UW students officially returned to class Thursday, Sept. 4. with the rush of beginning the semester, students might be looking for new and improved ways to study and excel in their classes.

A study from Education Next has discredited the theory that individuals possess distinct learning styles, such as visual or auditory learning, that correlate with specific study methods. Despite the prevailing consensus that these learning styles are more myth than reality, they continue to be taught to educators as a means to enhance their instructional approaches,  According to to Education Next

Associate Professor in Educational Psychology, Edward Hubbard, works in the Neuroscience Training Program at UW. His research focuses on the intersection between the biological sciences, especially neuroscience and education, thinking about brain processes important for learning, especially in learning mathematics.

Hubbard’s research is centered on addressing the “math wars” among experts, a term that describes the ongoing debate between two distinct approaches to teaching mathematics: one that emphasizes conceptual understanding to help students grasp the underlying principles of the math they are learning, and another that prioritizes procedural fluency to enable students to produce quick and accurate responses., Hubbard said.

“One of the things that we see is that spacing out your learning, taking those opportunities to learn a little bit at a time is going to lead to much more durable, long term memory,” Hubbard said. “Your professor will tell you this on the first day and you might think it’s just professors being professors but we say this because if you’ve done the reading, you come into class actually prepared.”

When students come into class prepared, they are more equipped to ask in-depth questions and understand the material and can then achieve spaced out learning, Hubbard said.

This form of learning has been studied for more than 100 years, but there are still many misconceptions, including the idea of cramming as being an effective method for studying, Hubbard said. 

“Getting information into your brain and learning something new is one part of the process in the psychology literature that we call encoding,” Hubbard said. “When you need to get that information back, we call that retrieval, and it turns out that encoding information depends mostly on the front of the brain and retrieval is in the back left parietal lobe.”

When students engage in cramming, the information is processed in the frontal lobe. However, when this information is reread, it is already present in the frontal lobe, resulting in reduced cognitive engagement, Hubbard said. 

This can deceive the brain into believing that the information has been fully memorized. Consequently, while students may perform adequately on a test the following day, they often struggle to retain that information in the long term., according to Hubbard.

Self-testing is considered an effective study method because it involves both learning and retrieval processes, which reinforce memory and understanding. Tools like Top Hat and Quizlet, often utilized by professors at the start of classes, are designed to promote spaced learning, Hubbard said. 

Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, Robert Enright, focuses his research on forgiveness as a science. He was hired by UW to study moral development in the area of human development. His research has developed from studying how people react to justice and then on to forgiveness which is a new area of study, Enright said.

The most significant challenges in students’ studying as distractions and a lack of energy. He noted that technology, particularly the use of cell phones during study sessions and laptops in the classroom, often serves as a source of distraction, which can impede both learning and the overall effectiveness of study efforts, Enright said.

“I see conformity nowadays where people can’t tolerate longer lectures as much anymore,” Enright said. “I see the phones coming out and the attention spans are different, technology is actually conditioning people to have less perseverance.”

Enright said self awareness about studying and active efforts to increase your perseverance are crucial to effective studying.

“The painful work is eventually going to end,” Enright said. “Shoot three or four weeks down the road and endure that.”

Both experts advised students to minimize distractions and fully engage with the content provided by their professors, noting that this content is often designed to support their success in the course.