Episode 10 - Study Smarter, Not Harder: Four Study Strategies I Wish I Had Known

In this episode, Dr. Reynolds will guide you through the most effective study strategies that can transform your learning experience. He shares his personal learning journey, including the challenges he faced with ineffective study methods. Dr. Reynolds will introduce you to four powerful, research-based strategies that are also supported by biblical references—yes, biblical references. Whether you're a student, educator, minister or lifelong learner, this episode is for you. Learn how to avoid common, low-yield study methods that cause stress and burnout, and instead, embrace techniques that enhance long-term retention and adaptive learning. You'll gain insights into how to integrate these strategies with your spiritual journey, making your academic and personal growth more fulfilling and effective. Don't miss out on this opportunity to improve your study habits and deepen your faith. Tune in, subscribe, and share with friends and family. Let's embark on this journey together to become more efficient, purposeful learners. 

REFERENCES

• The Science of Learning
• How to Study Effectively

CONTACT: faithmeetsacademia@gmail.com
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DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely my own and do not reflect or represent the positions, policies, or opinions of my employer, any organization or academic institution with which I am affiliated. This podcast is a personal initiative, and is not connected to my official/ formal duties and responsibilities as a university professor.

Transcript

Hey, welcome back. Thanks for joining me for episode 10. Episode 10, "Study Smarter, Not Harder: Four Study Strategies I Wish I Had Known." Let me tell you, yes, I really wish in my younger days I had mastered these strategies. They would have made life much easier. Now, can you believe it? We're already on episode 10. You know what that means?

That means we're just about halfway to being in the top 1% of podcasts worldwide. Yes, thanks to your continued support, interest, engagement, and downloads. Guess what? You're the one who has made this possible. Keep listening, keep being engaged, and share the podcast with a friend or family member. And if you haven't subscribed already, please do so ASAP so that you can get that notification once the episodes are released.

I pray that after listening to this episode, you'll be able to recognize common but low-yield, useless study methods that have been a major source of stress for you, your students, or maybe someone you know. I pray that after listening to this episode, you'll become highly familiar with four effective research-based study strategies, for which there are also multiple biblical references.

You'll see those references in the show notes. I pray that after listening to this episode, you will develop a deeper understanding of how to integrate biblical teachings with these study strategies, helping you to understand the spiritual dimensions of academic success and personal growth. All right, so let's get to work.

For as long as I can recall, I've always been fascinated with the process of learning and studying. I'm always curious about what's going on inside the mind when we are in the process of encoding, consolidating, and retrieving information. For more on those three terms or strategies, check out episode nine or at minimum review the show notes or the episode description.

Have you ever asked someone the question, "What were you thinking?" That question usually comes up when there's a mishap or a mistake, or when there's some unintended outcome, right? For me, though, that's a fairly frequent question. I always seek to understand my students' mindset. I usually try to figure that out by creating opportunities for the learner to think about or reflect on that connection between their thoughts, their feelings, and their actions—or thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, right? Sounds familiar? That's what they call the cognitive triad or the CBT triangle, CBT meaning cognitive behavioral therapy.

I love seeing when a student who’s been struggling in their studies experiences that light bulb moment. When they discover through academic coaching that just a simple, small change in strategy can bring about impactful results, both in and out of school. By the way, grades improve, focus improves, anxiety decreases, self-confidence increases.

There's another key reason, though, why I really enjoy academic coaching, and let me take some time to get really personal here. When I was in high school, I had severe test-taking anxiety. As it came close to midterm and final exams, my anxiety level just skyrocketed. It was just through the roof. I was late for exams because I was sick the night before. Unfortunately, none of my teachers had the training to identify the problem and design an intervention.

I guess I could say it wasn't really their fault because I am a hundred percent certain the science of learning, you know, that learning how to learn thing, learning how to teach students how to study effectively—all of that, I'm almost certain was nowhere in their teacher training or teacher education program. So guess what, y'all? I just basically struggled my way through. It was painful.

