About

Who is this Site For?

This site is for students. While students at any level may benefit from the site, it was creadted specifally for college students.

Why was this Site Made?

A lot of college students have difficulty learning and remembering the material they are presented because they have never been taught any strategies to help them prepare for quizzes and exams and other assessments. The goal of this site is to give students some specific skills that they can begin to use to help them study smarter and more effectively.

How to Use the Site

There is a lot of material on the site and each skill takes time to master. It’s not possible to try everything all at once. You don’t have to use the skills in order. Start with one of the skills and try it for a specific test or quiz that is far enough away that you can try out the skill. As you get comfortable with the skill add another one. There are also some skills that work well together. For example Spaced Practice and Retrieval Practice work so well together they are sometimes called Spaced Retrieval.

The Path Analogy

Throughout the site we will make an analogy between remembering something and finding a location in a forest or jungle. The skills on the site help you make easy-to-follow paths through the forest that help you get to your destination more easily (remember something).

Credits

This site owes a large debt to the wonderful materials in The Learning Scientist site https://www.learningscientists.org. Through the site itself, their blog, podcasts, videos and downloadable materials they provide a wealth of information on this topic. While that site serves teachers, students and parents, this site reframes a number of the core ideas from that site specifically with students in mind. There is a wealth of information on the web and each skill has a Resources area with links to more information. Thank you to all of the researchers studying how people learn and the teachers and students working to put the research into practice in effective ways.