recently i conducted a poll on my
instagram where i asked you two
questions
number one how often do you revise your
material and number two
how do you revise your material the
purpose of this was to analyze your
study techniques and then give you some
study techniques
that are backed up by science and
research
hey there I am Subhav Ramnani the guy
who is mad about medicine just like you
if you're new here make sure to
subscribe to the channel by clicking the
button below
and also follow me on instagram where I
post some amazing medical content
interesting quizzes and some exciting
challenges and giveaways
you can find the links to all of this
and everything else mentioned in this
video
down in the description box below so
let's go
so all of the things i'm going to talk
to you about today are backed up by
research conducted on students like you
and me i'll put down a link for these
researches if you wish to read further
so as you can see most of you answered
that you revise on days when you don't
study any new material
and re-reading was the most popular way
of revision
so while re-reading, making notes and
highlighting are amongst the most
popular
research says they are actually not very
effective
and they provide a very low yield for
the hard work you put in
methods that make you retrieve
information out of your brain
are the ones that actually strengthen
the connections in your memory
this is called active recall or active
retrieval
so today we are going to go through five
of these active retrieval or active
recall methods
and in the end we will summarize them in
a tabular form
so you can see which one fits best for
you number one
recall with the book closed now since
most of you answered re-reading
it's wise to start with this topic
recalling with the book closed
means keeping the book in front of you
and just recalling the information about
the topic you study
now whatever you can't remember just jot
down the topic name down on a piece of
paper
only once you are done recalling all the
information
you can have a look at the book and go
ahead and see what all you missed
after this close the book again and
recall all the material with the missed
points
so those of you who just cannot live
without taking notes
this one is for you after you study a
topic
take a piece of paper and make a spider
map of
all the information you learned again
this has to be without looking at the
book
or the resource you are using so this
will be your first pass through the
material
when it comes to revising this you will
essentially look at the center of your
spider map
and hide the other things from here try
to
actively recall all the information of
the map you made
you do this every time you revise
number 3 Feynman technique now you might
remember this technique from my first
youtube video
which tells you why i started mad about
medicine
now feynman technique is by richard
feynman an american nobel prize winning
physicist
now this technique tells you to pick a
topic and study it with an idea
to explain it to a child or someone who
does not already know about it
when you go through this process of
teaching someone you
actually recall all the information
actively
once done you analyze if there were any
gaps in your teaching
and then you hit back to the resources
to fill in those gaps
number four flash cards now this is a
method i
personally use every single day and have
loved it ever since a classic flash card
is basically a paper card
which has a question or a hint on the
front of it and an
answer written on the back of it however
you are not limited just by this
you can make digital flash cards with
the help of anki
anki is a platform which involves active
recall and space repetition in its
algorithm
i already have a video on it and i'll
link it in the top right corner here
and also in the description box below if
you would like to know more about it
number five taking tests and doing
questions
now taking tests and doing questions has
several benefits
not only it helps you to practice the
pattern of the exam
and know the important stuff but it is
also a way which forces you to recall
information without looking at the
resource
a study conducted on students stated
that students who took a practice test
before an exam tend to perform 15 to 30%
better than the students who didn't take
a practice test now you know why people
say to take grant tests and other tests
regularly
if you are preparing for a board level
exam like the neet pg
or the usmle so now all of these five
techniques give you the benefit of
active recall or active retrieval
now let's compare them with each other
and you can see which one fits best for
you
so while recalling with the book close
is the easiest to implement
but it also makes you fall into
procrastination quickly the quickest
method would be the flashcards
while feynman techniques usually eats up
most of your time
but also providing you with the most
deep knowledge
flashcards are the best method for
memorization by far
but you often tend to lose the bigger
picture and here is where spidermap can
help you out
at last taking tests should be mandatory
in any study plan in my opinion
as the pros weigh out the cons by a
margin
i'll attach this summary table in the
description box below
if you would like to read through all of
it comment down below what study method
you liked the best and you would use
hopefully you can master these
techniques and retain as much
information as you can and then
ace your exams now about the challenge
so this new challenge will be based on
these study techniques
and i'll post all the details about the
challenge on my instagram page mad about
medicine
i'll put the links down in the
description box below
as always stay healthy stay safe and
stay mad
but just about medicine