And here's the irony: I was known as the kid who was always studying. To this day, I'd run into someone who would remind me of this. They'd say, "Anytime I went by the house, Adrian was always in his room studying." But here's the thing. I was putting in the effort, tons of effort. I was putting in the hours, but it was wasted effort.

I mean, it feels painful to even say that. Why was it wasted effort? Well, simply put, the effort was not effective. You might ask, "What do you mean the effort was not effective? Hmm. Tell me more." Okay, guess what? I had one strategy. One single strategy.

Can you guess what that was? I was a memorizer. I was the rote memorization specialist. Line-by-line, word-for-word. Yeah, that was me. My only goal was to memorize the information so I could reproduce it on the test for any subject where we had to take lots of notes, like, you know, biology, for example. That was my strategy. Yep. The teachers would read from their notes, and then I would write verbatim what they read.

Then when I got home, I would memorize those notes. It was a pretty simple, straightforward strategy—though highly ineffective, of course. Let me ask you, just to see if you can apply what you learned in episode nine—this is a learning podcast, right? If you're not willing to do the work, then you may not get, you know, a whole lot out of this, right? I'm engaging you in a process here. How would you describe my approach to encoding the information? What kind of encoding was that?

Here comes the answer. By all means, feel free to hit pause until you're ready to respond. This is some retrieval practice strategy for you here. It was almost exclusively semantic encoding.

If you want to know what that is, you’ve got to check out episode nine. My method of consolidating the information was simply to reread it as often as I could. Now here comes trouble. Here's the problem with that. Due to the volume of information, I could not retrieve everything when I needed to.

Why? Because I didn't own the information, meaning I never encoded the information in a language or in words that were my own. I never paraphrased those notes. I never really understood them well enough to illustrate or explain them in my own words using concrete examples, connecting them to real-world problems, using a diagram, or some sort of visual to help me see the connection across ideas. I never asked probing questions about the material, etc.

But, you know what? Here's another twist. I did okay on most of those exams, though. I did pass most of them, you know, many of them with high marks too. That's where the education system falls short. If I could at least accurately explain or illustrate what I had studied in my own words, then I would have had multiple ways of responding to test questions about the same concept, demonstrating then a robust understanding of the information.

When it came to subjects like mathematics, there was no way that a memorization strategy would work. So the question becomes, how did I make it through math? Well, needless to say, math was a huge struggle—the biggest one of them all. It was a big struggle for me. Even outside of test-taking, I would dread going to math class. So here's the bottom line.

The reason I'm so passionate about teaching these strategies about academic coaching is that I would never want any learner, any student, any trainee to experience the stress and anxiety I had to endure as a result of using ineffective, inefficient, basically just useless study strategies.

And do you know what? It is the more distressing part of this. I was so diligent about using them because I never knew there was any other way to study. And let me just say, this was at a time when there was no internet, no cell phones, no YouTube videos. The only sources of knowledge were old dusty library books and our teachers, neither of which had any information about effective study strategies.

And you know what? Even if there were videos or textbook resources on this topic, how would I even begin to perform a search about learning how to learn or learning effective study strategies or the science of learning? I didn't know that was even a thing, right? So as they say, you don't know what you don't know. So basically, the only way I would have been exposed to these strategies would have been through my teachers.

And they were clueless as regarding the science of learning. Now, let me explain how the scriptures speak directly to these struggles I endured as a high schooler.

In episode eight, I discussed how 2 Timothy 2:15 reveals a little-known fact about earning God's approval: "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

We usually don't associate this scripture with our overall concept of how to earn favor with God or to be approved by Him. But listen to episode eight to learn more about that. On the other hand, though, there's a scripture in Ecclesiastes 12:12-13 that you may perceive as being in conflict with 2 Timothy 2:15. But it's really not. The word of God is never self-contradictory, in my opinion. Okay, so let's hear what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 12:12-13.

