlighting your text can fool your mind into thinking you are putting something in your brain, when all you’re really doing is moving your hand. A little highlighting here and there is okay—sometimes it can be helpful in flagging important points. But if you are using highlighting as a memory tool, make sure that what you mark is also going into your brain.

Merely glancing at a problem’s solution and thinking you know how to do it. This is one of the worst errors students make while studying. You need to be able to solve a problem step-by-step, without looking at the solution.

Waiting until the last minute to study. Would you cram at the last minute if you were practicing for a track meet? Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time.

Repeatedly solving problems of the same type that you already know how to solve. If you just sit around solving similar problems during your practice, you’re not actually preparing for a test—it’s like preparing for a big basketball game by just practicing your dribbling.

Letting study sessions with friends turn into chat sessions. Checking your problem solving with friends, and quizzing one another on what you know, can make learning more enjoyable, expose flaws in your thinking, and deepen your learning. But if your joint study sessions turn to fun before the work is done, you’re wasting your time and should find another study group.

Neglecting to read the textbook before you start working problems. Would you dive into a pool before you knew how to swim? The textbook is your swimming instructor—it guides you toward the answers. You will flounder and waste your time if you don’t bother to read it. Before you begin to read, however, take a quick glance over the chapter or section to get a sense of what it’s about.

Not checking with your instructors or classmates to clear up points of confusion. Professors are used to lost students coming in for guidance—it’s our job to help you. The students we worry about are the ones who don’t come in. Don’t be one of those students.

Thinking you can learn deeply when you are being constantly distracted. Every tiny pull toward an instant message or conversation means you have less brain power to devote to learning. Every tug of interrupted attention pulls out tiny neural roots before they can grow.

Not getting enough sleep. Your brain pieces together problem-solving techniques when you sleep, and it also practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you go to sleep. Prolonged fatigue allows toxins to build up in the brain that disrupt the neural connections you need to think quickly and well. If you don’t get a good sleep before a test, NOTHING ELSE YOU HAVE DONE WILL MATTER.

www.mosaiced.org  A great useful platform for medblrs, medstudents and other med professionals that contains tons of resources on almost every medical topic including notes, mcqs, quizzes & mnemonics. I highly recommend it to the professionals, current doctors, doctors in making and aspiring doctors to join it, benefit yourself and contribute your knowledge and experiences that would be mutually beneficial for everyone as a part of this platform’s community

This was originally for an article writing assignment, but I thought “why not write something I can also post on my blog?” so here are three study methods that I haven’t seen a lot of in the studyblr community but are definitely worth mentioning.

The Leitner System

          Flash cards have remained one of the most popular ways to study. Some people use them to memorize vocabulary, remember answers to specific questions, or even associate dates with events. Although the use of flash cards is convenient, their effectiveness has been reduced due to most people’s habits of prioritizing each card equally and therefore spending too much time memorizing the information on them.

          The Leitner System, created by a German popularizer of science named Sebastian Leitner, is a more efficient method of studying that implements the concept of spaced repetition. All the cards start off in one pile. You would first scan through these cards, then test yourself. Each card you answer correctly goes to a second pile, while those you answer incorrectly should be revised then placed at the bottom of the pile. When you review the cards in the second pile and get them correct, they will be promoted to a third pile. An incorrect card will always get demoted to the first pile, even if they had previously been promoted to the last pile.

          The reason why this method is so effective is that you end up reviewing the first pile of cards more frequently—the cards you don’t know very well. Some people choose to review their Stack 1 cards every day, Stack 2 cards every other day, Stack 3 cards once every three days, and so on.

          Once all your cards have been promoted to the highest box, study them thoroughly and then start over. The continuous revision trains your speed so that you may reach fluency, which allows you to recall the information faster.

Timed Memorization

          The name tells it all: you memorize a certain text within a time limit, normally around five to ten minutes depending on your fluency and memorization abilities. When the timer starts, you begin memorizing. When time is up, you flip to the next page, even if you haven’t finished the previous page yet. Continue until you’ve gone through all your material.

          Timed memorization helps you to discipline yourself because your brain thinks that there’s no time for messing around; you have to do this here and now. Make sure to repeat the things you missed and revise everything frequently. This method is actually one of the most effective for cramming as it gives a better coverage than if you spend a whole half hour memorizing one subtopic.

The Memory Palace or Mind Palace

           Sound familiar? In BBC’s Sherlock, the ‘highly functioning sociopath’ uses this method to remember vital information and facts. A mind palace is a systematic arrangement of information, each detail corresponding to a specific object in a familiar place. To ensure that you really remember everything, the objects have to appear shocking and conspicuous.

           Here’s an example: if I wanted to memorize “crimson, 11, delight, petrichor (the smell after rain)”, aside from imagining Amy Pond or the Doctor saying it, I would first choose a place, let’s say my school. I’d imagine myself walking up to the front gate and seeing that the entire building has been painted the color of blood—crimson. The building would then rise as though it were lifted from the earth and crumble into rubble, controlled by Eleven, the character from Stranger Things. Now, since I can’t really picture delight specifically, I’d probably end up visualizing a colossal sign that simply reads “delight” posted in front of my school. As for petrichor, I’d imagine curves rising out of the puddles on the asphalt after a rainy night, a visual representation of the smell of the rain. Of course, these visualizations have been created to suit my memory. (I wouldn’t know if you watched Stranger Things.)

           I used this method when memorizing case studies for geography, although I chose to visualize fictional places from television series and cartoons. Some people do opt to create artificial places, but these often become blurry and are easily forgotten.

           As with any study method, repetition is vital to storing the information in your long-term memory. Visit your “palace” as often as you can. Soon enough, you’ll remember the data as well as you remember the place associated with the data.