Add These Columns to Your Revision Board

Usually your revision board or revision timetable tracks what you have already studied. However, you should add two columns before the Studying column: Pre-test and Priming.

Pre-Test

In Cognitive Science, revision and active recall take advantage of the Testing Effect — more specifically Post-Testing. So what about Pre-Testing?

Pre-Testing is a quick and easy way to boost both your study speed and retention. How does it work? Before studying the material, take some sort of test. This could be past papers, practice problems, or attempting to start an applied project. You’ll probably fail it, but that’s okay. When you eventually study the material your brain will do a better job picking out relevant information so you learn faster and retain longer.

Priming

In Psychology, priming is a very general term to describe influencing someone’s behavior beforehand. For example you might repeatedly show someone the number 5 throughout the day and then ask them for a random number, hoping you primed them to say “5”.

Here are two ways to prime for learning:

Justin Sung’s Pre-Study: Sung recommends building a high-level outline or “skeleton” of the material.
Scott Young’s Meta-Learning: Scott Young recommends building a high-level outline of how you will learn the material by finding resources, interviewing experts, and evaluating existing curricula.

Example

Here is an example of what this would look like in Ahmni. To add a column click on the three dots in the top right “…” and then click on “New Column”.