And I mean, Solomon is an excellent source, as you know. I mean, he's the wisest man who ever lived, right? So this is a highly credible source. Okay, so here it goes: "And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."

Okay, so here it is. 2 Timothy 2:15 is telling me to study to show myself approved unto God. But Ecclesiastes 12:12 is telling me much study is a weariness of the flesh. So, let me rightly divide this word of truth for you. Let's dissect Ecclesiastes 12:12-13. We’re going to focus on a lot of the tall verses in particular.

In order to understand this verse, you need to ask the question, what kind of studying is weariness of the flesh? Okay, I'll tell you. Been there, done that. That's why I can speak with authority on this matter. What kind of studying is weariness of the flesh? It's the kind of studying that I used to do when I was in high school.

Yeah. Among other, you know, generally speaking, ineffective study methods. Yes. Low-yield ineffective methods lead to weariness of the flesh. And we can just call that burnout. Yeah. You can just replace "weariness of the flesh" with burnout. Just like you get what I'm talking about.

And burnout is typically described as a psychological condition that is marked by emotional, mental, as well as physical exhaustion that is brought about by prolonged or repeated stress. That's sort of the classic definition of burnout. So what type of studying leads to burnout or weariness of the flesh? Hmm. I'm going to list them for you, right? Yeah. I'm going to outline five strategies that lead to total burnout that you should definitely avoid.

Number one: cramming. Trying to learn all the material, trying to study for the test, you know, the night before, pulling all these all-nighters, you know, right before the exam—you know what happens with this? The result is poor long-term retention. Yeah, you might retain it well enough, you know, to get whatever score you're trying to get on the exam, but after that, it's gone. It doesn't last at all. If your course exams are cumulative, whatever you crammed for the midterm, it won't stick around until the final exam. So you'll just have to keep cramming, right?

So you definitely want to avoid that because there's going to come a point where cramming won't work anymore.

Number two: multitasking. Yeah. So for those of you who may think that, "Oh, you know, I study better with the TV on, or listening to my favorite music," studying while simultaneously engaging in all these other activities, right? You know, checking social media here and there usually leads to less effective learning. Multitasking is divided attention. And that's not good. It significantly reduces your focus. This kind of scattered focus prevents deep, meaningful, long-lasting learning because your brain is struggling to process and retain information efficiently and effectively when it's constantly switching gears between tasks, jumping around from one task to the next.

So multitasking does compromise the quality of your study time, making it harder to retain and recall information later on.

Number three: passive reading and rereading. This is merely just reading over lecture slides, reading your textbooks or notes over and over and over again without any active engagement—no asking questions, no self-testing, no use of tools such as Bloom's Taxonomy to ensure that you're being thorough in your learning, that you're not just trying to memorize a bunch of facts, but that you're going beyond that, that you are connecting the dots, that you're evaluating the information, and that you can apply it to what's happening in the real world.

So passive reading just leads to surface-level comprehension of the information.

Number four: over-highlighting. And we might as well just throw color-coding in there, right? I mean, if you're highlighting every other sentence, then that begs the question, what's the main idea? What's really important? Because everything can't be equally important. So if, when you look at the pages of that textbook or your notes or your Bible, and almost every other line or verse is highlighted, then it means that you're not getting the gist or the main idea of what you're studying.

Over-highlighting simply means that you're not able to distinguish between what's really important and what's not. And you know what else it does? It makes you feel accomplished. It makes you feel really busy, like, "Yeah, I'm getting it. I'm doing my thing." Yeah, but not if you can't tell me in one sentence what that paragraph was about.

All right. Number five, the last study method that could lead to burnout or weariness of the flesh, as this scripture states: it's a little bit more global but very far-reaching. 📍 It's lack of specific, achievable, relevant goals. Studying without a clear plan or objectives. If you're preparing for an exam or a test, it might even be, you know, preparing to write a dissertation, do a literature review, preparing for a conference presentation, a Bible study session—you name it. If your goal is to study everything about the topic, then you really don't have a goal.

