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The main science behind Best at Biology is a method called Active Recall. Never heard of it ? You are in for a treat. Active recall is without a doubt the number one study tool for remembering large amounts of info long term.
Instead of mindlessly writing mind maps, summarising notes taken in class or from your copy, everything is simply turned into a question.
This method has worked for medical students, it will work for you.
Re-reading, Highlighting, Summarising - 3 of the most ineffective study methods.
Plenty of studies have been carried out online about effective study techniques, re-reading ranked a very low level of technique when compared to other methods. “A wealth of research has shown that passive, repetitive reading produces little or no benefit for learning” - Jeffrey D. Karpicke. PHD. If you compare the retention re-reading info gets you to other methods such as active recall. Re-reading, quite simply. Is a waste of time.
Highlighting and underlining are easily the most utilised study techniques used by students all around the world. It feels so productive and satisfying, all the different colours, co-ordinated in pretty ways, it feels so right. Unfortunately, that could not be further from the truth. A study by Dunlosky et al highlighted (excuse the pun) that “Highlighting and underlining have very low utility, and does little to boost performance”. Now, even after reading this, you will probably go back to highlighting and underlining anyway, so if you do, just put one hours effort into effective highlighting, you wont regret it
Summarising content, and making notes, while more effective than re-reading and highlighting, is still no where near effective enough to remember content long term. I understand that having beautiful, picturesque notes is satisfying, and feels productive, but it just isn't. Its fun spending an hour or two hours creating easy to read, colourful notes, but then you cant remember the content three days later. I would describe that as a waste of my precious time and effort. Dunlosky et al simply put it “On the basis of available evidence, we rate summarisation as low utility”.
What is Active Recall
Active recall or active retrieval basically means recalling or retrieving info or facts from your brain. This works because the very act of recalling info that is in your brain, actually strengthens that info and how easily you remember it.
You might think that once you study a topic, the next time you need that info is in your exam. While this is true, you obviously will need to remember it in your exam, but by recalling the info a number of times after the first study. This is where you put that info into long term memory.
As you can see here, in one study carried out, a class of students weres told to learn a topic they never seen before, and they were given a test on that topic either a day later, or a week later.
They were split into two groups, the white lines are students who were told to just study normally. The blue lines are students who had practice tests at the end of their study session.
As you can see, the students who literally just had a practice test at the end of their study session, performed on average 15% higher than the students who just studied the content.
In this particular study, again, a class of students were told to study a topic once, and were given a test one week later.
Again, the white line is students who studied normally, mostly using highlighting, re-reading, and summarising. Where as the blue line again took a practice test.
The interesting part here, is not only did the students who took the practice test do 30% better than those who studied normally for remembering facts. They also were able to remember concepts far better. Which in turn, makes content easier to understand and remember in the long term.
Using all of this science based information and studies, I created a “practice test” for every single topic on the Leaving Cert Biology course.
Not only is this scientifically proven to help you remember and study more effectively. It actually isn't boring either. Your brain is constantly being tested and stimulated.
I used to spend hours just testing myself, topic by topic, diagram by diagram. And it definitely worked. I walked out of my biology exam in 2023 knowing I achieved a H1. It was impossible that I didn't, as I 100% knew all the answers.