Note taking vs Reading Multiple Times

[NYCdude]

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So I'm into my second week of MS1 and find myself clueless as to how to go about learning the monstrous amount of material that has been hurled at me.

Usually I retain information best when I type them in paraphrased form and study what I write down later. That worked well in college when I had 1/4 the amount of material to deal with.

I've realized that it takes me an absurd amount of time to do this for every lecture that I have. One older student suggested just reading the material a few times (once before lecture, and 2 times after lecture) at different points to re-inforce the material that way. It seems to be an easier way to kind of stay on schedule with the material without sacrificing too much in terms of the amount of detail required.

What say you folks?

 

[Oblique]

take notes in class to clarify information on powerpoint. Go home, read powerpoint/notes and UNDERSTAND, and memorize what needs to be memorized. Do this couple times before the exam, then you should be fine.

 

[TBV]

Don't worry man tests are open notebook

 

[Rajayray2019]

Don't worry man tests are open notebook

LOL

 

[pd1112]

This happens to a lot of people. Most end up just reading multiple times. On my 2nd pass I'd write a few notes in a notebook of things I still couldn't remember well, but didn't overdo it. Also, there are some things that can only be learned with repetition of notecards multiple times.

 

[nonick123]

Just read 2-3 times before the last week of the test. Then in the last try to retell it without looking at the ppts/books/ That's the real mastery.

 

[achamess]

So I'm into my second week of MS1 and find myself clueless as to how to go about learning the monstrous amount of material that has been hurled at me.

Usually I retain information best when I type them in paraphrased form and study what I write down later. That worked well in college when I had 1/4 the amount of material to deal with.

I've realized that it takes me an absurd amount of time to do this for every lecture that I have. One older student suggested just reading the material a few times (once before lecture, and 2 times after lecture) at different points to re-inforce the material that way. It seems to be an easier way to kind of stay on schedule with the material without sacrificing too much in terms of the amount of detail required.

What say you folks?

tl;dr Testing yourself is superior to re-reading.

Re-reading seems like it should be the best way to ensure that you learn something, but in reality, it is pretty ineffective.

Rather than re-reading, the much better strategy is to test yourself, to make yourself retrieve what you've learned and generate an answer.

That testing yourself >>> re-reading has a lot of evidence behind it. Formally, this phenomenon is called the testing effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect), and studying by testing yourself is called retrieval practice. Many studies have demonstrated the power and superiority of self-quizzing/testing/retrieval, w/e you want to call it, at various levels of education, and in medicine.

Here is a landmark study addressing this question.
A popular article from NYT

See the work of Dr. Doug Larsen @ Wash U for some good background in medicine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18823514
http://blog.questionmark.com/dr-lar...r-test-enhanced-learning-in-medical-education

All this is to convince you that you should really be spending your time testing yourself, rather than reading again.

The reason that making your own notes worked well for you in undergrad is that that is a form of testing actually. It's generative. You used your brain to retrieve some information from memory. Even doing that just once produces superior results to re-reading.

If you retrieve multiple times over time, in a spaced manner, you have Anki.

Med school has a lot more volume of info, and so you need to be efficient. Producing copious personal notes takes too long.

Try out some form of spaced repetition to help you remember what you're learning. Read, watch, listen, 1x. But then just start trying to answer questions. They could be SR cards, qbank questions, practice exams. SR is better for straight facts, the latter for more conceptual understanding.

For more in-depth guidance on how to use do this in practice, I co-wrote a guide that you might find helpful.

Good luck!

 

[NYCdude]

Wow, thanks a lot @achamess !!! Super helpful.

 

[OnePunchBiopsy]

For me:

Memorization: Anki Flashcards

Complex concepts: Make an outline in my own words and read it multiple times. Use practice problems in textbook/Qbank to test knowledge.

Then there is Pathoma, which is so wonderful it requires nothing but repitition.