It's not specific. And it's definitely not achievable. Think about all that you have going on in your life, and your goal is to study everything. That's just not going to work. It's not specific enough. It's not achievable.

And if it's a goal that includes everything, then it's impossible to find relevance because everything isn't relevant. So the "I need to learn it all" type of goal is an unattainable one—unachievable. To learn more about creating what they call SMART goals—goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely—check out episode six, "Living Your Faith: A Strategy for Integrating Biblical Principles into Everyday Life." So, yes, having these broad, unachievable, all-encompassing goals leads to much frustration and, yes, potentially burnout. Because, of course, you're not clear on your outcome, you're not clear on your destination, or your why for studying the material. Then you end up getting lost in the weeds, studying content that's irrelevant to the objectives of the course or whatever task for which you are preparing.

And this is what really takes the joy out of learning, right? But guess what? There is a way out. You have the power to change all of this, right? I mean, there's just decades of research out there regarding high-yield, high-impact, transformative learning and study strategies that we can all use, whether you're still in school or not. Because remember, as I stated in episode nine, we're all learners of something at any given point in our lives. We're always learning, even if it's unintentional.

Now that you know the kinds of study methods to avoid, let's talk about the four key strategies that can help with the encoding, consolidating, and retrieving processes that I discussed in episode nine. These are, my friends, the four strategies I wish I had known in my younger days. I'll define each strategy and provide a few biblical references.

Just to manage expectations here, the point is not to go into extensive detail about how to implement these four strategies because this will be an ongoing conversation, an ongoing discussion. So for this episode, I'm not going to be providing tons of examples and illustrations as to how one can implement these four strategies in various settings and so on.

That'll come at some point in the future. Nonetheless, I wanted to make sure that you are at least aware of these strategies because, as I mentioned earlier in the episode, you don't know what you don't know, right? So the first thing is to make sure that you are aware that these strategies do exist, and I'm going to be providing some resources in the episode description in the show notes for further learning.

Okay, strategy number one is called 📍 retrieval practice. And guess what, friends? Retrieval practice is the single most effective learning and study strategy that too many people just don't use or underutilize. Right. What is that? Retrieval practice is actively recalling information or concepts through questions, whether it's you quizzing someone else, them quizzing you—let's say you're studying with a peer, a friend, a group—it might involve using flashcards, pre-made practice questions, self-made practice questions, or flashcards.

It's testing for learning. All right, repeat that: testing for learning. So traditionally, we think of tests as the instructor's assessment of our level of competence or knowledge or the extent to which we have met the objectives of the course and so on. However, it's not too often that we think of tests as tools that will help us uncover our knowledge gaps, our strengths, our areas for improvement, so that we can make informed decisions as to where we really need to spend our time, right?

This is about improving performance over time with purpose, with strategy, and with focus. Consider retrieval practice as just one giant Q and A session, right? It just makes the learning process more enjoyable and interactive. It also improves long-term retention of the information, right? The more you practice pulling out the information from memory, the stronger your ability to recall that information becomes. Yes, there's really no better way to prepare for a test than taking tons of practice tests or quizzing yourself on the information to be learned.

For biblical evidence of retrieval practice, check out Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Deuteronomy 6:23-25, Job chapters 38, 39, and 41, and St. Luke 2:46-47.

Number two: The next study method that you absolutely must master is 📍 called spaced practice or spaced repetition. That is, reviewing your content through retrieval practice primarily and increasingly spaced intervals over time, right?

So you were reviewing the information for retrieval practice in increasingly spaced intervals over time. This is the opposite of what they call massed practice, otherwise known as cramming, right? So let me break that down for you. Instead of studying or reviewing for 14 hours the day before the exam, pulling all-nighters with very little breaks, which is just not healthy, you could study an hour a day over the course of two weeks. What you're doing is you're chunking the material into digestible bites, which helps to decrease the cognitive load and gives you enough time to process the information. Enough time to track or monitor your improvements in your learning over time.

