Using Memory Research to Enhance your Study

In my view, one of the most helpful things students can glean from an introductory psychology course is techniques for improving their own study habits. Not only does the wealth of research on human memory inform us as to why certain things are remembered better than others, but it suggests ways that we can use that knowledge to better encode, store, and retrieve information that we are trying to learn. Meaning, you can use this to improve your test performances!

I was just alerted to a GREAT website created by Dr. Stephan Linn Chew, professor of psychology of at Samford University. He presents a video series on How to Get the Most Out of Studying that incorporates many aspects of the memory research we've been studying in class. For example, in the video embedded below, students should recognize the Levels of Processing Model (deep vs. shallow processing) that we learned about in class today. Other videos include:

• Beliefs that make you fail...or Succeed
• Cognitive Principles for Optimizing Learning
• Putting Principles that Optimize Learning Into Practice
• And..."I blew the exam, now what?" for when things don't go as planned.

Great things to keep in mind as we prepare for our last unit test (on Memory) and the final exam!