And spaced repetition is shown to improve long-term memory or retention of information. So remember: space it out, chunk it up, retrieve it. You can see this type of spaced, consistent approach to learning reflected in Isaiah 28:9-10, Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Joshua 1:8, and Psalm 1:1-2.

Now moving on to the third research-based learning and study strategy you will find extremely helpful, and that one's 📍 called dual coding. Dual coding means that you're using both words and visuals, for example, pictures, concept maps, charts, diagrams, etc., to enhance comprehension and memory.

That word-visual association—because as I mentioned in episode nine, we learn by association, right? So that word-visual association helps to make learning stick. We can see dual coding at work in Revelation 1:12-16, Psalm 23:1-5, and Matthew 13:3-9.

It's all in the word, my friends. I highly encourage you to go to the scriptures, and you'll see the connection. It'll jump out at you. It is quite evident.

And the fourth and final among the most effective learning and study strategies I want to leave with you today is 📍 called interleaving. Interleaving is sometimes referred to as varied practice as well. That is, alternating between multiple topics or concepts in one study session, right? This is in contrast to studying just one topic at a time. Interleaving really builds adaptive learning skills. It allows you to practice how to differentiate between and connect concepts by applying them across multiple contexts.

So don't bore yourself to death just studying one topic at a time. You spend, you know, three, four hours on one topic before you move on to the next, or you spend a whole day and a half—I'm just exaggerating, of course—but a whole day and a half just studying one subject, and then you move on to the next and then the next. By the time you get to the fourth, you forgot what you had studied on day one. You need to be able to connect the dots across concepts, across subjects.

All right, so if you have three classes for the day, you should be reviewing the material for all three, not just one. Now, you might not get to everything that was covered that day, and that's okay. That's where spaced repetition comes in. So you see, all these strategies are connected. They're interrelated.

What I like about interleaving is that it adds variety to your learning. It takes the boredom out of learning, and it's an alternative to what they call blocked practice. And blocked practice is studying that resembles an A, B, B, B, C, C, C pattern as opposed to interleaving, where you're studying concepts in an A, B, C, then B, A, C, and C, B, A pattern and so on.

And the biblical reference for this research-based study strategy is Isaiah 28:10. Yeah, you better believe it. Yeah, there is a connection. These four strategies together—retrieval practice, spaced repetition, dual coding, and interleaving—will significantly enhance your ability to be an adaptive, efficient, lifelong learner who studies with a clear sense of purpose, who studies like you're on a mission. A mission to solve real-world challenges, real-world problems.

Remember this: If you want to pursue mindful learning that sticks, here's what you need to do with the information: Retrieve it, space it out, mix it up, and connect it with a visual. Can I repeat that? Retrieve it, space it out, mix it up, and connect it with a visual. That's what your study practice should look like.

And guess what? Musicians use these strategies. Medical trainees use these strategies. Athletes use these strategies. These strategies are also used in language learning, professional development, even memory rehabilitation—cognitive rehabilitation for patients with memory impairments. You know what that means? That means these strategies are valid, and they're reliable. They have stood the test of time across disciplines and across professions. So, how about you? I think you would agree that it's time for a change. If you're tired of studying for tests and then forgetting it all three days later, these four strategies are for you. These four strategies are for you.

Now, there are other effective, evidence-based, research-based strategies out there. However, for now, I wanted to highlight these four as they are among the most rigorously supported strategies in the learning sciences research. If I had mastered these strategies as a young learner, studying would not have been, I'm sure, it would not have been this anxiety-producing exercise time after time.

However, all is not lost, right? I can now teach these strategies to my two children. I can now teach them to high schoolers, middle schoolers, college students, medical students, residents, and the list goes on.

Today, I'm going to leave you with this one question: What is it about your approach to learning or studying that needs to change? And which of the strategies that I discussed today will you start with? Just start with one, right? You don't need to implement all of them at the same time, right? Don't overwhelm yourself. Just start with one.

I know you can do this. You got this. Until next week, stay blessed.